Three Times It's Jazz

Resting

2006-08-31T11:48:00.000+01:00

"A note of music gains significance from the silence on either side." Anne Morrow Lindberg

To those who still check into this blog from time to time, my apologies. It seems that the jazz melody I was improvising here has ended on a rest notation.

Many thanks for reading! :-)

Remembering

2006-07-07T11:28:00.000+01:00

“If we have no peace, it is because we have forgotten that we belong to each other.” Mother Theresa

A year ago this morning, I was at home getting ready to go to my Japanese class. I’d been living in London for just about 10 weeks, and still spent my days alternating between trips downtown to explore the city, and running errands in our West London neighbourhood. Trying to establish a normal routine of life in a new city.

The phone rang, and it was the Good Guy, calling from work.

“Oh good, you’re still home!” he said.

“What’s up?”

“Something’s happened on the London Underground. I don’t think you should go out today.”

At that point, neither of us knew the extent of the tragedy. But as soon as I turned on the television and began to watch the unfolding story of the July 7 bombings, I was stunned. It was some time before we found out all the facts: 52 people killed and hundreds more injured by four separate suicide bombs, three on the tube and one on a bus. The more I learned, the more I felt numb with sadness and shock.

Yes, I’ve lived a very sheltered life. I grew up in a country that is extraordinarily peaceful and prosperous by international standards. Random bombings have not been a part of my reality the way they have been for people in other parts of the world, including London.

It was literally weeks before I could get on a bus or underground train again, and even then I would find myself filled with panic and would hop off at random stops along the way to wait for another vehicle. (I still do this sometimes.)

I couldn’t banish the images of July 7 from my overactive imagination. I would regard my fellow passengers alternately with suspicion and with kinship or compassion, realising that we could all die together at any moment. It was a macabre thought, but one that made me reflect on the fact that we are all connected, here on this planet. All of us.

I was amazed and admiring of all the Londoners who were able to get on with their lives so stoically. But then, I didn’t really have a life to get on with. And I wasn’t really sure I wanted one in London any longer.

A year later, I realise that I still haven’t made peace with what happened that day. Perhaps it's best not to let such acts of brutality ever sit comfortably in our souls. I can’t turn off the television this morning; I don’t want to turn it off. Heart-wrenching photos of those who were killed flash across the screen, their faces carefree and smiling, bringing tears to my eyes. I listen to the stories of the survivors, of the families of those who were killed, and I think, “I can’t imagine how they must be feeling today.”

But you know what? I can. Anyone with even a glimmer of imagination can. It’s called empathy, and as humans we are gifted with this ability to think and feel our way into someone else’s experience, if we but try. I try much less than I used to. I’d like to change that.

The interview that touched me the most deeply was with George Psaradakis, the driver of the number 30 bus where a bomb went off in Tavistock Square, about an hour after the three underground explosions. “What really bothers me,” he told the BBC reporter, speaking of the passengers killed on his bus, “is that they were under my care.”

We are all under each other’s care. We need to remember that. It is what I will try to remember this July 7, as I pray for peace.

Bodacious Blogging Babes' Balderdash

2006-07-05T01:20:00.000+01:00

The nice thing about having friends who blog is that if you go for long enough without posting anything, there is a good chance that one of them will leave a comment or write something in their own blog that will spur you to action. And so it is that while lolling about in the London heatwave, writing pieces in my head that I am too lazy to post, I have been ‘tagged’ by Marvelous Medea to come up with a list of 10 words that are meaningful to me that start with the letter B. So here is a rather random (but alphabetized, of course!) collection of some of the Bs that spring to mind:

1. Bald(ing) men – Incredibly sexy. After two years of marriage I think the Good Guy finally believes I really mean it when I say this.
2. Banjo – The instrument played by my beloved grandfather, whose nickname also began with a “B”.
3. Beaker – My favourite muppet (along with Animal). His perpetually wide-eyed and panicked reaction to life always felt familiar.
4. The Blues Brothers and The Adventures of Buckaroo Banzai Across the 8th Dimension – Two of my favourite ‘cult’ movies from long ago.
5. Books – My obsession. I love reading and I love being surrounded by books! Libraries and bookstores are my favourite haunts.
6. Border collies – My absolute favourite dog, because they are so smart and fast and adorable and can follow whistled commands.
7. The Box – A 1980s New Wave band from Montreal that provided the soundtrack for a lot of my high school summer memories. I’ll be curious to know if anyone else who reads this blog knows them.
8. Breakfast – My favourite meal of the day. I’ve never understood how people could skip it!
9. Brownies – The first thing I ever learned to cook. My grandmother made the best brownies in the world.
10. Buddhism – The spiritual tradition where I feel most at home.

