I was late for my first day of Japanese elementary school. Not by minutes or hours, but by weeks. My paternal grandmother had died suddenly and my parents, baby brother and I flew back to the US for her funeral. I needed to be back by early April 1972 to enter elementary school, but my mother and brother and I stayed in the US.  My father flew back in time to start teaching his incoming students for the academic year starting also in April. I would start Japanese elementary school when I got back, whenever that would be.

The memory I have of that first day at Hōsei Elementary School was that kids were hanging out the windows and gathered at the shōmen genkan—the main front entrance. Their focus was me: today a gaijin (foreign) girl would join Hōsei. They yelled, screamed, gawked. Over and over, I heard, “Gaijin, gaijin!” and kids yelling out my name. The din was intense. The whole scene was annoying. I didn’t want this. I didn’t want this to be my everyday experience as I walked into school, just under a mile from our home on Nishi 3-jō.

Teachers met me at the main front entrance and walked me and my mother to my classroom. Year 1, class 1. Ichinen, Ichikumi. My teacher was Satō Sekiko sensei. She had a large mouth lined with pink lipstick and she laughed a lot. She wore a lot of peach-colored foundation, but I saw her neck was a different color. This difference in color fascinated me; I frequently found myself staring at her neck. I would soon learn she was kind and believe in fun. She taught us about different kinds of farts. She laughed out loud without covering her mouth. We played for the first class of the day, then crammed the first lesson into the second lesson of the day. We learned from her that akachan (baby) in Japanese comes from the word aka (red, which she wrote in dark pink chalk). Babies were often red when they were born, hence akachan.

I enjoyed her as my teacher except for the time Satō Sekiko sensei (we called her by both names) gathered us in the center of the swimming pool, pointed to the large drain in the middle protected by a black metal cover, and said,

“This is the drain. Don’t come near this drain, ever. It will suck you down inside and you will never see your mother and father again.”

That was it. I wasn’t going to get into this pool again. I would find an excuse. I would avoid swimming at all costs. (I still don’t know how to swim.) How could Japanese public elementary schools be so dangerous? What kind of school was this? Should I tell my parents?

I spent six years at Hōsei Elementary School. My parents taught me to speak my mind. It didn’t matter that girls were supposed to be quiet and less opinionated, that part of Japanese culture didn’t apply to me. I was a foreigner. Some Japanese rules didn’t apply to me; a clear message of being exempt from a select few social norms—only on occasion. I grew into a popular kid. I had many friends. I spoke my mind. Shy, I was not. My grades weren’t bad. I quickly found the school library, and only later as an adult did I realize I had read King Lear, War and Peace, Othello, The Tempest, Les Misérables, The Red and the Black, Crime and Punishment, The Magic Flute and more. Today, I still marvel at the fact Japanese elementary school children had access to the classics at such an early age. I read voraciously.

For six years I walked to school. For the first two years I walked over the Urikari-gawa bridge, past the house at the bottom of the riverbank where a large mentally challenged man lived with his elderly mother. He was known in the area as zanpan-jijī. Zanpan is the Japanese word for garbage–kitchen garbage and not general trash. Jijī is a crass way of referring to an elderly man. We called him this because in the front yard of the small house he shared with his mother was a pile of stinking garbage. The pile never went away. Yumi, my classmate with whom I walked to school, saw leaves of cabbage and apple cores on the pile, always smelly, always gross. As I reflect on this, perhaps his mother was composting; I happen to not have a word for it as a child.

Over his broad shoulders, wide back and protruding belly, the bald man wore the same clothes: a yellowing formerly white t-shirt, and similarly stained long-johns. He would always come out of his home during my commute, stand at the top of the embankment staring at me as I walked up the hill towards the bridge. When I got closer, he started to run towards me making loud noises. I would run as fast as I could; get away, get away, get away.  He would cackle. I was terrified. When he dangled my friend Yumi over the bridge, I lost it. Yumi was screaming, squirming far too much. Could he hold onto her? Would he let her go? I ran to Yumi’s house on the other side of the bridge. I banged open the front door and yelled to her mother that Yumi was in danger. She and I ran back to the bridge yelling at the man to put Yumi down. He did, but the damage was done. That man terrified me. After second grade, I started to walk a different path to school.

Urikari–gawa was named such (Buy-and-sell River) because of its history of settlers trading with each other and the indigenous Ainu. My third-grade teacher, Mrs. Tateyama told me a story about the Japanese who had moved from the southern islands to the newly developed Hokkaido found they could cheat when trading with the Ainu. The Ainu were not accustomed to Japanese sake. A group of settler men decided to get the Ainu drunk and convinced them that counting in Japanese started with “Hajime” (start), then one through ten, and finish with “Owari” (end). This way when they traded with the Ainu they would always walk away with two extra fish.

After changing my walking route to avoid the scary man, I found my new route came with more kids walking to school. I lived further from the school, the road in front of our house being the line between which children went to Meisei Elementary School, and which ones Hōsei. I made the cut for Hōsei. Changing the route meant I would merge routes with kids coming from two streets over. That meant every morning, every single morning as well as every afternoon, I would be met with kids’ versions of cat calls. It wasn’t sexual; still it was taunting. It became old within the first week.

