Anna Matsushita

  Please listen to this as an old woman’s rambling reminiscence. It happened more than thirty years ago.   For someone like me, who had spent the years from the end of junior high school through high school in Britain, the Japanese university entrance examination system was an entirely unfamiliar world. What worried me most was hearing that the English used in entrance examinations was largely based on American English.   Let me start with the examination itself.   By the time I sat for the entrance examination at my second-choice university, I had already received a rejection from another university. I therefore attended a short summer course offered by a cram school, where I was taught things such as how to write academic essays in Japanese. There, I was told that, although it varied from university to university, American-style English was often used in entrance examinations.   Then came the day of my second university entrance examination. ...

  It has been 81 years since the end of the Second World War. Around the world, people commemorate the end of the war in different ways, including V-J Day and other national days of remembrance. Please allow me to tell two stories I heard from my relatives about their experiences of the war as children. Towards the end of the war, my father's family had evacuated to the countryside near a beach in a small village in Japan. My father's elder brother was ten years old at the time. One afternoon, he was walking alone along a beach lined with pine trees. Then an Allied aircraft appeared and began an attack. My uncle ducked behind one of the pine trees. He heard the enormous sound of a bomb exploding very close to him. He remained crouched there until the aircraft had disappeared. Once he was sure it was safe, he stood up—and found a huge fragment of the bomb embedded deep in the pine tree, just at the height of his neck. He imagined what might have happened if he ha...

    On my very first day of preschool, when I was a three years old, I couldn't understand a single word my teacher was saying. I was so scared that I clung to my mother's skirt. Mom and the teacher talked for a while. Then Mom knelt down, smiled at me, and said in Japanese, "Go have fun, Yuki." She gently placed my hand in the teacher's. The classroom walls were painted a soft pink. Sunlight poured through the big windows, making everything sparkle. There was a shelf full of toys in the back. Children my age were running around, laughing at the tops of their lungs. Some had blond hair. Some had dark, curly hair. Some had sun-tanned skin. They all came over to talk to me. I couldn't understand a single thing they were saying. I was frightened. I didn't understand anything. I cried my way through the whole day.   The moment Mom picked me up, I threw my arms around her and burst into tears. I couldn't stop cryi...

    “ Ema, that’s not right. Put your tongue against the roof of your mouth. Again.” Mum’s sharp voice rang through the living room.   Me and my little sisters were all born and grew up in Tokyo, under Japanese parents.   It was 1977.  From the age of seven, we had English lessons at home every single day. My sister was four, and the youngest was only one year old.   Mum was our English teacher, and she was tough. She showed no mercy, even with my sisters. Mum had spent large part of her childhood in America.   She often told us about those days. Wide roads. Big houses. Kind teachers. A sense of freedom. And she always ended with the same words.   “ America is our homeland. One day, we’re going back. If you can’t speak proper English, people will think you’re a foreigner and look down on you.”   I was too young to understand what “look down on” really meant. But the word left me with the impression that...