Despite being a long-timer in Kumamoto, there are many of
you whom I haven't met yet.

I came to Japan in 1972 on a two-year Monbusho scholarship to
study Japanese language and literature at Keio University in Tokyo.
I met my husband in Tokyo and we were married in Kumamoto in 1975.
I am a third generation Japanese-American from Hawaii and both
sets of my grandparents came from Fukushima Prefecture.

I came at a time when foreigners were still few in number and
when international telephone charges were absurdly high. There was a
period of about five years when I spoke practically no English at all
since I stayed home to care for my two children. When I returned
to Hawaii on a short visit after about five years, I was surprised
to find that I still retained my English ability. Furthermore,
to make matters worse, my Japanese ability didn't improve.

I've been doing Japanese to English translations for the past
twelve years including one-and-a-half years when I left my family
to work as a reference librarian at the Library of Congress in
Washington, D.C. My job included writing abstracts of Japanese
governmental documents which I enjoyed doing very much. (I am
a librarian by profession.)

For the past six years or so, Cristina Tashiro and I have been
working on getting the names of foreign wives' on the juminhyo to
reflect the true state of a complete family unit on the juminhyo.

Yoroshiku!
Lucinda Otsuka