I feel like this is an incredibly BORING list but since that also starts with B I suppose it’s okay. :-)

I'm not sure whether or not they will want to play, but I tag:

Kiki with the letter T
Laura with the letter A
Sheri with the letter S

Run away, run away!

On Shotgun Weddings and Cheeky Monkeys

2006-06-22T12:37:00.000+01:00

“We are one big family of people, trying to make our way through the unfolding puzzle of life.” Sara Paddison

Last night the Good Guy and I celebrated the 2nd anniversary of our marriage* in a hotel room in East London, trying to explain the concept of a “shotgun wedding” to his parents. Apparently, William Shakespeare and his wife had one. (Who knew?)

My in-laws had just completed a Japanese bus tour of the UK, and were full of stories of what they had seen. They shared beautiful photos of thatched-roof cottages, narrow village streets and forbidding castles. While they laughingly recounted their travels in Japanese, I did my best to follow along, with the Good Guy translating into English as much as possible.

I know that relationships with in-laws can be difficult even when there are no cultural differences involved, so I feel very grateful to have married into the family of two such kind, humorous, warm-hearted and down-to-earth souls. The week before the Good Guy and I got married, I went to visit his parents for the first time, and his mother gave me her pearl necklace as a gift for our wedding day. When I shared the story with my own mother, I was touched to learn that my (American) paternal grandmother had made the exact same gesture. The generosity and welcome of women across generations and cultures, linking Canada, the United States and Japan.

The Good Guy and I didn’t have a wedding ceremony, but I wore those pearls to the municipal office when we filed our marriage paperwork, and then out to a romantic dinner afterwards. I treasure them still.

There is culture, and then there is personality, and I knew from the first that my parents-in-law would get along well with my mother and stepfather. They are all open-minded and curious, adventurous in their own ways, caring and appreciative of the simple things in life. Last September, they all met up at our place in London, and I found out that I was right.

I spent time playing tour guide while the Good Guy was at work, but eventually the two couples decided they didn’t really need me, and went off on their own adventures. My father-in-law’s English is very good, and I gather that the electronic dictionaries got a lot of use that day! My parents still rave about the Japanese lunch that they had at Mitsukoshi, and my in-laws still chuckle at how my mother scolded a squirrel by calling it a “cheeky monkey.” Once they sorted out that squirrels are not in fact members of the primate family, they were thrilled to add another colourful English expression to their repertoire.

Upon hearing that my parents love jigsaw puzzles, my in-laws bought them a puzzle of the Rosetta Stone from the British Museum. 800 pieces of incomprehensible, squiggly lines on a background of varying shades of black. It took us over a week to complete and was the hardest puzzle I have ever worked on, albeit the most satisfying. (When I visited the British Museum a few weeks later and saw the actual Rosetta Stone, I had to stifle a strong and spiteful desire to kick it.) My in-laws never saw the finished puzzle, but on this return trip my father-in-law couldn’t help commenting with a wicked gleam in his eye that perhaps they could find a more difficult puzzle for next time...

My parents-in-law will be coming over later this afternoon for a visit and a meal, and I know that I will enjoy my time with them, even as I wish my own parents could be with us again. In spite of the occasional challenges of geography and language, I am grateful to be part of this crazy, cross-cultural family, with whom life is never dull.
____________________

*I feel compelled to add, however, that it’s been 20 years since our first date!!!

A Little Bit Country, A Little Bit Rock 'n' Roll

2006-06-12T16:06:00.000+01:00

“London is a roost for every bird.” Benjamin Disraeli

Here is what I love about London.

Sometimes, it is sunny. And when it is, London seems to be not so much a city as a patchwork quilt of parks, threaded together by museums and galleries, office buildings and shops. Green jewels set in a concrete crown.

