Friends of Japan Series: The Fresh Princess of ... Hamamatsu - Avah Atherton

Now this is the story all about how my life got twisted, turned upside down. I´d like to take a minute -really just a minute or two- to tell you how I became the Princess of Hamamatsu. *insert instrumental* In 2015, just after five, I was about to take the first plane ride of my life. Sweating bad, crying hard like a fool, I had given up on trying to look cool... with a couple people I knew pretty good, plus friends and family from my neighborhood. I got on the plane with a small suitcase and from there on out, my life was real pace. I arrived in Tokyo three days later, plenty of jet lag, humidity on high and no cell phone data. Look all around me, I wasn't quite there. I had to do orientation with not a minute to spare! I pulled up to Hamamatsu later that week, dressed in a suit, looking real sleek. Look at my kingdom, there was nothing else to do but sit on my tatami as the Princess of Hamamatsu.
 

Hamamatsu is a town of no real interest, there is a Shinkansen stop and that's about it. People boast about the quality of unagi - all I can say is that it costs a lot of money. While I was there, I made a lot of friends, both foreigners and locals, it wasn't all pretense. We'd go out and lime, the amount of karaoke I sing, there was even the time I did nagashi somen. I wanted to get involved with whole community so I had classes about things that were so Trini -we played pan, limbo-ed and even made pholourie. The children in my school were all very cute but when I asked them to speak English, they suddenly turned mute. My teachers were shy and very hard working so when I left work at four, it felt like I was ducking. But later that year, I got another assignment, it was two hours away, quite up in the mountains. The atmosphere was lax, we would chop wood, go to the shrine and share all our snacks. This was my favorite because everybody tried - to make me feel at home- not like I was looking in from the outside.
 

Whenever I could, I traveled a lot, to places even the Japanese seemed to have forgot. I went to Hokkaido, not once but twice, and I loved the Snow Festival but lawd there was plenty of ice. I grew to love onsens and okonomiyaki, I bowed, sat seiza, my favorite word was kawaii. My Japanese was basic but my cultural interest was high, so I learnt to play taiko and even saw sumo live. I hosted cooking classes to share my culture with them, they loved macaroni pie and called it caramel, not stew chicken. Machel had a concert
over in Nagoya, never was I so happy to hear that man say ¨Heh ha!¨ In 2018, when I decided to leave, my teachers were shocked and my students weren't pleased. But I made a promise to myself and my friends, I would be back, this isn't the end.
 

Back in Trinidad, I'm both happy and sad, I love Carnival but I miss the Hamamatsu Kite Festival. I go to embassy events, those are always fun and I'm even VP of the Alumni Association. Japan is far away but close in my heart. My friends and I video chat quite often yet as hard as we try, nothing can beat that second enkai. It's true, absence does make the heart grow fonder so first chance I get, I´ll be on a flight right back to Narita.


Friends of Japan Series: The Fresh Princess of ... Hamamatsu (Japanese Embassy Facebook)


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