Anna Matsushita

      Allow me to indulge in a little rambling from my twilight years. It was some forty years ago, on an otherwise ordinary day at school, when I was abruptly asked, “Anna, why did you go upstairs?”   It was in late 1980’s, and at the time, my family had been relocated to London due to my father’s job, and I was attending an international school. The weekend prior, we had ventured to London’s Chinatown for a much-anticipated dinner. The memory still lingers—savouring stir-fried greens, steaming noodle soups, fried rice, and tapioca in coconut milk. Bliss.   On the way to the restaurant, I’d run into a classmate and their friends quite by chance. Later, I learned that they had trailed us, curious about where Japanese families dined. Apparently, the sight of us entering a Chinese restaurant had intrigued them enough to follow us inside.   The restaurant, like many in those days, operated on a system of subtle (or not so subtle) racial disti...

This is a fiction based on my personal experience at a university in Tokyo, back in early 1990's   ------------------------------------------------------   I first noticed her in October 1987, during the admissions interview at Zophia University in Tokyo.   The English department, my dream destination, had a rigorous selection process—both a written test and an interview. Having cleared the written test, I received the much-anticipated interview invitation.   I’d spent five years in the northwest of England during my secondary school years. This background gave me an advantage, but my motivations ran deeper than just fluency. I wanted to study linguistics, to truly understand the English language from every angle. My aspirations spanned teaching, translation, or even interpreting. I had a lot riding on this.   The interview was to last just ten minutes—a brief window to define my future. How it would go, I couldn’t predict, but I’d prepared myself as best I coul...