cathys family

hello


cathys parents and sister are staying with us at the moment for 2 weeks, they arrived a couple of days ago. its cathy and yuichis 25th wedding anniversary, her sisters 30th and their parents 60th so they designed it as a present for all of them. also, her dads 86 and mums 84 so its gonna be the last time they come to japan. so yeah its a pretty special time for all of them.

cathys sister, joan is the most amazing person- shes a psychiatric nurse who works at a childrens hospital, and is going back to uni next year to study art therapy. shes really thoughtful and spiritual and i really like her. she meditates for like an hour a day and reads heaps of self-improvement books, like shes trying to get us to read a book called "non-violent communication" which at first i thought meant like not bashing people up haha but its all about how to phrase what you say in a loving way and the impact words can have on people. the author apparently often goes to dangerous situations, like a room full of Israelis and Palestinians, or warring African tribes and uses his methods to defuse the situation. i really want to read it.

the day before last i got interviewed by the Yomiuri Shinbun, a national Japanese newspaper which has different local branches. I was interviewed by the Shikoku branch. Anyway, it was the same journalist who interviewed Cathy when she won the Mildred Batcheldor Award for translating Moribito- and she wanted to interview a foreigner who had recently arrived in Japan to contribute to a feature they were doing on "New Lives".

I was so scared- ive never been interviewed in English let alone in Japanese, so i asked Reina (who came again for 2 days to see her grandparents) to sit in in case i got stuck. I ended up getting onto the topic of Indigenous nutrition, and she asked me why they often have poorer nutrition than other Australians. Talk about a hard question to answer!! Particularly when i was trying really hard not to show any sort of political opinion about it since the whole thing can get pretty controversial in Australia. but i think it went ok cos i said it in English to ensure i could be as tactful as possible. when it gets published ill try to get it from their website or something so people can see it.

its so funny being surrounded by Canadians after being around Japanese people- its been a great opportunity to see how many Japanese people may feel when they live in the West. japanese people speak fairly slowly and are more comfortable with periods of silence then Westerners tend to be, and everything they say is very indirect and "delicate" (i think that sums it up well). Cathys mum is really direct and loud and it was so funny the first day she was here, it was a bit of a shock to my system haha.
for example, Japanese people tend to compliment you for really small things (eg if you just say konnichiwa, even if its the worst accent imaginable). cathys mum on the first day she was here asked me what "maple-viewing festival" was called, and ignorant me didnt even know there were maples outside canada, so i definitely didnt know the japanese word for the festival. when i told her this, she said "you dont know???" which after getting used to delicate Japanese culture was a bit of ashock to say the least haha. but now its ok.

i mentioned before the books cathy has translated, and i would encourage all of you to look for them- Moribito: Guardian of the Spirit and Dragon Sword and Wind Child. theyre both fantasy books but its fascinating to read fantasy from a japanese cultural background- theyre set in a medieval background like western fantasy but of course medieval Japan was not knights on horses going on quests. very interesting.


Sonia