You will find short stories on this site. Most are autobiographical. Some are fiction.

KITSIKO

Jeremy Henson had been fascinated by Japan from the time he was a boy watching samurai movies. As he grew into his teens he was drawn to books about the Japanese culture. In College Jeremy majored in East Asian studies and became fluent in the Japanese language. Upon Graduation, in 1996, he gave his meager belongings to friends and scraped together enough money to buy a one-way ticket to Japan. Once there he found an ad for a teaching job at a boy’s middle school in a rural prefecture north-east of Tokyo. The advertisement was for an English teacher in a small town named Yoshimi. Jeremy recognized the Japanese word, yoshimi, which means beautiful. He applied and was granted an interview. The train line, out of intensely urbanized Tokyo, ran through increasingly agrarian landscapes. Approaching his destination, the train passed by many traditional Japanese houses. He repeatedly whispered the word, “yoshimi” to himself.

The interview went well and he was offered a job. The position seemed to be ideal. He accepted and rented a traditional Japanese house taking up his new life, adopting aspects of Japanese culture. Among the many things about Japan, that he found especially engaging, was the variety and use of bamboo in the landscapes.

He had been there less than a year when he met Miko, a teacher in the girl’s school. It was not long before Miko and Jeremy were dating. Within a year they were married. As Jeremy had been fascinated with Japanese life, Miko was drawn to life in the United States. They decided that after one more year of teaching in Yoshimi, they would move to the U.S.

They wanted to be on the West Coast. More particularly, to live in a rural area where Jeremy could have a bamboo nursery. They chose the Willamette Valley, of Oregon because of its moderate home prices and the temperate climate, which was ideal for bamboo. Miko had a friend who had emigrated to Portland so at the end of their second year of teaching, they shipped their possessions to Portland, where they rented an apartment in which to live while searching for a farmhouse with enough land for a bamboo nursery.

Near the small town of Albany. They found a house on three acres. They were able to qualify for a mortgage and bought it. They immediately began to modify the house to make it more suitable to their Japanese lifestyle. They enclosed the front porch to become a genkan, where one would remove shoes and coats, before stepping up into the house. The kitchen was re-arranged to resemble kitchens in Japan. The biggest task was the modification of the bathroom to accommodate the traditional Japanese, two-stage, bath where one washes and rinses before stepping into the deep, hot Japanese soaking tub.

Miko was able to find a waitress job in Albany’s only Japanese restaurant. Jeremy pursued his dream by reshaping their three acres into a Japanese-style nursery for which he acquired several exotic species of bamboo. He advertised in the local garden shop, and the local newspaper as the “Bamboo Boy” providing, planting, and maintaining bamboo landscapes. He was also called upon to remove unwanted or overgrown stands of bamboo, a process by which he acquired more species for his nursery. His income supplemented Miko’s wages.

Life was good. Miko became pregnant and delivered a healthy baby girl. They named her Kitsiko. After a brief maternity leave, Miko went back to work in the restaurant, she was now The Chef. They needed her salary to maintain their simple lifestyle and to pay the mortgage. Jeremy became Kitsiko’s surrogate mother while Miko was at work. He carried her in a baby pack while working in his nursery. At home, they lived as if they were still in Japan. Every aspect of their life in the house and garden was according to Japanese tradition. Japanese was spoken in their home. Kitsiko learned to speak and read Japanese before she learned English in school. Their Japanese traditional life included bathing which is a sequential affair. First, the man of the house prepares the tub and takes his bath. If the family has small children, it is his job to bathe them at the same time. It is important that small children bathe with an adult as there is the danger of scalding or drowning in the Japanese soaking tubs. After Dad and the kids are done, it is the mother’s turn to take her bath alone so she can enjoy a quiet soak while her husband puts the kids to bed.

Two years after Kitsiko was born, Miko delivered their second baby, also a girl. They named her Kaiko. As before, Miko returned to the restaurant and Jeremy attended to the welfare of their totter, Kitsiko, who helped her dad in his bamboo nursery, while her baby sister, was carried on her father’s back just as she had been.

Their Japanese life at home, and American-style life in the community, co-existed beautifully. Four years later, when Kitsiko started Kindergarten, she became friends with several of her classmates. One of her new friends invited Kitsiko to her birthday party. At the party, the girls were sitting in a group talking among themselves about whatever came to mind. The girls were fascinated by the differences in Kitsiko’s home life from their own. Among many unique customs she described, was the Japanese bathing tradition. She told them how her father bathed with her and her sister. The mother of the birthday girl overheard this conversation. Later, she pulled Kitsiko aside and asked if her father was naked when he bathed with her. Kitsiko replied, “Yes, he's bathing too.”

The birthday girl’s mother ruminated over what she perceived as child molestation. She eventually reported it to the police. The local office of Children’s Services was informed. They knew nothing of the Japanese culture and found that a father bathing with his daughters, constituted pedophilia. Jeremy was mandated to leave the house and have no contact with his girls. The small town newspaper was quick to cover every detail of the gossip. The word spread that the “Bamboo Boy” was a child molester, Jeremy’s landscape clients no longer sought his help with their gardens. Miko had to cut back her hours of work to take care of her girls. Jeremy had the additional expense of rent on an apartment, daycare, and attorney’s fees. Their income was barely enough to pay the mortgage, and utilities. Miko brought leftover dishes home from the restaurant to feed herself and the girls. This situation was also difficult for six-year-old Kitsiko. In addition to the social isolation she felt at school, where other children were aware of her father’s “abuse”, Kitsiko assumed that all the family’s troubles were her fault. “This all happened,” she thought, “because I told the other girls about how we take baths.”

A year had passed before Jeremy’s case came to trial. The jury, of local citizens, did not accept the “story about Japanese bathing customs” and found Jeremy guilty of child abuse. His isolation from his children was mandated to be permanent. By this time Japanese friends, which they had met while in Portland, had become aware of their situation. They provided some financial support. A sympathetic lawyer in Salem agreed to appeal Jeremy’s conviction without charging fees.

Upon appeal, to a more open-minded state court, Jeremy’s conviction was overturned. Jeremy was finally able to return to his home and family. He had missed two formative years for his girls. The editor of the Albany News had been following the story and realizing their role in tearing this family apart. His paper covered the appeals case with sympathy for Jeremy’s situation.

Slowly the local community came to accept that there are other cultures and that the Japanese way of doing things could be different, and still be OK. Kitsiko’s friends forgot, or never knew, what adults had said about her dad. Their life in the two cultures eventually regained its previous state of harmony.