Have a wonderful time in your new home, and with your new "family." You deserve it.
Thanks, mass55th. Yes, my Dad was alive when I was stationed in Japan and attended the wedding held in my hometown on Cape Cod.
In fact my Mom visited Japan, met my wife’s relatives a year before we got engaged and married. She had the time of her life — and it’s a cherished time because my Mom and I had a neat adventure together.
At first, getting used to my Dad was a challenge for my wife. And after I left the Navy (after 9 years in) I left the Cape Cod homestead for a part-time job in the Boston area for a week or two and my wife had to live with my Mom and Dad alone at this time.
Dad had a terrific knack at being a self-employed real estate agent — and later an appraiser. He and my Mom raised 8 kids and it was a great childhood they enabled.
But Dad was a bit rough around the edges (as was the custom in those days) at being the king of his castle.
Anyway, my wife and my Mom were preparing a special dinner with some Japanese twist to it. And my wife said Dad was prowling around the kitchen wondering what was being prepared and worried that he wouldn’t get something he would like, etc.
And he eventually got fidgety enough that he bursted out at my mother, “Ann, what are we having for dinner?!”
My wife was cutting a large cabbage at the time and she immediately retorted to my Dad, “Cabbage!”, while holding a big knife in her hand.
Well, that comment broke the ice. And all three of them laughed, realizing that my wife could hold her own and displayed her fast wit.
And so that began a good relationship. From that point on she and my Dad understood each other. And occasionally Dad would use the term “Nipponese” or something like that, but it really didn’t matter, because there was a two-way respect.
I am thoroughly enjoying life here in Japan as a I try to learn the language — enough to have some good conversations.
The city I live in has a big R&D plant for Honda at the local industry park, so not so ironically I’m running into a few people who have lived in America. One of my Japanese language teachers spent a couple years in Dublin, Ohio where Honda has one of its biggest American factories.
Regardless, this is a technically and culturally advanced society so it’s fun for me to observe and analyze the differences.
In the coming months I plan to launch a new blog site that looks at Japan from an American’s perspective — not about food or tourism, but more from the “how the country works” angle — the kind of stuff FReepers would enjoy reading.