Step off the tube at Hyde Park Corner, walk through the gates, cross a couple of perpetually under construction roads, and suddenly you are cradled in foliage. Sun-starved bodies sprawl in small packs on the lawns; themed gardens, monuments and ponds break up the monotony of grass, paths and trees.

You meet your pregnant friend and her puppy for lunch at a café on the water. Over lamb koftas and roasted vegetable salads you talk about your lives. You have nothing in common, you have everything in common: you are both ex-pat wives in intercultural marriages.

After lunch you stroll through an endless emerald bubble of peace and activity. The sleek, copper puppy galumphs into the water, happily eating algae and suffering the hissing of swans. You discover that even Londoners will talk to you if you have a dog, and you wonder if the same is true for babies. You realise that in a few months, going for a walk with this same friend, you will find out.

Once you’ve said your goodbyes, you decide to stroll up to Piccadilly Circus, tripping over bookstores, cafes, high-quality food shops, and Christopher Wren’s favourite church along the way. Piccadilly Circus is the sun around which you circled like a lost satellite those first few months in London, a Canadian wearing Japan as a second skin. The Japanese embassy is here, and a fabulous (but expensive!) authentic Japanese okashi (sweet) shop, not to mention Japan Centre, where you can find a Japanese bookstore, travel agent, grocery store and restaurant all behind one very English-looking façade.

Perhaps that’s what I love about Piccadilly Circus: that here the youthful energy and digital billboards of Tokyo's Shibuya meet the staid and majestic Edwardian architecture of Regent Street, and the whole world comes to gawk.

This is my London, neither here nor there, but somewhere in between. A place where it’s okay not to be completely at home.

Our Wildish Nature

2006-06-04T22:11:00.000+01:00

Although we live only 30-40 minutes from Central London, there is no shortage of wildlife in our little corner of this sprawling metropolis. Herds of deer roam in some of the local parks and flocks of wild parakeets (yes, that's right, wild parakeets!) fly screeching overhead like brilliant green arrows. My stepfather is convinced that he smelled a badger's musky scent near our garage, and I like to imagine that hedgehogs come and wuffle around in the darkness from time to time.

But nothing startled and delighted me more than the lanky creature that appeared on a sunny afternoon last summer, ears alert to danger, russet fur somewhat the worse for wear. Something like a dog but unmistakably wild, with shades of the coyotes I would sometimes surprise on early morning walks through Vancouver rainforests. A fox.

Actually, two foxes found refuge in our back garden last summer, never at the same time, but one noticeably smaller and mangier than the other. They would curl up in the grass and nap in the sunshine, or in warier moments make a little nest out of sight in the unkempt bushes. The slightest noise or movement in the window would be enough to startle them out through the hole in the neighbour's fence, but we often managed to let them nap out their day undisturbed. Naps are sacred in this household.

They disappeared over the winter and right through the long grey spring, with only the occasional, brief sighting to give me hope that they would be back. And at last, on Friday, one of our rust-coloured bundles of wildness spent the day in our yard again, napping fiercely in those rare, bright rays.

I know that most people around here view foxes as nothing more than pests. And I also know that this little fox lives a fast, fierce, wild and threatened life that has nothing to do with me. But there is something in the sight of that sleeping creature that speaks to what Clarissa Pinkola Estés, author of Women Who Run With the Wolves, would call my wildish nature:

"It is our brush with the wild nature that drives us not to limit our conversations to humans, not to limit our most splendid movements to dance floors, nor our ears only to music made by human-made instruments, nor our eyes to 'taught' beauty, nor our bodies to approved sensations, nor our minds to those things we all agree upon already. All these stories present the knife of insight, the flame of the passionate life, the breath to speak what one knows, the courage to stand what one sees without looking away, the fragrance of the wild soul." (Clarissa Pinkola Estés, Women Who Run With the Wolves, paperback edition p. 21).

If I were to try to engage our little fox in conversation, I have no doubt that she would flee, jumping up over the back fence and into the grassy beyond. That's all right. She has her wildness, and I have mine, brought home to me by her sleepy presence in the middle of the sun-shadowed lawn.

Odd Things in Common (or, “Goldorak, Go!”)

2006-05-29T22:27:00.000+01:00

One of the more minor drawbacks to being in an intercultural marriage is that you and your partner have so few pop culture reference points in common from the years before you met. The television shows and cartoon characters you idolized as children, the music you danced to and the movie heroes you styled yourselves after as adolescents, are likely to be worlds apart in terms of appearance and values.

