Anna Matsushita

 In 1990, I came back to Japan from the UK in an attempt to enter a university in Tokyo. Back in those days, high school qualifications from schools abroad were not readily accepted by Japanese universities. Even if you had completed A-levels or taken the SAT, you still had to sit a university entrance examination. Only a limited number of universities had special admission schemes for students who had studied abroad, so we were left with very few choices. I failed my first university entrance examination. I had not used Japanese for a while, and I was not familiar with writing essays in Japanese. It was quite stressful to write all those kanji characters by hand, hoping that I would not make too many mistakes—which, probably, I did. I took a summer course for students who had graduated from high schools abroad. It was designed to brush up our English and Japanese, as well as our essay-writing skills. After two months of intensive study, I became much more confident about writing i...

  November came and I was still out of job.  Just for a change from regular visi to job centre and endless search on the internet, I decided to treat myself a day out to the Enoshima Island.  The Enoshima Island is located off the coast in Shonan beach, near Fujisawa, Japan. The legend has it that a lonely dragon was desperate and angry with loneliness, causing terrible disaster to local area with endless storm. Then out of the blue, there came a beautiful goddess, which is said to be the Salasvati, speaking to the angry dragon why he is causing such a dreadful disasters. Dragon said that he want someone to stay with him. The goddess said that she will be with him as his wife on a condition that he will make an end to his  despair and guard the local area instead of causing natural disaster. Thus the island became famous for this romantic legend of dragon and Slasvati, couples from all over the world are visiting shrines, making wish for endless relationship. It was ...