Off the Beaten Track: Grandmas Across the Ocean

Novel Adventurers is pleased to welcome our guest this week, Mary Beth Horiai.  Mary Beth has 32 years of experience living in and around Japan and it's culture. She a has a BA in Political Science with a Minor in Environmental Studies and a MA in International Relations. The research for her graduate thesis was on the challenges and responses to aging societies and declining populations with Japan as her case study. She is presently working on a personal manuscript about adjusting to life in an aging world. How will you grow old?  Mary Beth has established a not for profit organization that raises funds to assist Yamada families whose lives were impacted by the March 11th tsunami.  Visit Renew Yamada or Mary Beth's personal blog, Driver of Change for more information. 

My husband, Toshiaki, and I have been married nearly 27 years. Today, it's hard to believe that both sets of parents were not so thrilled about this union at the beginning.

Our upbringings were so very different. His mom and her nine sisters were rice farmers in Northern Japan, and his dad was a lumberman. Their hometown of Yamada is one the many rural fishing villages located 250 miles north of Tokyo on the very coastline recently destroyed by the March 11, 2011 tsunami. Toshiaki’s diet growing up consisted of what was caught by his brothers from the nearby sea and what was grown on their land.

I had a middle-class, American upbringing. My father was an executive in Los Angeles and my mother was a Leave it to Beaver housewife. My mother was always curious about my in-laws. Once while my daughter was admiring my mom’s high-heeled shoes, my mother innocently asked Miki whether her grandmother in Japan, her obaachan, wore high heels. Miki  diplomatically replied, "Grandma, this is America. Japan is Japan."

Our whole married life, I have wanted my family, especially my mom, to meet Toshiaki's family, or at least his mom. We have tried for many years to get Obaachan to agree to make the journey to the States, to no avail. I still hold out hope for my mother to visit Yamada someday, but the tsunami has changed the landscape in so many ways. While the homes of Toshiaki's parents and his three brothers are all on high ground and were not damaged, the majority of Yamada was washed away and still remains flattened and unchanged. Minus of course, scattered mountainous piles of random household trash and tall weeds and sunflowers growing where homes and small businesses once stood.

Toshiaki and Obaachan

On a visit to Yamada last summer, Ojiichan (Grandpa) met us at the door of their home with his usual big smile. Toshiaki brought our bags inside, while I started to walk next door to his brother’s house. From experience, I knew that my sister-in-law, Kazuko, had probably prepared some dishes to contribute to that night’s dinner, and I could help carry them over. On my way, I greeted Obaachan, who was watering her unusually dry batch of daikon, one bucket at a time. Unlike my homecomings in the states, there was no hugging or small talk. Instead, I quickly became her relay-woman, shuttling buckets of water to her fields of thirsty vegetables, as she grumbled on about not having enough rain this year. I tried to be more helpful and gingerly attempted to join her in the field, but she warned that my “city-slicker” shoes would get muddy (my words, not hers). I shamefully agreed and stuck to water patrol.

Later in the evening, another sister-in-law, Miwako, brought over additional dishes to add to the feast. The women knew that their husbands (my brothers in-laws), would all gather tonight to catch up with Toshiaki and their parents. Over the years, I have found my groove among the Horiai women. Somehow it was understood that I was excused from any cooking duties (phew), and I have gratefully settled into the role of setting the table with an assortment of tiny dishes then handling the washing and clearing afterwards.

After somewhat of a peaceful night’s rest (with only two mini-quakes to wake us), we woke to sounds of roosters squawking and people chattering. Obaachan and her 90-year-old sister, Setsuko, were downstairs in the kitchen. Setsuko usually made her rounds in the afternoon, but it was too miserably hot to walk around that August day. She knew we were visiting, and 6:30 am seemed as good a time as any to drop by to welcome us.

While Toshiaki and I joined them for a breakfast of fish, pickled vegetables, miso soup, and rice, it occurred to me what time it was in the States. I quickly contacted my mom via e-mail to set up a time to Skype then tried to explain the technology to my in-laws. They were intrigued and agreed to journey next door to Kazuko's Wi-Fi’d house.