In this respect, the Good Guy and I got lucky on a few counts. We first met while we were high school students in Canada, and two years in my country at an impressionable age gave him an appreciation for some of the in-jokes that usually only Canadians understand (Beauty, eh?). A few long stays in Hawaii as a child infected me with a love of all things Hello Kitty that I’ve never been able to shake (okay, I admit it, I haven’t even tried!), and encountering her again in Tokyo as an adult was like meeting a long-lost childhood pal. And of course we were both teenagers in the 80s, the decade when good tunes and bad music videos went global together for the first time.

But what I find most amusing and curious of all, is the fact that thanks to a French fascination with Japanese anime in the 1970s, and the fact that I grew up in Montreal during that decade, the Good Guy and I actually spent our childhoods glued to some of the same cartoons on TV.

When I lived in Japan, at one point I went on a quest to discover the Japanese name of my favourite anime, and to see if I could find any old episodes on video. After scouring the shelves of the local video store and finding that all of those robot-spaceships actually look kind of the same, I found the French theme song on the Internet and played it for the Good Guy. He immediately began singing along in Japanese, having recognized it as Grendizer (or Goldorak in French).

Well, sadly I never found the show on video, but recently, while we were amusing ourselves looking up old 80s music videos on the Internet (and yes, they really were deliciously bad), we came across short clips of the theme song to Grendizer/Goldorak, in both French and Japanese. And thanks to the fact that those were also the very early days of karaoke, the Japanese song has the lyrics appearing in hiragana at the bottom of the screen, which fits in perfectly with my desire to adopt a more childlike approach to language learning.

So I’ve now learned the words for “justice” and “pledge” and “protect” in Japanese, and although there are some obvious differences between the two versions of the song – the French hero is Prince Actarus, which I can’t help but feel is so much more romantic than the Japanese Duke Freed, but Actarus comes across in the French lyrics as something of an intergalactic planet-stalker (“He dreamed of our earth, the blue planet / Whose light he could see from a hundred thousand leagues away.”) – they both sing of the courage and strength of someone pledged to protect a fragile planet and a people he loved, in spite of being treated as an outcast himself.

I find it strangely comforting to know that at a young age, the Good Guy and I were both absorbing those admittedly cheesy but fundamentally good values. Along with some terribly exciting space robot battle scenes, of course. And I wonder what odd things other intercultural couples have in common, that help build the evolving and unexpected foundations of their relationships.

Breaking Open

2006-05-25T16:34:00.000+01:00

“There’s a crack in everything,
that’s how the light gets in.”
– Leonard Cohen

You know you’re not practising mindfulness in daily life when somewhere between the living room and the kitchen sink you end up with a smashed glass and a gaping wound on your hand, and you have no idea how it happened.

After bursting into tears from the shock of seeing how deep the unexpected cut was, and after several minutes of gentle first aid from the Good Guy, we spent the requisite three hours in the Accident & Emergency ward of our local hospital, where I was disinfected, x-rayed for stray bits of glass, glued back together and sent on my way home again at 3 am.

Such a relatively minor accident (no muscles or nerves involved, thankfully!), and yet such a reminder to me of how often my body and my brain do not seem to be located at the same point on the space-time continuum. There’s nothing quite like being sliced open to root you firmly in the present moment (if you don’t pass out from the sight of blood, that is!).

This lack of mindfulness is one reason, I think, why I haven’t updated my blog for such a long time. I’ve been running around doing everything I can to distract myself from the cold greyness of London’s absent spring, worrying about what is going to happen next in my life, instead of allowing myself to be present with the new experiences and sensations of each day.

I’ve been doing an awful lot of resisting lately: trying to catch the glass as it falls and spearing myself on its shards, instead of letting it go, cleaning up the pieces, and moving on.

I can use my right hand today, but not 100%. I have to do everything more slowly, more mindfully, with my non-dominant hand. That’s not such a bad thing. Through this small rift in my hand shines a fractured light. I'm awake again.

