Foreigner

Foreigner

When Grandma sold a painting she said she knew who she really was. It was dark when Aki landed in Japan. Leaving the airport by train left her feeling claustrophobic from all the hours of recycled air. The first step from the platform was like a reviving for slap. Her face stung with cold and even late in the evening she was assaulted by the sheer business of Nagoya station. A dazed jet-lag forced her mind into autopilot as she dragged her suitcase towards the central area and from there followed the english signs to the Marriott. She couldn't read the signs otherwise and when the bright-faced receptionist greeted her in Japanese she managed only a polite greeting before asking him if he spoke English. Her American accent surprised him and, she was sure she was just paranoid from tiredness, offended him too. He lost his smile for only a moment before switching to a neutral east cost accent. She smiled.

“Where did you go to school?” She asked. He told her quickly as he tapped in her passport details. The only other information he gave her was regarding her room. When she sat on the large bed her mind began racing. The Japanese word for foreigner better translated as alien and she felt it. It only surprised her in its familiarity. With the angle of her eyes and her strange name she had always been different at home but at least that was expected. Her smile and her all American upbringing challenged people's assumptions much more positively than this way around. She looked the same here but there her sympathies ended. Her Grandmother had done all she could to bring up her son as American. A challenge to a post-Pearl Harbour immigrant. Or perhaps not. She wouldn't have had a chance if she'd gone any other way. Aki's grandmother had never returned to her country, had given up all but a few ties. She kept one Kimono and wore it only on special family occasions celebrated within the home. She drank green tea in her art studio but coffee in any other location, including her own home. And she called Aki by the fond term chan. That was all.

Aki woke in the middle of the night to loud rattling sounds. The mirror catching the light from the undrawn curtains shook and the light fitting swung from side to side. Her heart was beating heavily and she managed half a breath before the shaking doubled in intensity. As she forced herself to accept the panic in the situation the movement stopped. The stillness was hard to perceive as her body shook from the double shock of being woken and experiencing her first earthquake. The world was abruptly not at all what Aki had always believed it to be. She felt the loss of her grandmother so completely that it was suddenly raw once again. She curled up this time under the covers and cried to herself until exhaustion reclaimed her.