As my mom's bright face and excited voice entered the room, she could see two sun-drenched farmer women shuffle into seats facing the screen. My sister, Meighan, stood beside my mom and Toshiaki, his brother, Satoshi and Kazuko, popped in behind Obaachan and Setsuko. At first, they all just smiled at each other, both sides commenting in their own language on how beautiful and young-looking their counterparts were. After I made all the introductions, we ventured into the three topics older people all over the globe hold dear: health, weather, and grandchildren. After we established all of their ages and when they recently stopped riding bicycles (late 70s for Obaachan and Mom, and 86 for super-Aunt Setsuko), we discussed weather conditions on both sides of the Pacific. There was a pause, where we all took in the incredibleness of the moment.

Then I asked Toshiaki's mom if she had anything she wanted to ask my Mom. After a moment, she leaned toward the screen and said, “Do you get to see our grandchildren, Emi and Miki, and are they well?” My mother gave a glowing “proud grandmother” report, and I knew that nothing could top that connection. Cyberspace has minimized the distance between our two worlds, but maybe they weren't so different after all. Everyone smiled and waved goodbye, and to me, it seemed both sides were changed. I know I was.

It’s A Small World After All

By Alli Sinclair

As a mother of two young children, I’m always interested in how parenting styles vary from family to family, culture to culture, and country to country. I’ve been lucky enough to visit friends with kids in various parts of the world and along the way I’ve observed a myriad of parenting styles. Some methods have appealed so much I’ve adopted them into my own style of parenting and so far, the results have been pretty good!

From the moment most people announce their pregnancy, people flock to give advice—whether the pregnant woman wants it or not. The same goes when the children arrive into the big ol’ world. In-laws, old men, cousins, aunties, strangers… everyone has something to say about the way you are interacting with your child. Sometimes the advice is helpful, but most of the time, it’s just someone trying to shove their opinion down your throat (yes, yes, this is a touchy subject with me!).

For the same reason, I’m not one to run to a parenting book every time a challenging situation arises. I tend to take a more organic approach and run with intuition and assess the situation and the individual child as to what outcome I am aiming for. But I did find a very good parenting book called How Eskimos Keep Their Babies Warm by Mei-Ling Hopgood. I honestly had a hard time putting it down.

Mei-Ling covers many cultures and interviews anthropologists, educators, and child-care experts and even tests out some of the theories on her lively toddler, with some pretty amazing results. Her narrative is non-judgmental, something that is not always seen in parenting books.

Here are some examples of what Mei-Ling discovered:

Argentina

This one I can vouch for and it amazed me even before I was a mother. In Argentina, it’s not uncommon to find young children dining with their families close to midnight, or attending a wedding and dancing until two in the morning. Seriously. I could never understand how the young ‘uns could function the next day, but they do. Toddlers tend to sleep in later than North American children, and sleep experts say that as long as children are getting the required amount of sleep for their age, late nights are not a big deal. The other bonus is children who socialize at functions from a young age adapt better to new social situations as they grow older.

France

Food… ah, one of the great joys of life but as a busy mum, it can be difficult to prepare interesting meals the kids will actually eat without a fuss. I’ve always been keen on exposing our kids to a variety of food from many cultures, and luckily, the kids have been (mostly) pretty keen to at least give it a go. We do have a rule in our house that it’s okay not to like a food, but you have to try it at least once (and the French chef in the book thinks the same way with his kids). According to Mei-Ling, it’s not unusual for French children to have duck or asparagus in their lunch box, and they tend to drink water rather than fruit juice.

Polynesian Islands 

This one takes community caring to a new level. Siblings, cousins, and family friends, form a group to take care of the younger children. We’re not talking adults here. For example, in a group of 10 people, there might be four children between the ages of eight and twelve, and they look after the other children who might range in age from two to seven. The older children prepare food, change nappies, supervise, play games… all things an adult normally does. Meanwhile, the parents are free to go and do the tasks that are needed to keep the community fed, such as fishing or farming fresh fruit or vegetables.

Japan

Duking it out doesn’t sound like an ideal way of handling a situation where two children are fighting, but in Japan teachers sometimes turn a blind eye (unless it gets really out of hand). The theory is the children learn to handle a situation without having to resort to a third party (a parent or teacher). Now this may go against the beliefs of many parents out there, but I can see how people believe this theory has value. It took me a while as a parent to work out that when two young children are fighting (arguing, not punching!) that the situation dissipates much faster than when an adult gets involved. As for the physical side of sorting something out… well… I’m not sure what to think about that, but it seems to work well in the Japanese culture.