The Progress of Spring

2006-03-29T22:05:00.000+01:00

Springtime in Montreal always felt like a miracle. After the endless winter snowfalls; the air so cold you had to warm it in your mouth before taking it into your lungs; the windchill that made your eyelashes freeze together; the snowbanks and ice that muffled the scent of living things; at some point in early April the snow began to peel back like a bandaid, revealing snowdrops and crocuses and delightful piles of muddy slush the colour of coffee ice cream. Springtime in Montreal was like fizzy candy exploding under your tongue; like being brought gasping back to life by a lover’s kiss; like stumbling baffled and blinking into the sunlight from the tunnel of a nightmare.

Springtime in Vancouver was different. I was never really sure when it began, hardly knew if winter truly existed in that misty rainforest city that always smelled of evergreen trees and the sea’s salty tang. Some purple crocuses might catch my eye in early February and then there was no catching my breath, only surrendering to wave after wave of beauty that would last well into September: plum petals and cherry snowflakes, apple blossoms and tulips, camelias and magnolias, rhododendrons and azaleas, hydrangeas, poppies, asters and mums, and on and on until rain blanketed the world once more. I do remember miserable, rainy winter days in Vancouver, and the occasional blaze of summer sunshine, but the details of my 12 years on Canada’s wild West Coast collapse in my memory under the weight of an endless spring.

One of the things I loved about my short sojourn in Tokyo was the way that the seasons seemed to permeate every aspect of Japanese culture. I lived there for about 16 months, just long enough to watch the seasons cycle around and come home again. I love collecting writing paper and stickers, and I would haunt the department store stationery floors waiting to find out what the symbols of each new season would be: hydrangeas and snails for the rainy season in June; goldfish, fans and fireworks to take the edge off the summer heat; rabbits and harvest moons for autumn; snowy scenes in December that gave way to Chinese zodiac animals, little green birds and plum blossoms in January and early February; and finally in March and April the achingly pale pink sakura or cherry blossom, Japan’s ultimate homage to spring. My two springtimes in Japan were like gentle sighs; midnight walks with my husband along the sakura-lined canal near our apartment, the petals shimmering ghostly pink in the streetlights, the rose-coloured lanterns guiding our feet.

This year has been my first opportunity to observe the progress of spring in London, and so far it seems to be an orderly affair. My parents arrived last week from Canada for a visit, and in 8 short days we have watched spring unfold around us. The crocuses and snowdrops that were blooming upon my visitors' arrival have folded up shop and the daffodils and have taken their place in cheerful profusion. Plums and cherry blossoms are stuttering into colour here and there, while magnolias wait their turn in the queue. The tiny robins puff out their chests and sing tirelessly in tree branches still bare of leaves; blackbirds play hide and seek with their lilting songs.

Those of you who know me well already know – and those of you who have the patience to keep visiting this blog will discover – that I have a bit of a love-hate relationship with London. But today, watching spring’s determined progress around me, riding back on the train from less than an hour outside the city and seeing lambs, honest-to-goodness cute cuddly woolly little lambs lurch to their feet and take a few shaky skippy steps across a sun-dappled field, today, it was nothing but love, as pure and unadulterated as the spring.

Child's Play

2006-03-17T18:33:00.000Z

Ever since I first visited Dongurigal’s blog and had to ask my husband what donguri and koro koro meant, because I was too lazy to look them up in my dictionary, and then he started singing the little children’s song about an acorn rolling and rolling and falling into a pond, I have had the very annoying experience of a song running through my head to which I know neither a) the words (apart from “donguri koro koro”) nor b) the tune.

Until yesterday, when a brightly-coloured children’s song book caught my eye while I was hunting for a very serious-coloured Japanese grammar book at the Mitsukoshi book store. Actually, it was the CD that caught my eye, so I took a look and sure enough, it had “Donguri koro koro” on it!

I gleefully scooped up and purchased my find (along with the grammar book) and raced home to spend the evening singing cheerfully off-key to songs about flowers blooming in the springtime, crickets chirping, acorns rolling, the wide wide ocean, and demons and good fortune running pitter patter across the floor.

This is how I learned my second language, French, as a small child from an English family growing up in Montreal. I don’t really remember learning French, or worrying much about learning it. I remember countless catchy little songs, and pictures on flashcards, and a television show with a crazy parrot (not to mention all the Japanese anime on French TV), and the endless stories about René and Aline and Pipo (the French equivalent of Dick, Jane and Spot).

