The Cherry Blossom Rarely Smiles

by Ioana Lee

  My father couldn’t stop converting the prices from yen to the Romanian Lei. At that time Tokyo was by far the most expensive city in the world. Often times, when people from abroad visited Tokyo, they would ask me in extreme awe: “Do you really live here? I come from New York and I can afford a vacation once a year, yet I couldn’t afford to live in Tokyo…” A ginseng tea bag was $5, a magazine that was $3 in the USA was $13 in Japan... You can imagine the rest. The conversion at that time was 100 yen to $1. A loaf of bread was 500 yen, a can of juice at the vending machines on the street was 150 yen. Not all citizens had high salaries to be able to afford a decent lifestyle. That saddened me the most. There were many men who had lost their jobs and had no income. They were once successful, clean and well dressed, yet recession brought them to the edge of life, living in a cardboard box under the clear sky. Most of them never dared to ask for money.

  That evening when I took my parents out by myself I saw how worried they were being dependent on me showing them around and then going back home. I thought of making fun of the situation, since there was nothing that could take away the wrinkles on their worried foreheads. We had already spent many hours together and were way passed our return home time. Around 11p.m. my mom became really worried about the whole situation. She asked me gently if I knew the way back home. I answered:

  “Mom, don’t worry. I left bread crumbs along the way so that we can find our way back.”

  They didn’t think it was funny and became even more worried. To calm them down I said:

  “Of course I know how to get us back home.”

  “Even at night time?” my mom insisted.

  “Mom, here it’s much easier to find the way back home at night. It’s so bright.”

  “What if we get lost? What do we do then?”

  “We won’t. If we get lost, which is basically impossible, I’ll call Ken or Uncle Koji to send someone to pick us up. But we won’t get lost. Please don’t worry about it.”

  My mom, dad and sister listened to me respectfully and pretended to believe my words, yet I could see the uncertainty on their faces. They must have thought to themselves “How in the world is she able to get us back home if she can’t even find her slippers and hair brush in her own house? How was she able to memorize all these complicated streets and turns at night in Tokyo?”

  “Ioana, you know what I think is best? Let’s call Ken now and ask him to come pick us up. By the time we’re ready to go he’ll be here” said mom.

  “Let me tell you how things work. Ken has the car but he’s on the other side of the city. In order for him to come get us by car, it would take him 5 hours. It’s already late and I really want to sleep tonight. I also have to feed Kiku. Please understand that “summer is not like winter” (a popular saying from the President of Romania) and that Tokyo is not like Bucharest. Let’s go home now. You either come with me, or you’re stuck here by yourselves.”

  I started walking. That was the first time in my entire life when I was the strong and responsible one and had three small children with me—my mom, dad and sister. Between you and I, I’d have to admit that I enjoyed being responsible and having control over the situation—at least once in my life.

  We changed a few subway lines and hopped on a bus. The bus had velvet covered seats and a fresh flowery aroma inside. Usually, the bus only took 30 minutes, yet that night it took 45 to get us home. Sorana and I sat together on one side and my parents on the other. Once in a while they asked:

  “Ioana, are you sure that this is the right bus?”

  “Yes, I am.”

  “When we came to town, we took a different one… I believe,” continued my mom, fueling their fear of getting lost at night in Tokyo.

  “Please, look out the window, admire the view and relax. We’ll be just fine.”

  After just a few minutes, Sorana asked me, whispering:

  “Ioana, mom and dad are really concerned about this. Are you absolutely sure that you know where we are going?”

  “Yes, Sorana. I already told you. You’re driving me crazy.”

  It took me by surprise because I had never seen her that worried before.

  After half an hour I heard my dad ask me again, with unusual diplomacy:

  “My darling, have you ever been on this route before? “

  They drove me crazy with their questions. Actually, I don’t know what bothered me most—their questions, their lack of confidence in me, or that they weren’t enjoying the view, worrying instead about being lost. Our roles had switched. They looked like helpless children now, even though they had always been better than me before.

  Since our family’s sense of humor is very developed, I decided that the best way to handle the tension of the situation was to joke around. I let Sorana in on my prank and asked her to be an accomplice. I also assured her that we were very close to our stop and that from there it would only take us two minutes to get home. We planned to trick our parents. Our scenario had me fall asleep while Sorana told them that I had admitted to her that I wasn’t sure where we were. I pretended to be sleepy and in a few minutes I “fell asleep,” my head resting on the bus’ window.

  “Mommy,” I heard Sorana whispering. “What are we going to do now? Ioana fell asleep. A few minutes before she confessed to me that she doesn’t know if this is the exact way to get home. She was too embarrassed about it and felt too guilty to admit it.”

  “I was sure of it,” I heard mom’s anxious reply. “The view doesn’t look anything like the one we had seen when we went to town.”

  “I believe that…” Sorana continued on a very serious tone, “this bus will eventually take us to China!”