Mexico

In small towns in the Yucatán (as with many parts of the world), young children are involved in daily chores. A child of two may help his mother with the washing or collecting fruit and this involvement helps the child build confidence and know they can contribute in a meaningful way—something that is so important for all of us to feel, including little ones. I know sometimes I tend to do chores by myself because honestly, it’s just easier, but when my kids show an interest in helping, I slow myself down and allow them to get involved, even if I’m busting to get the job done. The look of joy on their faces when they complete a task really is wonderful and reminds me this is all part of their growing and learning and sense of self-worth.

In our house, we like to embrace ways from many cultures and Mei-Ling Hopgood’s book is an excellent resource to see how it’s done elsewhere. Not all of the methods will appeal to all readers, but that’s the beauty of this world and experiencing so many cultures. We can adopt the methods that work for us and our children, and ignore the ones that don’t appeal—all the while maintaining a healthy respect that everyone is different and that’s what makes the world a pretty amazing place.

As we have such an array of readers from many cultures, it would be lovely to learn about any parenting styles you’ve grown up with or have adapted.

Off The Beaten Track: Travels with Esperanto

Anna Lowenstein was born in London, UK, but after spending some years in Edinburgh, Tel Aviv and Rotterdam has ended up in Palestrina, a small town in Italy near Rome. She is the author of two novels, and has been active for many years in the international Esperanto movement.
 

I speak Esperanto. You may ask What’s Esperanto? It’s an artificial language. You mean someone just sat down and made it up? That’s exactly what I mean. And I speak it.

A friend of mine, a language teacher, asked me some years ago whether I wouldn’t do better devoting my energies to learning a “real” language. Well, I suppose I could have done, but I know this: if I had devoted my time to learning Russian or Spanish instead of Esperanto, it would have taken me far longer, I would never have been able to speak them as well as a native speaker, and most importantly, I wouldn’t have done a fraction of the exciting things which I’ve been able to do thanks to Esperanto.

Through Esperanto I met my husband, through Esperanto I started writing, through Esperanto I’ve traveled to dozens of countries, through Esperanto I know people all over the world.

Esperanto was created in the 19^th century by a young Pole, Ludwig Lazarus Zamenhof. His aims were idealistic; he had seen the tragic consequences of linguistic and cultural misunderstandings in his home town of Bialystok. He believed that if the people of the world could communicate with a single common language, it would be a first step towards peaceful coexistence. A naïve hope of course - but my own experience as an Esperanto speaker suggests that he was not entirely wrong. After all, I have found myself in rooms where Iranians were chatting with Israelis, Americans with Cubans, all brought together by their shared enthusiasm for Esperanto.

Even if you’re hopeless at languages, you’ll be able to learn Esperanto. In his search for a second language for the world , Zamenhof considered and rejected the idea of using one of the existing national languages, or Latin (far too difficult!), and concluded that the best approach would be to create a language from scratch. Esperanto has totally regular grammar and spelling, and its vocabulary is based on European languages. If you want to know more about it, try looking here: http://en.lernu.net/enkonduko/pri_esperanto/kio.php

I learnt the language when I was 13 years old from a book I borrowed from the library. The book consisted of twenty lessons, and after working my way through them (incredibly easy, compared to French and Latin, which I was learning at school), I bought myself a book of short stories and a pocket dictionary, and started reading.

So, what kinds of things have I done in Esperanto? They’re so many that I can’t even begin to list them, but I could mention my job at the headquarters of the World Esperanto Association in Rotterdam, Netherlands, where among other things I started writing articles for the youth magazine.

I also founded and edited a magazine called Sekso kaj egaleco (Sex and Equality) in the late 70s, the heyday of the feminist movement. The magazine doesn’t look like much – it was typed on an electric typewriter (remember those?) and printed by a friend in the UK. But I doubt whether any other feminist magazine existed at the time which regularly received letters and articles from Australia, Bulgaria, both East and West Germany, Yugoslavia, Poland, USSR, the United States, the Netherlands, Norway, Sweden, Latvia, France, Italy, Switzerland, Brazil, the UK, Estonia, Hungary, Iran, Belgium, Israel, India, Japan, Denmark, Korea, Benin, ….