I’ve loved learning languages ever since, and have always approached them more as play than as work. But recently I’ve been feeling discouraged about my lack of progress in Japanese, particularly since we moved to London. Until stumbling across that CD yesterday, and eavesdropping on some of my fellow foreign wives’ conversations about their children’s language learning, got me rethinking my struggles.

Children can understand a second language (or even their first) long before they can speak it, and I’m not even sure they worry all that much about whether they understand it or not, in the beginning. They just let it wash over them like the music of a song, picking up the meaning from things like voice tone or visual cues. When they’re ready to speak, they will, and in their eagerness to communicate, they won’t worry about getting every single word right. Learning languages really is – and should be – child’s play.

For the first time in quite a while, I had fun studying Japanese today, singing under my breath that spring had come, and that the little acorn had found her way home.

A London First

2006-03-16T18:35:00.000Z

I bumped into someone I know on the Tube today!!!

Okay, to fully appreciate how exciting and unexpected this was, first you need to know that London has a population of 7.5 million people, and that after living here for almost a year, I know approximately ten of them. Second, you need to know what my life in Vancouver was like.

I lived in Vancouver for about 12 years, longer than I’ve lived anywhere else in my adult life. The population of Vancouver is anywhere from half a million to two million, depending on where you draw your borders, but statistics aside I can tell you this: if you live there for long enough it starts to feel a bit like a small town.

Vancouver is a beautiful city. Those of you who have been there will know what I am talking about; those of you who haven’t will find reasons to visit here, here and here. And here. (Okay, feeling just a wee bit homesick now.)

But after 12 years of being a student, a teacher, a volunteer within various organizations and a keen participant in all kinds of community activities, it became difficult to go anywhere in Vancouver without bumping into someone I knew. Not a bad thing, mind, but by the time I made the decision to move to Tokyo to be with my partner, I was ready for a change.

And did I ever get one! I don’t think I was fully prepared for the anonymity that would be mine in Tokyo. Okay, sure, as a 6’2” white gal I can’t say I never got stared at, but in a city with a population of about 12 million (out of whom I knew, approximately, ten), I can safely say that I never ran into anyone I knew, and indeed often had trouble finding friends that I had actually arranged to meet! Thank goodness for cell phones and for the fact that just about all Tokyo Metro exits are numbered.

I knew that my stay in Tokyo wouldn’t be much longer than a year, which is probably why I enjoyed that anonymity and the freedom it brought me. I know that London will be home for another three or four years, which is probably why I have been more anxious to meet people and put down roots in this city. Of 7.5 million. A somewhat daunting task, to say the least.

So to bump into a woman that I knew on the Tube today, a fellow classmate from the intensive German class I took a few weeks ago; to be able to call her by name and have her come sit down and chat with me; to talk about the weather (grey, rainy, cold) and to share bits of news and scraps of gossip about ourselves and the people we both know; well, it just felt good. I almost felt like a Londoner.

And who knows? Maybe it will happen again.

Desperately Seeking Colour

2006-03-14T17:46:00.000Z

I should have known it was too good to be true when my first winter in London started off so sunny. Hey, I lived in Vancouver for 12 years, I know the drill. But even as the days got shorter and shorter, there were enough sunny stretches that I was able to keep hoping that we'd circumvent the rainy season on our way to spring.

No such luck.

Since January 1, the skies over London have been relentlessly cloudy. I feel as if I've been living in this blank sphere of uninterrupted grey, a monotony unbroken by any splashes of colour. I don't know if this is true of all London neighbourhoods, but our little corner of it is a symphony in drab brick and stone: red brick row houses, buildings of ochre stone, rows of brown brick flats... you get the idea. Not much on which to feast the eyes.

When I worked as a summer camp counsellor in Canada, one of my favourite activities was to bring out a margarine tub of little square paint samples, and have the kids each choose one at random. Their task was then to go out and find something in nature that matched their paint chip perfectly. What never ceased to amaze me about this exercise was that they were always successful in hunting down those colours, from the softest lavender to the brashest orange. I was always astounded at how much colour there is all around us, even when our minds filter most of it out. It's just a question of taking the time to look.

