Somewhere between my heart and Japan

TOKYO – Here I am inside Japan’s high-speed Shinkansen, giddy with excitement, smiling from ear to ear, heart racing as fast as this 300-km-per-hour-bullet train.

In two and a half hours, my long search would be over, years of yearning finally fulfilled.

At long last, when the train stops at Kurikoma-Kojen Station in Miyagi Prefecture in northern Japan – some 400 kilometers away from Tokyo – I would finally be reunited with my Japanese foster parents whom I last saw 34 years ago.

Though sleep-deprived from a red-eye flight the night before, I couldn’t really doze off. I was running on adrenaline and nostalgia as every second moved me closer to a decades-long dream of seeing my foster parents again.

You see, I was in seventh grade when I was selected to participate in an exchange program, in our little-known school which we call JASMS – or as our anthem goes, “J-A-S-M-S oh yes, the school we love the best!”

JASMS was our real life Neverland, a school which made learning so fun we didn’t even realize there was turmoil happening beyond the campus, especially that memorable year of 1989 – from coup d’etats to a hostage crisis.

Being in JASMS, indeed, gave us the opportunity to learn from other cultures and other people; mine was an opportunity to study and stay in Japan. As a young seventh grader, it would be my first trip abroad without my parents. You can imagine my excitement, as excited as Peter Pan’s Lost Boys.

Bridges of friendship and globalism

“Our young ambassadors will live with host families and will attend school for the duration of their stay. What better way to build bridges of friendship and forge globalism at a person-to-person level...They will never learn this from textbooks,” says the school’s letter to my parents.

Thus, on Aug. 31, 1989, I, together with 17 other JASMS students, left for Japan for a cultural exchange program with Omatsu Elementary School in Miyagi.

Staying with host families, paying courtesy calls on city officials, going on educational tours to places of interest – all that and more made the experience the trip of a lifetime, at least to a young 13-year-old like me.

It was a life changing trip indeed, an adventure second to none.

And not surprisingly, it made me fall in love with Japan. For how could I not? It was an immersion into the fascinating and beguiling Japanese culture – from its superb cuisine to its exquisite architecture to its relaxing ofuro bath.

I don’t remember every detail; some have become blurry memories but I remember being happy and thrilled and just being lost in countless moments.

Friendships among nations

But my sojourn soon came to an end. I lost touch with my foster parents soon after I left Japan because there was no internet at the time.

It’s also because I grew up and life happened. I got busy finding my place in the sun.

But that experience armed me with the excitement and readiness to face the world and helped shape me into what I am today – always eager to learn new ideas; appreciative of new things and respectful of other cultures.

Indeed, I believe that just as the roots of war are passed on across generations, building foundations of friendships among nations can start with the children.

Through the years, there was always a persistent tug at my heartstrings to go back and see my foster parents again. In a way, Japan never really left me or I left a part of myself in Kurikoma, that rural town filled with rice fields and greenery as far as the eye can see.

But I couldn’t track them down. I had several attempts since 2004 but to no avail. Yet, I was never disheartened. I had that unshaken belief that one day, I would find them again.

Fast forward to 2023. I was able to find the contact details of one of the organizers of the program, Got? Kunio, a Japanese businessman, and I asked him for help in finding my foster parents and he did. I am forever grateful.

The rest, as they say, is history.

Here I am now, at the tail end of spring, against the backdrop of the billowy pink and white petals of sakura and the snow-capped Mt. Kurikoma, here in beautiful Japan.

I finally arrived at my foster parents’ home. I jumped out of the car and rushed to their warm embrace, overjoyed like a long lost child reunited with her parents. My eyes glistened with joy and my heart, I suspect, was as pink and dreamy as the cherry blossoms of spring. 
It’s a beautiful moment I’ll cherish for a long, long time because it is as much about finding them as it is about finding that piece of me I left in Japan.

The philosopher Heraclitus once said that no man ever steps into the same river twice because it is not the same river and he is not the same man.

Indeed, it is not the same Kurikoma that I saw 34 years ago; neither am I the same seventh grader.

But here’s what I know for sure – I will always have a home here, and it is the same home that welcomed me decades ago.

It will never disappear and I will always know where to find it – in a thin membrane in this universe, somewhere between my heart and Japan.

(Thank you to the Got? family for the invaluable help and Jes Aznar who documented my search and reunion.)

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Email: [email protected]. Follow her on Twitter  @eyesgonzales. Column archives at EyesWideOpen on FB.