After the first issue of Sekso kaj egaleco came out, I received a letter from two women in Japan requesting permission to publish the magazine in Japanese. They explained that the Japanese media did not give much information about the international situation of women, apart from the women’s liberation movement in the United States. After that, SkE came out regularly in a Japanese edition (far more professional in appearance than the Esperanto one!), while the Esperanto edition acquired many new readers and contributions from Japan. You can see me with Japanese collaborators  Yamakawa Setsuko and Hukunaga Makiko, displaying the Esperanto and Japanese editions of Sekso kaj Egaleco in the picture above.

I met my Italian husband at the World Esperanto Congress in Bulgaria in 1978, and three years later I came to live in Rome. Since we met using Esperanto, it was naturally the language we spoke at home – and still do, thirty years later. Our two sons also speak Esperanto, and when they were small, we used to take them every year to a meeting for Esperanto-speaking families in Hungary.

I started writing my first novel The Stone City in English, not in Esperanto, but without the experience I had already acquired in Esperanto journalism, I would never have had the courage to start work on a novel. The Stone City was published in 1999 by a small publisher, Citron Press, and in the meantime I translated it into Esperanto. The Esperanto edition came out in 2000, and is now in its fourth edition. The book also came out in French in 2010 (translated from Esperanto), and at the moment I’m corresponding with a Rumanian woman who has just finished translating it from Esperanto into Hungarian – mainly for her own amusement, I’m afraid, as I don’t know what chance there will be of finding a Hungarian publisher for it.

Esperanto has taken me not only to many different countries, but also to a virtual world, Second Life. Esperanto speakers have their own region within this virtual community, Esperanto-lando. I would never have imagined that one day I would find myself doing something like this, but about four years ago I started teaching a course there at advanced level (there are also two different courses for beginners, if anyone’s interested).

Party in Esperanto-lando

From time to time we also invite speakers to give a talk in our virtual classroom. Here, you see me giving a talk on Lord of the Rings http://vimeo.com/2141989 – you won’t be able to understand it if you don’t know Esperanto, but if you’re curious, you may like to listen to the first few minutes. (Hint: the first few sentences are in Old English, not in Esperanto – I started with a quotation from Beowulf, as Tolkien used to do when he was teaching at Oxford. Tolkien, by the way, admired Esperanto. As someone who had an interest in creating languages, he was able to appreciate Zamenhof’s achievement.)

So, in conclusion, do I wish I had spent my time learning Russian instead of Esperanto? No way! Russian would never have taken me to Japan, Finland, Brazil, China, Portugal, Lithuania, and all the other places I’ve visited thanks to Esperanto – and I’m sure I’d never have become a writer and journalist in Russian.

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Off The Beaten Track: Tokyo

Today’s Off the Beaten Path contributor is Robb Grindstaff, a fiction writer and book editor whose first career was in journalism and the business world of news media.  Robb has had several short stories published in various anthologies and magazines, and his articles on the craft of writing have appeared in writer magazines and websites. He writes the ‘Ask The Editor’ blog, and has edited book manuscripts (fiction and non-fiction) for published and agent-represented authors from the U.S., Australia, and Europe. He is currently marketing his second novel to agents, writing his third, and hiding the first one deep in his laptop. During his journalism career, he served in various editorial and management positions, including executive editor and general manager of an international English-language newspaper, which landed him a five-year assignment in Asia, where he ate his way through one country after another.

Before we get to Tokyo, a bit about my food bio and how I got my reluctant taste buds to travel with me. I grew up in mostly small, rural towns in the southern and Midwest U.S.  Our family dinners consisted of meals like pot roast, meatloaf, fried chicken, and pork chops. Potatoes might be mashed or baked or fried. Corn or green beans or peas as a side, which I would never eat. I was the picky eater.

Good, sturdy food, not spicy or heavily seasoned. And Mom usually cooked the meat somewhere between medium well and well done, a habit from the days on the farm when undercooked meat could kill you and the nearest doctor might be a half-day’s travel away.

Osezaki, it's breathtaking underwater or above.

When I was in high school, we moved to Arizona, the Great American Southwest, and my culinary experience broadened tremendously with the introduction of Mexican food. I learned you could season meat more generously and wrap it in a tortilla rather than put it on a bun. My universe of food expanded exponentially.

