A Child’s Eye View from Visiting Japan for the First Time

One of the great benefits being a military brat, a dependent child of someone in the military, is the opportunity to travel. That is what I got to do during my childhood. Without question the highlight years for me was visiting, actually living, in Japan for three years. We certainly did a lot of visiting through parts of this country known as The Land of the Rising Sun. I was very excited to go there. My mother wanted to be stationed in Europe. Visiting Europe would be fine, but Japan was much more intriguing to me. My first visit was in August 1968. Our family left in May 1971. I mention these far off dates, because I have visited Japan subsequently.

From a child's eye view it was very different from where I had lived before. Coming from Florida where it is flat all over the state, Japan had mountain ranges everywhere you went. It was good to see mountains again. I was a bit disappointed not to see everyone wearing kimonos; quite frankly I was very surprised. However, the older generation certainly wore yukatas in the summer and kimonos at other times. One thing I will never forget was how the Japanese would constantly stare at me. Now I know how celebrities feel. During the time I was there my hair was pure blonde, a towhead blonde. I didn't realize then most Japanese had not seen many gaijin (foreign) children, much less someone with my hair color. Another vivid memory was being able to see Mt. Fuji from the military base, especially from our house and the middle school I attended. Yes, it looks exactly like you see on postcards during the spring with its snow-capped peak and blue mountain. We went to Kamakura to see the famous Buddha statue. My mother took a picture of me in front of it. I looked like a tiny ant in comparison to its size.

Living during that time period saw a great deal of change in the U.S. In a weird way I had lived in a bubble during those tumultuous years while in Japan. It was nothing like it is today with the internet and globalization. Even though we lived in the Tokyo area there were no U.S. fast food places of any kind back then. Moving back to the U.S. was very different. No one was really interested in my life in Japan, because they could not relate to it. Once again, even at that time not many people went to visit Japan. I did get an opportunity to visit and live in Japan back in 1997-1998. Of course I was curious to see how it had changed. That is certainly an understatement, yet there were things I remembered that's remained the same, such as older women still wearing kimonos. I did learn one thing the second time in Japan I wasn't aware of before, reverse culture shock.

SOURCES:

Michael John Grist, "Remnants of the U.S. Air Force Base in Tachikawa, Japan," MichaelJohnGrist.com

Kamakura, Japan-Guide.com

Tas Anjarwalla, "Dealing with reverse culture shock," CNN.com