“Emi Mira! Emi Mira!” was one phrase they hurled at me daily, the name I used at the time–Amy Miller–being mangled into Japanese. “This is a pen!”  was another, and the proverbial “gaijin, gaijin!”  This is a pen? What? Why? I wondered, why call out that particular line? What did it mean? A pen? My daily commute to and from school was fraught with annoyance. Surely, they will get bored of this? No. The kids who called out at me (mostly boys) never tired of this routine. I learned to ignore it. This is just how life was in Japan. This was life for a foreign girl, a gaijin girl walking to school.

Fifty plus years later, I reflect on the bombardment of “difference” and “other” always being present in my childhood. I had no choice in the matter. I was in Japan because of my parents’ work. There was no international school in our town of 150,000. I always stood out; there was no blending in. Being reminded daily of one’s otherness, the you-are-not-one-of-us message reinforced the fact I was an outsider. In today’s Japan, except in very rural areas, the cat calls and taunting of “gaijin, gaijin!” have largely gone away. There are so many of us now, and in larger cities we are everywhere. Government officials, however, still display the old attitudes. The Finance Minister of Japan has stated Japan will not become like European nations welcoming refugees. The Prime Minister is hot and bothered by the foreigners who won’t go away. Perhaps the most controversial of all is the half-American Minister of in charge of a Society of Well-Ordered and Harmonious Coexistence with Foreign Nationals. That title alone shows just how clearly how problematic the Japanese see us. My goodness. Do forgive us, Madam Minister. We are truly sorry for the gross inconvenience we cause you as foreigners. (Am I serious? Obviously not.) All three ministers happen to be women. Was it Madeleine Albright who said, “Women who throw women under the bus will have a special place in hell”? I feel as if my true love dumped me.

A daily reminder of my otherness left its mark on me. Japan was my home, but I could never be “of” Japan not having Japanese blood. This left me rudderless as an adult, having no real place I could say I was from, but that also I became used to. I see now, being forced to face and confront my otherness daily as a child probably wasn’t healthy for my childhood development. My therapist says I now have Complex Post Traumatic Stress Disorder. It never occurred to me this was causing me so much stress. I learned to ignore it as a child, even though it left a scar, and I never bothered addressing it. Unaddressed childhood complexities leave a mark. I am just now acknowledging I have this scar. (I am 60 this year. It does feel a bit late.)

After graduating Hōsei Elementary School, I went on to the public junior high school nearest our house. That was 4-chū, or Middle School No. 4. It had a reputation for being rough. There was supposed to be a 9^th grade girl that worked in her mother’s pub at night, a clear violation of labor laws, and of course school laws. The implication she was involved in some sort of sex-related business was always present. She supposedly had dyed hair. I was told no one said “no” to her.

I was on time for my first day of school, and there she was with her hair dyed a light brown, waiting for me at the shōmen genkan (front entrance). I don’t remember what she said to me, but I do remember holding onto my best friend’s hand. Tight. Natsuko, my best friend, was in my same class—a major relief for me. Again, I was gawked and yelled at. There were more cat calls, this time the shouting of “gaijin, gaijin!” from boys with deeper voices.

Our welcome ceremony for the incoming 7^th graders took place in the gym on an unusually hot day. A local news crew filmed. The principal gave a speech about how this year there were two special students: one boy with a heart condition, and me. Please, no. Please stop. Make him stop. The cameraman came closer to me and my fury must have shown as he quickly moved away. Then, thunk. My classmate three up from me fainted. We were in rows facing the stage, boys on the right, girls on the left; the lines formed by height, short to tall. The boys wore Prussian uniforms modeled from the late 19^th century, and the girls wore a nondescript pleated skirt, and jacket, and a white shirt. Natsuko had warned me we could be beaten up if we wore a pointed collar on my first day of school. “Wear a round collar. Whatever you do, don’t wear the pointy collars. You can later, months out.” Natsuko, told me. Who knew Japanese schools had such potential for violence, especially over a collar.

The girls’ bathroom had stalls with wooden doors and walls. On the ground was a large hole where we would do our business. We could see our debris down below. The walls and doors were covered in graffiti in the form of messages and confessions of love. Noteworthy was the repeated line I saw, “Machida raped me.” I knew Machida-sensei had a reputation of being handsy. Did he really rape his students? Would he rape me?

In 7^th grade, I had to take the mandatory class in English along with everyone else. Never mind that I spoke it at home and could already read and write like most other 13-year-old American girls. The gaijin girl also had to learn English like the rest of the Japanese students.

Our first day of English class, we were handed out textbooks. I opened the cover, skipping the introduction and index. I went to the first page of lesson one. The page contained one line:

This is a pen.

There it was. My answer to why that sentence got included in my teasing and cat calling was right in front of me. Finally, I knew why: this was the first line in English all Japanese students learned. The mystery was solved. It didn’t ease the sting. The answer I found offered no peace. I knew why the kids said it to me in elementary school, but that brought no relief. I would now and had forever be an outsider in Japan. In my thirty years living in Japan, I learned to grow into an adult who was always stressed, tense, and always minding my manners.  I was and am constantly on guard. Maybe now that foreigners are officially a problem in Japan, just maybe, now I can start acting like myself when I’m there.

We shall see.