Miwa was pretty much our constant companion in our final year in Japan. She moved in with us about a month after we had settled in, taking command of the guest bedroom. Not long after her mannequin also moved in. Miwa was studying Kimono and we were to see the mannequin in many states of dress and undress.
It's hard to quantify the contribution Miwa made to our lives. We were struggling with a baby boy, sleep deprivation and the need to invest huge amounts of energy into a school that had shrunk in our absence. She helped out with Tom, with cooking and shopping, with a thousand little daily interactions that would have taken us a long time to figure out. She was often an intermediary between us and various utilities and service providers and sorted out all manner of little conflicts. It's not that we weren't culturally sensitive, or competent or even quite experienced in things Japanese. We were. It was the baby Tom. He made all the difference, as we should have known from the start.
So this is a little tribute to Miwa, our dear friend. We hope that she finds happiness in all that she does. She never liked photos of herself but this one(taken at Sanda's Mukogawa) is a corker, if you ask me.
No comments:
Post a Comment