Then, I met my wife. She’s half-Italian, half-Cajun, which largely explains why I married her. She introduced me to the joys of Tabasco sauce and cayenne pepper. She serves rice more often than potatoes. I’d only known rice as the stuff charities sent to starving people in famine-stricken, third-world countries. I didn’t know people ate it by choice.

She also introduced me to seafood. Growing up, fish wasn’t big on our family menu. As a kid, it meant frozen fish sticks heated up in the oven. Occasionally, it meant someone went fishing and brought back some catfish or perch, which would be filleted, coated in cornmeal, and deep fried until it was thoroughly cooked, then cooked another minute or two just to be safe.

But with my wife’s pot of gumbo came shrimp and crab and oysters and who knows what else. And crawfish etouffee.  I proposed after the etouffee.

Even with all these expanded horizons, there was one food I did not understand and knew I would never touch.

Sushi. Sashimi. I didn’t care what you called it. I knew what it was. Raw fish. In Texas, we called it ‘bait.’

You might find Nemo on your plate at dinner.

Why anyone would eat uncooked fish was beyond my comprehension. How anyone could eat uncooked fish and not wind up in a hospital with food poisoning, e coli, salmonella, or botulism escaped me. The mere thought of putting a piece of raw fish in my mouth churned my stomach.

So what did I do a few years ago? I accepted a job in Japan.

We soon made some wonderful Japanese friends who took us out to dinner for the ‘real Japanese experience.’ A sushi restaurant. In a private room – with karaoke of course. Not only do I not eat raw fish, I don’t sing in public. Ever.

Who gets to do all those dishes?

I was quite prepared for a very lousy evening. The lousy evening was confirmed when the waitresses hauled in large platters of seafood. Beautifully prepared and plated works of art. Raw fish, cut and arranged into intricate designs, an explosion of colors, and a few hundred tiny bowls of different color sauces. Remarkably, no fishy smell. But still. This stuff was uncooked and therefore unfit for human consumption.

My friend Hayashi-san asked if I’d like to try the tako.

“Yes, tacos!” Definitely. I didn’t know they served tacos too. Beef preferably, although chicken would do.”

He served up a slice from a giant octopus tentacle onto a tiny little plate and handed it to me. It still had the suction cup on the outer edge. He pointed to one of the sauces in the middle of the table – his recommendation for the tako.

Or go catch it yourself, like this early riser.

If there’s one thing I try to avoid even more than raw cephalopods, it’s being rude to someone who takes me out to dinner. With my hashi, I picked up the slice of white meat with the reddish-orange outer ring (and suction cup) and dipped it into a sauce. I hoped I could get it down without pulling a President Bush 41 and vomiting on my Japanese hosts.

Absolutely exquisite. Tasted more like lobster than whatever I had expected. Delicate, not at all chewy or rubbery as I’d anticipated, and the sauce exploded with flavor.

That’s all it took. From then on, there was no stopping me. I ate raw octopus, shrimp, squid, crab, several kinds of tuna, salmon, anything that used to swim, float, or squirt ink. I tried all the sauces. The smooth ones, the soy-based sauces that were a little salty, the spicy sauces, and my favorite, the wasabi that would clear your sinuses and set your hair on fire.

Soon afterward, I discovered the cheap lunch counters where pieces of sashimi lazily drift by you on a conveyor belt and you grab the ones you want and eat until you’re full, then total up the damages, and walk out wondering how in the world you could eat so much for so little money.

If you’re in Tokyo, you can’t go wrong with sushi, whether you’re at an elegant restaurant, a truck stop, or an airport kiosk. The seafood on your plate may have been pulled out of a tank moments before it landed on your plate, or it might have been hand-selected earlier that morning at the Tsukiji Fish Market.

The fish market – especially the tuna auction – is a mandatory stop if visiting Tokyo.  Get there early (say around 4 a.m.), and wear old shoes as you might be sliding around in a little fish muck on the floor.

Then head across the street from the market to one of the many small restaurants for lunch. The only way to get fresher seafood is to dive into the ocean and catch it in your teeth.

As for karaoke, however, I still won’t do that.

The only way to find fresher seafood in Japan is to go get it yourself.

