On the shelf in my living room is a wooden Japanese doll with painted face and clothes. In all the years that she has sat in plain view, I have never had a child, boy or girl, want to take her down and play with her. After all, if you can’t take off her clothes and redress her, what fun is she? But I love her, because she was an introductory gift from a Japanese student that my husband and I mentored a number of years ago.
When smiling Davd, my husband and I were first retired, we had all kinds of requests to volunteer at a number of different assignments. Most of the time we cheerfully acquiesced to the requests, especially if they had something to do with education. One year as part of the Ollie program at UNCW, we were asked to take on a student from a foreign country and introduce him or her to different places here in the United States.
The college had a program for older students who wished to be immersed in the English language and the culture of our nation. At a general meeting we met Akari, who was from Japan, and she was assigned to us to take out to eat, to attend meetings, to cheer at different sport’s events, actually as many things as we could think of and were willing to do with her. She would live in the dorm for one semester, but we could pick her up in our vehicle and transport her to places of our choice.
My first impression of our new charge was how pretty she was. Tiny and delicate with the smallest feet I have ever seen on anyone, Akari was dressed in typical college clothes, jeans and a sweater. Her beautiful thick black hair surrounded a lovely face with a perfect complexion, tan and pink, and totally devoid of any makeup. She was, we soon found out, 20 years old and in this country to please her father, who wanted her to become proficient in English, so that she could serve as a hostess at his business dinners. We understood that we were to help her in her pursuit of our language, and to help her understand our culture which in some ways was almost opposite from her nation’s culture.
When we picked Akari up the first time to take her to our home in a retirement village, she was obviously extremely anxious. She could read and write English, but could not speak the language. In our vehicle, she passed me a white board and erasable marker to ask questions which I answered by writing back to her. At the same time, I made sure to say her question aloud and my answer in carefully pronounced English to help her get used to our voices.
When I remember it now, I realize that we should have taken her to a nearby restaurant, because the distance to our home was about ten miles and the longer the ride went on, the most agitated Akari became. I think that she may have believed that we were kidnapping her. I’m sure she had been warned about people who trafficked young women in this country. So, she kept passing me the white board with the question: “How much farther?” And my reply of: “Not much longer,” probably did not do much to reassure her.
Once we arrived at our home and took her to the resident dining room, she became visibly relaxed. We were happy to see that she ate any and all the food served. We loved her immediately as her manners and shy demeanor were charming. For the next few weeks, we picked Akari up two or three times a week and took her everywhere with us, grocery shopping, a high school football game, an ice cream parlor, a beauty shop, even a church service. The more we were with her, the better her spoken English became. If she learned the language and our culture from us, we learned an incredible amount about Japan from her, since she answered our questions about her life openly and willingly.
One time we decided to take her to the Biltmore Mansion in Ashley, NC. It was a wonder for Akari, as she could not get over all the rooms and furnishings in the mansion. As we toured the huge house, she kept asking, “Why?” to everything we viewed. Later when she showed us pictures of her house and her room with the sparse openness of her bedroom without even a bed in it, we understood that the Biltmore Mansion must have seemed like a total mystery to her, and obviously overdone. It was our last trip together, because in November a male student discovered Akari.
We were soon put on the back burner as she was with the boyfriend as much as they could possibly be together. When she moved into his apartment to live with him, someone must have alerted her father. The next thing we knew, Akari was packed up and back in Japan. For about a month, she emailed us and then it all went dark as our emails to her were returned undeliverable.
On fall days like now, smiling Dave and I talk about Akari and wonder how she is, and what became of her. That we no longer can communicate with her, makes us believe that her father made sure that she would not return to the States, and the boyfriend would never have a chance to see her again. Perhaps he blamed us for her moving in with the boyfriend. At any rate, we were completely cut out with no way to find out how Akari was prospering.
That time some years ago, turned out to be an especially joyful interlude for us with a stranger who became as close to us as any family member. All we have to show for that semester, is a little wooden doll with painted clothes, and the delightful memories of a young woman who for just a short time gave us the knowledge of another land. We know now how blessed we were to have had that experience.