  We all started laughing so hard that we burst into tears. I missed that Romanian laughter so much. I was laughing at the situation and they were laughing to scare away their tension and anxiousness. I made fun of their desire to navigate their way back home by looking out the window. This would have been impossible, as the scenery was completely unfamiliar to them. Not even a local person could have remembered things clearly.

  “Well, I looked out the window and everything looked new,” explained my mom once again, laughing at herself.

  The bus stopped at last and we got out. We made fun of the situation for two days in a row. I ask my mom to this day: “What was in your mind when you said that the view didn’t look the same? How did you expect to recognize things when you had only landed in Tokyo two days before?”

  The next day I asked Sorana to go for a walk with me before her bedtime—just the two of us. She’d usually go to bed really late because of the different time zone. She also suffered from chronic insomnia and I thought that fresh air would help the two of us sleep better. It was a beautiful summer evening. The air was warm and very humid, which made the bright lights of the city look like they had a translucent aura around them. Sorana was happy to go for a walk.

  First, I had to tell Ken that we wanted to go out. He approved. The first obstacle was easy. Then, we had to tell our parents that we wanted to walk in the neighborhood. Well, this second obstacle was harder than we thought… Dad said:

  “Are you crazy? It’s 10p.m.. Where do you think you’re going? No! Don’t even think of it! You’re not allowed to leave the house!”

  I said:

  “Dad, I want to respectfully let you know that we are not asking for your permission. We want to go for a walk and thought that it would be nice of us to let you know.”

  Our mom added:

  “My dear, please let the girls go for a walk. They’re not 17 anymore.”

  Ken added in broken Romanian: “Ioana’s Father, let girls go out get fresh air. They go around the house. Ioana don’t like when we say no, no, no too much. She say the world say no to her because she is a baby. I know that she is baby but she say that she is big girl. We don’t always understand each other.”

  After 15 minutes of debates my parents understood that walking in the evening in Tokyo was perfectly fine, relaxi
ng and safe. Now that we had permission, we rushed to put clothes on before one of them could change their mind.

  My sisters, Iulia and Sorana, look very different, yet always dress similarly. They both are classically beautiful. My way of dressing was different. At that time a LOT different. Everyone saw the difference in the way I dressed as normal for me. My extravagance, my theatrical look and behavior in public places didn’t surprise anyone too much. That evening, there was no exception to the rule: I was Ioana and Sorana was Sorana. I dressed in a tight Kenzo top with a short and tight denim skirt. I wore my highest heels and two gold bracelets on my right ankle.

  Sorana looked at me smiling. I bet she thought, “When will Ioana grow up?” She was dressed in a black, sleeveless, tight dress that came down to her knees. She wore nice sandals with medium size heels. Her outfit was tasteful and discreet. We looked at each other, smiled, and got ready to say our goodbyes.

  “Where do you think you are going, dressed so improperly, at such a late hour?!” asked my father, in a very upset tone.

  Oh well, if you thought that his question was addressed to me, you’d be wrong. He addressed his question to—I can’t even believe it myself—Sorana. She protested like a child in front of him:

  “Me?! I’m dressed improperly? Why can you only see me? You’d better look at what your youngest daughter is wearing. You never tell her anything, or even suggest that she’d wear something different. Something decent! This is too much!”

  They both continued to argue. My father said that there was nothing inappropriate in the way I dressed, as it was usual for me. Sorana contradicted him. Mom, Ken and I laughed as hard as we could while hearing their arguments. The whole scene was too funny. On one hand Sorana was right when she said that they never told me anything about my extravagant way of dressing. On the other hand, my dad was right too, saying that he was used to my style and that Sorana wearing a tight, black dress was too much and too showy.

  That argument made me remember how my sisters and I were always treated differently. In order for Iulia, my oldest sister, to go out dancing, she had to ask for permission three weeks in advance and had to make sure that she got good grades in school, helped my parents with house work and took care of her two youngest sisters, Sorana and I. She had to be Super Girl for the entire three weeks just to be able to go out dancing. In order for my middle sister, Sorana, to go out dancing twice a month, she had to give them enough notice so that my parents had plenty of time to make up their minds. She had to get good grades at school too. Their only condition was that she’d come back by 10p.m. whenever she went out dancing. When my turn came to go out clubbing, communism was over, so I got to go out dancing every week.

  Sometimes, I did it more than once a week. In order for me to get permission to go out, I had to finish the food on my plate. My two oldest sisters were already independent, living on their own, when my clubbing days came, yet despite this they thought that my parents’ attitude towards the situation was unfair. As far as I was concerned, eating was a true punishment for me. I would have done anything else but eat. I tried to make them change the rule by saying that I’d do my homework and learn how to cook. I would have done anything to get rid of the plate of food sitting in front of me. Often times, I gave up dancing because of this, even though dancing was for me a way of living and expressing myself. I thought that eating was a waste of time. I could always find better things to do than this. Later, much later, I understood that eating actually meant living.

