Obaachama

I was anxious to go back to Tokyo this spring break to see my family and friends but unfortunately because of the recent earthquake and tsunami that hit the northern part of Japan and with the devastating problem of the nuclear power plant, my family had to cancel our trip. I was hoping to sit down and talk to my grandma and interview her life and everything she’s been through, but instead I skyped her. I titled this post Obaachama, meaning grandmother in Japanese. 

To be honest, I’m not close with my dad’s side of the family. I used to live in Tokyo whereas my grandma lived in Osaka, a 3 hour train ride away from Tokyo. So I never get to see her that often and in fact, the last time I saw her was about 4 years ago! But thanks to technological advancement, we get to video chat via Skype. 

During this interview, I was actually quite upset because there was so much about my grandma that I never knew about. We never had a conversation about her life and it was so fascinating to hear all the stuff she had done in the past and the challenges she faced living in a male dominated society. 

One of the things I noticed during this interview was when she was describing her mother’s daily life. She recalls her mother cleaning the house, taking care of all her 6 children, and preparing meals for her husband because that was her role; women weren’t allowed to work. She remembers seeing her mother eating leftovers from their husband’s meals because they had to prioritize their husband’s needs before theirs. Her mother was a loving, caring mother who gave up her meals for her 6 children during WWII when resources were scarce. My grandma looks up to her as a role model and respects her for all the sacrifices she had to make in raising all her children and being able to send all of them to a two-year college. 

She sees a great difference between her girlhood and the lives of girls today and she believes it’s changing for the better. Girls today have far more freedom than girls during her time because they are able to have part time jobs and make money for themselves. Girls today live a more independent lifestyle whereas before, most girls had very strict curfews, strict parents, and were restricted on things they wanted to become because they were expected to marry young and have a family of their own. Although she says women’s status has changed for the best, she believes that girls as well as boys today don’t appreciate the things they have because Japan is rich in resources and they can have whatever they want, whenever they want. 

During the interview when asking about the difficulties during her young adulthood, I could really tell that my grandma had a rocky and difficult relationship with her mother-in-law. She was very strict and they both had very different opinions so they didn’t get along very well. She didn’t have anyone to talk to or seek anyone for comfort because all of her 3 sons went off to Tokyo for high school and college. She kept all her frustration inside of her for a very long time and at one point of the interview, she became very emotional because she was telling me how she just wanted to escape and be on her own. But soon after, her father-in-law past away and things began to change because they worked on their relationship and soon enough, they became closer than ever and even lived under the same roof. 

I actually enjoyed interviewing my grandma because we bonded for the first time in a really long time and it made me feel a lot closer to my grandma. This assignment wasn’t something that I felt like I had to do just because it was homework, but it was a way to connect with my grandma. I learned so much about her that I’ve never known and it made me really want to talk to her more.