I just received a package today from Motoko-san, a lady that sat next to me on the flight home from Osaka-Kansai. She sent me some stationery with a motif of little girls wearing kimono as well as origami cranes together with a little coin purse made out of that big weave striped fabric they have. The name of it escapes me. How sweet.
This is what I could glean from Motoko-san's spoken kanji: she was 64 yrs old, raised in Hiroshima. I gather from that, she must have been an infant when the bombs dropped and WWII ended. She somehow ended living up on an island village close to there, but I couldn't remember it. She met her American husband, who is in his mid-80's, in London 15 years ago. She said something about a sanitorium or asylum in London, but don't know if she was a patient or working there. She lives in Maryland now on the Bay in her husband's old family vacation home, which is their only home now. He has children, I didn't gather from her conversation that she does. I don't think his children have anything to do with her, but I could be wrong. I was trying to translate from kanji to English. Gets garbled sometimes.
I felt that she is a really lonely person and misses her heart language and her home. I wonder what's keeping her here?
2 comments:
She wrote a letter to you in Japanese? If you want, I can try to translate it. Scan it and send it to me, boo.
No, she did not write a letter to me in Japanese or in English. Just the Express Mail letter pkg, with a thing of stationery in it and a coin purse. Out of whatever that fabric is that I thought was what they make the haori ties out of.
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