Jaymie Takeshita received an NWK Scholarship Award in 2008 and traveled to Wakayama in 2009 as a NWK Ambassador with Clay Thibodeaux. After becoming more involved in the kenjinkai thanks to the experience in Wakayama, she became the NWK Scholarship Committee Coordinator in 2015.
Click below to read more about her first trip to Wakayama.
Smiles and Tears by Jaymie Takeshita (July 2009)
I’m a very verbal person. I love to talk to people,
to listen to people talk, to write, and read what people write. I’ll choose a
9-page paper over a simple math problem any day. That’s one of the many reasons why my friends
call me crazy. That’s also one of the
many reasons why I was rolling around in bed and quadruple checking my luggage
the night before my first trip to Wakayama, where I knew communication wouldn’t
come easily to me as it does in LA. What
if they’re expecting a cool American college student? I’m definitely not cool – at all. What if I use the wrong word? What if I want
to tell them something, but I don’t know how?
Why didn’t I study harder at Japanese school? I knew that regardless of all my worries I
would try to smile everything off and make as many good memories as I
could. I never expected to return home
with yet another reason for the people around me to think I’m weird. When they ask how my trip was, I honestly
reply, “I’ve never smiled and cried so much at the same time in my life.”
I still can’t believe how much
beauty can be concentrated in one place.
On the way to Wakayama City from Kansai Airport, Clay and I must have
commented on the natural beauty of Wakayama at least 30 times, and that was
only a preview of what we were about to see in the following two weeks. As a San Fernando Valley girl, I didn’t even
think it was possible for trees to be that green. We were lucky enough to see
Nachi Falls very clearly thanks to the beautiful weather. The rock formations of Kushimoto are amazing,
and I couldn’t find words better than “super blue” to describe the ocean water.
When I think of historical and cultural sites, places like Olvera Street and
Chinatown come to mind; places that are “interesting” and “old,” but not
beautiful and pretty. It’s amazing to
think that there is so much to appreciate both culturally and aesthetically at
places like Negoro Temple and Kumano Kodo.
Just thinking about how pretty everything was makes me smile.
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| Clay and I - bringing the valley to Nachi Falls!! |
There were also those sights that
were perfectly normal, everyday things to Wakayama residents that were “super
bikkuri” moments to me. Children ride their bikes with friends and walk by
themselves to school. It’s okay to leave
your umbrella outside of the building without worrying about someone stealing
it. People are able to drive their
cars down narrow roads that I wouldn’t even be able to ride my bicycle
down. Those little things jumping on the
streets aren’t bugs, but frogs! Everyone probably thought I was crazy when I
was taking pictures of cars packed into ridiculously narrow parking spaces but
I couldn’t resist. “I can’t believe
it!” I’d explain while laughing. The
Wakayama residents smiled back, probably while trying not to laugh at me.
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| Catching frogs in the neighborhood. |
But what impacted me more than the
temples, shrines, and clear rivers were the people that gave up their time to
show me the sights of their home and their everyday life. From the moment that we landed, we were welcomed
with big, warm smiles. Through the
Wakayama International Exchange Association as well as the Japan-America
Society of Wakayama, we had the opportunity to meet and learn from amazing
people. I immediately got along with a teacher whom I shared similar taste in television
shows, music artists, fashion, and actors with.
An advisor to foreigners in Wakayama was always making me laugh; he
helped me laugh away my nerves at the beginning of the trip, and my tears as we
left. Clay and I had the opportunity to travel to other parts of the prefecture
with an extremely influential yet humble and friendly teacher who was
constantly giving us lessons. These are
just a few of the many people that we were able to visit, speak to, and learn
from.
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| Learning from people of every age. |
I learned the most during the days
that I spent with my host family, the Takahashis, who welcomed me into their
home. I had so much fun with my adorable
host sisters. Mizuki, a cute and
talkative 4-year old, constantly made me laugh, and let me meet over 50 of her
friends at the local preschool. We
played tag and sang along with her classmates.
Although I’m 12 years older than Haruka, an adorable and studious second
grader who becomes quite scary when she’s hitting the boys in her karate class,
she became both an older and younger sister to me. She was always there to
re-explain complex things in a simple way that I could understand. She would
repeat new words over and over for me until I could remember them. The three of us played Go-Fish, colored, and
imitated the dances that we saw on TV.
We were always clinging on to each other, and all three of us would
smile whenever people told us that we seem like real sisters.
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| My sisters, Haruka and Mizuki. |
While Haruka and Mizuki became my
real sisters, my very young host parents “May-chan” and “Asso” became my real
best friends. We spent countless hours
staying up late and talking about everything from the differences in fashion
trends to psychology and neuroscience. I
tried to teach them about my college life, and how Nikkei culture differs from
the culture of other Americans. They
successfully explained the importance of Nachiguro candy commercials to
Wakayama culture, and the appropriate times to say “nandeyanen!” I laughed so hard that I was crying. The Takahashi Family introduced me to many of
their neighborhood friends, as well as friends from their foreign language
club. Playing word games, making cookies together, looking at old high school
albums, listening to stories, making “fan clubs” for each other, practicing
basic salsa steps with second graders – although these were all simple things,
I’ll remember them just as clearly as that super blue water.
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| One of my favorite family pictures. |
Although I learned a countless
number of new things, there is one in particular that stands out the most:
maybe words and grammar, things I love and rely on so much, aren’t the most
important things in communication after all.
I learned communication is not just a matter of opening your mouth to
speak and your ears to listen, especially in situations when the number of
words that we mutually understand are limited.
Since words are my strongest methods of expression, substituting what I
truly wanted to express with simpler Japanese words and sentences both worried
and frustrated me. However,
communication and understanding are not only verbal, but also emotional. To
ensure mutual understanding, every single person I talked to patiently received
my words not only with attentive ears, but also with an open mind, and more
importantly, an open heart. It was this
heart-to-heart connection that put a huge smile on my face and moved me to
tears more than anything else. It was
this connection that made it impossible for me to say goodbye to the people
that I met without preparing myself with a huge stack of kleenex and waterproof
mascara. It is this connection that
makes me absolutely sure that I will keep in touch with my new friends and new
family. It is this same connection that
I will try to bring out in every conversation I have from now on.
On the
night before I returned to sunny Southern California, Haruka wrote me a letter.
“Don’t forget about me when you’re in America.”
Trust me, Haruka, I will remember and be grateful towards every single
person that made me smile during two of the most memorable weeks of my life. I sincerely hope that the warm, heart-to-heart
connection that made me smile and cry so much will never fade.
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