  That evening, when we wanted to go out for a walk, my dad acted like he usually does. Because he has three daughters, his protective side got over developed in time. I admire men and their contribution to society, yet I started being annoyed with their superiority towards women when I was 15. It always seemed that men overpowered me. If the man wasn’t my father, he was my head teacher, boss or husband. I’ve always had an inner battle towards that authoritative, masculine, dominant presence in my life.

  Accommodating my Extended Family

  After two weeks of spending time together in Tokyo, we left for Sendai. The drive between the two cities, including stops for food and beverages, took about 12 hours. I slept most of the way, yet could hear my parents talking in the background. My father was astounded at how Ken was able to drive the car with the steering wheel on the right side instead of the left. Sorana was astonished at how exquisite the Japanese countryside looked, how rich and colorful the trees and grass were, how beautiful all those tiny little creatures playing around were (frogs, lizards, sea gulls, etc.) My mother couldn’t stop trying to read all the Nipponese characters on the indicators. She tried hard to read them, only to realize that it was useless. To this day, those characters remain a mystery to her. She found the courage to ask Ken about it:

  “Ken, what are normal people like us, who can’t decipher these characters, doing here? How are they able to get from one place to another?”

  My husband answered with certain assuredness:

  “But… Ioana’s Mother… In Japan no one is a … character orphan.”

  Character orphan?! I remember waking up because of their crazy and loud laughter. Ken couldn’t understand why everyone laughed at him. I explained to him that he should have said, “All the Japanese know how to read these characters (kanji); no one is illiterate.” His combination of words “character orphan,” was used to express “illiterate.” It was so funny that it forever stuck in our memory, as if it were poetry. No Romanian would have ever mixed those two words together.

  All of them were impressed by how great the roads were and how polite the drivers behaved. During our Sendai trip we lived unforgettable experiences and deep friendships were born. We had so many fun memories together and laughed at everything that was happening. Many of those moments should have been filmed, as they felt truly epic.

  Just to give you an idea, here is how my mom invented a Romanian recipe, without even trying. She woke up one morning crazy early. Because of the different time zone she still had trouble sleeping. To make herself useful, she went to the kitchen to make a mushroom stew. To this day, I have no idea how my mom managed to find her way around in a Japanese kitchen. It all looked like a labyrinth to me, with science fiction equipment and utensils. My secret for staying out of trouble was to avoid them all. Anyhow, while in the kitchen, waiting for the mushroom stew to cook, she got hungry. She peeled a banana and all of a sudden she heard someone coming down the stairs. She felt so embarrassed that someone would see her eat at that crazy hour, that she decided to cut up the banana and put it into the mushroom stew. In spite of her kitchen experiments she was always the winner when it came to the culinary awards. The whole family was impressed with the taste of her dish. They said that they never tasted anything like it before. My father and Sorana sensed the different taste and asked: “Did you add bananas to this stew?”

  My family assimilated most of Japanese customs: bowing in front of everyone, eating using only chop sticks, saying words and phrases in Japanese to be polite. I taught them some of those words, yet most of them they learned on the go. The challenge was that they added a Romanian spin to the Japanese words. The three of them knew how to introduce themselves, apologize, say hi and thank you and talk to Kiku. They didn’t understand the subtle differences between the words used for people and those used for animals. I thought that I was going to faint when my mom said OSUWARI after she finished cooking and setting up the table. It meant, “Please sit down,” yet it was an imperative only used to address lower class people. That’s why we used it for Kiku. Before I could interject, to save the situation, she said MATTE, which meant, “Wait a moment.” It was impolite, as it was usually used for animals or children. She ended her Japanese performance with “Yoshi-Yoshi,” which is what I usually said to Kiku, giving her permission to start eating her food. Thank God they had a sense of humor and my mom’s trial to impress them with her Japanese was perceived as a joke. After all, my mother made the effort to learn all those words
in Japanese. Looking back now, I realize how wonderful those moments were. Daily, I was a bundle of laughter joy.

  My Japanese family showed my parents around: the restaurants, lakes, mountains, stores, museums, and forests with two thousand year old trees. I don’t know all their stories, as I didn’t join them every time. The only thing I know for sure is that they were always happy, excited and deeply impressed by the people, culture and language. It was the first time when my parents met my extended Japanese family. Our relatives came for all over the country to attend our wedding. We hosted all of them in our two homes. Ken, Kiku and I had our bedroom. Sorana, mom and dad got the two guest rooms that were on the same floor as our room. Their rooms had tatami on the floor and were traditionally designed. They were separated only by a rice paper gliding door, which proved to be good as they used to talk until late at night. I was concerned that they’ll accidentally rip the rice paper door just like I did. As with many other things, I was wrong.