So today I decided to play this game on my daily walk along the Thames; not restricting myself to natural phenomena, but just trying to be observant of the colours around me, letting them sink in for a change. I found myself noticing things I'd never seen before, and appreciating familiar sights even more: the mini daffs growing bravely outside our front door, the bright red post boxes, the colourful river boats, the early plum and cherry blossoms, the cheerful pub signs, the occasional stained glass detail or vibrant shout of hot pink street art.

My colourful stroll reminded me that much of what I see depends on where I put my focus, both literally and figuratively. I haven't been the happiest camper these last few grey months in London, but maybe that's because I'm playing the wrong games. Time to get out my little paint chips -- call them friendship, call them creativity, call them wonder -- and scurry around this city, to see what I can find.

I came home from my walk to find a whimsical, vibrantly coloured postcard from a friend in Japan. A jungle of goofy little cartoon animals, all looking insanely pleased with themselves, shouted out: "HELLO! HAPPY?"

And in that moment, I was. Grey skies and all.

Finding My Tribe

2006-03-13T19:34:00.000Z

I never imagined that I’d have to move to another country in order to discover my people, and that I would then get to know many of them only online. I had no idea that by marrying into another culture, I was also joining a kind of sisterhood of women around the globe who had already done the same. But am I ever glad I found them!

I was five months into my new life in Japan with my husband-to-be, three weeks away from getting married, when we found out that his company was going to transfer him to Manila for five years. I had been expecting this news (without knowing the exact destination); indeed, one of the reasons I chose to move to Japan when I did, was so that I could live there for a while before we had to start a new life in a third culture.

Knowing very little about the Philippines, I went online to look for resources for expatriates and stumbled across a website for women in intercultural relationships. I joined the discussion forum, introduced myself, asked a few questions, and received a warm welcome and very helpful advice. I soon found myself checking in once or twice a day to read the other women’s stories, to share small talk and fun, and to vent my frustrations when dealing with bureaucratic red tape (usually Canadian, not Japanese!) or when life in a foreign culture became overwhelming for me.

I’d never made friends online before, but I was soon meeting up with these foreign wives in Tokyo, in Osaka, even as far away as Kagoshima in southern Japan. They were just as kind and just as fun in person as they were online, and in befriending me they took away some of my loneliness at being a very temporary but deeply rooted foreigner in Japan. Not to mention the fact that it was comforting as well as eye-opening to realize that I was not the only English / Western woman married to a Japanese man!

Although they are all very different people, they share some common characteristics that I deeply admire: the sense of adventure that led them to travel beyond the boundaries of their familiar and conventional worlds; the openness required to live daily in another culture (or with someone from another culture), even when there are aspects of it that you dislike or find frustrating; the kindness and helpfulness with which they reach out to other women in similar situations; and the sense of humour that may be the only thing that sustains them at times, and that has helped preserve my sanity on more than one occasion.

It’s hard to imagine what my sojourn in Japan would have been like without the friendship of those women. For the move to Manila was cancelled, and I ended up spending another ten months in Tokyo before my husband was transferred to London, where we live now. Two of those months I spent alone as a “trailing spouse,” but thanks to the members of my tribe, I never felt isolated. There was even a member in London who provided wonderful advice and was my first contact in this new city that I am learning to call home.

As strange as it may sound, I think of these women more as family than as friends, for we put up with one another’s foibles and accept that we have different perspectives on love, marriage, home, work, child-rearing, in-laws, politics and the countries in which we live. We don’t always see eye to eye, but we listen ear to ear, if I may coin a phrase. I’ve never gone to this group with a problem that didn’t receive helpful advice and words of support and comfort, with a frustration that didn’t invite huge amounts of empathy, with a celebration that didn’t meet with echoes of joy and delight.

As much as I want to live my life in such a way as to focus on the positive aspects of intercultural marriage and life abroad, these women more than anyone understand the constant negotiations and compromises and losses that this life entails, the way that living in another culture full-time – even if it may seem as close as England is to English Canada – can be exhausting and sometimes even soul-destroying. I don’t need to apologize to these women or explain why sometimes I just walk around feeling grumpy about having to operate so consistently outside of my comfort zone. They get it.

And because a number of them share their daily lives with me through their blogs, I guess in a way I am beginning this blog for them. Because their stories inspire and comfort and sustain me, and let me know that I am not alone in this crazy adventure. I hope that my reflections will in some small way do the same for them.

Rock on, sisters! Foreign wives rule! :-)