Off the Beaten Track: In Hot Water - From Japan to Morocco

Our guest this week is Edith Maxwell, whose mystery novels feature Quaker Linguistics professor, Lauren Rousseau. The first, SPEAKING OF MURDER, is in search of publication. Her short stories have appeared in THIN ICE and RIPTIDE by Level Best Books, the LARCOM REVIEW, and the NORTH SHORE WEEKLY, as well as the forthcoming FISH NETS. Edith holds a PhD in Linguistics and lives in historic Ipswich, Massachusetts, with her beau, four cats, and several fine specimens of garden statuary. She works as a technical writer when she's not writing fiction.She is a member of Sisters in Crime, and is on the board of the New England chapter. Edith blogs weekly on topics relating to SPEAKING OF MURDER at Speaking of Mystery. Look for her as Edith M. Maxwell on Facebook, and @edithmaxwell on Twitter.

I'm so pleased to be a guest here among this group of intrepid travelers/writers. I have also traveled widely, lived in disparate place like Brazil, Japan, and Mali for a year or two each, and am a mystery author.

I was thrilled to discover the sento, or public baths, when I lived in Japan for two years in the mid-1970s. They were widely used, because many homes did not include a bath.

The baths were segregated by gender. I was still learning to speak the language when I first ventured into the building, so I just followed what I saw others doing. Females from birth to 100 removed cotton pants, blouses, or kimonos in the common changing area and hung them on hooks without any evidence of embarrassment or self-consciousness. As the sole gaijin – foreigner – I was the self-conscious one. Women stole sideways glances and little girls stared at me and giggled.

I knew from reading that you wash first and then soak. A well-lit tiled room featured faucets every few feet along each wall and down the middle. You grabbed a blue plastic bin and a little wooden stool and picked a faucet. Lather up, rinse off, and repeat.

Women in the Kiyonaga Bathhouse

When I was clean, I followed a woman into a steamy room with two large bathing pools enclosed by low tile walls. I put a foot in and drew it out in a big hurry. It was HOT. I couldn't believe tender babies and elderly women sat soaking in that boiling pot. Someone pointed me to the other pool. It was marginally cooler, at least enough for me to lower myself in. It being Japan, people were shy about talking to foreigners, but I did eventually get some timid smiles.

After the bath session, people walked away even mid-winter wearing sandals with no socks. Your body was so heated it kept you warm all the way home. And I always slept like a baby that night.

When my son was in Morocco last year for a study abroad semester, he wrote his own blog post about visiting the public bath, the hammam, with his host father. We visited him for two weeks, and checking out the hammam with his host mother, Farida, was high on my list. I was sort of expecting a similar experience to the Japanese one. Boy, was I wrong!

Host Mother Farida

Bath doesn't exactly describe it. More like a willing deep slide into into all the senses, no holding back. I followed Farida like a lamb into a dark high-ceiling long room and then into to the next room, a less dimly lit copy of the first. It lined up in parallel with the first and another beyond, three long chambers that the passageway bisected. The stone walls were dark with moisture and centuries of steamed human skin cells.

We did wash first, just like in Japan. Then a woman named Baresha, a massage/scrubber Farida knew, started scrubbing me in a casual way that soon turned firm. She moved my body around in all dimensions. The treatment was both luxurious and painful. My head rested on Baresha's ample thigh as she sat splay legged. I closed my eyes and submit to having my chest, breasts, stomach scrubbed and massaged over and over. My legs were worked top to bottom and then my front torso again.

She turned me on my side to face her and scraped my pale skin up and down. A large pendulous breast was in my face. I closed my eyes again, loving it all. She turned me to the other side, extended my arm, scrubbing my armpit, side, hip. My neck, back, buttocks, and legs also got the full treatment.

Moroccan Hammam

When I was  finally brought back to sitting, Farida laughed and showed me the multitude of particles rolled into tiny dark fibers all over me that came from my skin. That WERE my skin.

All this time, women talked. Low voices, shrill voices. Greetings and negotiations. Children speaking to their mothers, friends catching up on neighborhood news. Not a word of it could I understand. The language echoed and merged. It washed over me as welcome as the bucket of warm water Baresha dumped over me, even as she still rubbed and cleaned.

In my year each in Mali and Burkina Faso, in West Africa, I never heard of a public bath.You can bet I would have been there in a flash.

