Mother!
Role:
Date: March 21st, 2009
Waiting at arrivals in the airport is a strange experience. You are all these thousands of miles away, but yet at a selected time and place, you can meet anyone you like! All it takes is an email.
Christmas 2004 was the last time I saw my Mother. I was wondering what would be different. Funnily I got rather apprehensive to her arrival – we had already mapped out what we were going to do for these three weeks – but there’s always the chance that when people come to Japan they freak out. As a matter of fact I think it’s required. Also we would be sharing sleeping quarters for three weeks with her legendary snoring.
Plans included taking some time off work, going down to Kyoto, cherry blossom parties, walks next to the sea, staying in traditional inns, bathing in the hot spring and boozing in dingy standing bars with Japanese sallarymen under the railway bridges of Shibuya. I wanted to show her a slice of my life, and a slice of Japan.
As I stood there waiting for someone I knew to come out of the arrivals door, all these plans and more were being formulated – turns out we did them all too!
Mother arrives, all is good.
I was sad to see her go in the end, I can only hope I gave her a good enough impression of Japanese life. (she got lost a few times when I was at work, and proceeded to consume all the treats from England she bought me, as punishment I guess.)