Off the Beaten Track: Finding the Right Words

This week’s featured guest is author Sujata Banerjee Massey, who recently ended her fabulous Rei Shimura mystery series with the tenth and final installment, Shimura Trouble. Along the way, Sujata has collected numerous mystery award nominations, including the Edgar and Anthony, won the Agatha and Macavity awards, traveled often to Japan for research, and saw her books published in 18 countries. She is currently writing a new standalone novel with the working title, The Sleeping Dictionary. It's a historical thriller that tells the story of India's struggle for independence through a young Bengali woman's point of view.

When I was invited to write for this blog, I was delighted. In my opinion, there are not enough books published showing us the world. To wit: when I was getting ready to send out The Salaryman’s Wife, I attended a conference at which a famous mystery editor opined that mysteries in foreign countries don’t sell – except if the location was England! I swallowed hard, because my unpublished manuscript was set in Japan. And what made the situation all the harder was my inner worry that I didn’t have the right to write about Japan.

Yes, I had lived there for two years and had made extended trips to continue research and fact checking. I spoke a little bit of the language. But I could not read kanji characters; I could not understand sophisticated conversation and nonverbal cues; I had not grown up in a household with Japanese traditions. By blood, I was Indian and German. Not Japanese!

What makes someone of another nationality race to capture a different country on paper? I have found myself examining this, years later. In my case, I fell in love with Japan: its proud traditions, modern gadgets, and kind people. All of it gave me the drive to start my first novel whilst living in Hayama, and to finish it four years later in Baltimore.

The young narrator I created for my book was a “foreigner,” so it was possible to explain foods, objects, and rituals without seeming awkward. Much harder was making the Japan-born characters’ speech and actions authentic. The solution turned out to be a rather lengthy one. I started a Japanese immersion class at the Yokohama YMCA, and after building a base of nouns, learning simple conversation patterns, and exploring the many permutations of verbs, I began to learn Japanese idioms. Now my manuscript began to include expressions like “grinding her sesame seeds” (pandering to a someone above you) or Shigata ga nai, “It can’t be helped.” These are the things that made not only the language, but the story, take flight.

I had enough proverbs and idioms to write ten books set in Japan. So I did. But then, something funny happened. Another country came calling: India, specifically the city of Calcutta, my father’s hometown. I had been to India several times since childhood, but never felt brave enough to write about it. Further restricting me was the fact that I didn’t speak an Indian language. I felt like I really needed Bengali for this historical novel set at the end of British rule in India. Finding a Bengali class in Minneapolis was impossible, so I enrolled in a regular daily undergraduate Hindi course at the University of Minnesota, which I dutifully attended for a year. I was soon reading, writing, speaking, and loving this language and its linguistic brother, Urdu. However, to be fond doesn’t mean to know. After the year of study was over, most of what I learned for tests fled my memory, because I wasn’t living in an environment where I would use my newly acquired vocabulary. Anyone out there who studied French in high school may understand the situation.

Researching the backstory 
of the Indian independence
struggle, Sujata sifted through
stacks of old periodicals in the
National Library's Newspaper
Reading Room in Kolkata.

So, my India book is almost done. I can understand Hindi better than before, but not hold a real conversation. However, I have also retained some sense of word order, grammar, and word choices that helped with dialog. There are also many varieties of English spoken by Indians that fascinate, from educated, old-fashioned British school English to the pidgin-style language of servants to their masters. And of course, there are metaphors and similes and proverbs that translate quite interestingly. For Bengalis, the mark of a thief is overwhelming respect. If someone’s terrified, her hands jump into her stomach, and if things really get bad, it’s like pouring ghee on the fire. Bang!

As I work on this new book with a mixture of excitement and trepidation, I still think about the long-ago editor’s comment about foreign-set books being underachievers. In hindsight, I feel that the sorry situation has arisen because of the American education system. Most U.S.-born people cannot identify foreign countries or their leaders, let alone speak a second language. Without ever having learned words in another tongue, it is difficult to imagine another kind of place. It’s intimidating to buy a book that is about something foreign: will I really like a book about a detective in Botswana, a journalist in Sweden, or an art dealer in Italy?

By painstakingly working to make a foreign language come alive, we can perhaps reach that reader.