From a Town on the Hudson by Yuko Koyano Read Free Book Online

the old film says. It might have been something like a status symbol among some white people in the United States. If anything, in fact, I didn't like wom-en who turned into fake blondes. They were put on a pedestal in commercials, yet they seemed to hold themselves in contempt by pretending to be more beautiful than they really were.
    New York was filled with an exalted air in every corner of the streets. People, both good- and ill-natured, seemed absorbed in looking for chances to make money. In the city, they had a lot of self-confidence and always asserted themselves. Gradually, I came to think that dyeing their hair blond might have been one of the ways women survived in New York. They also seemed to be fighting against the male chauvinism of the nation. When women got angry with men as they insisted on their rights, their long blond hair seemed to be about to wave like a lions mane or their short blond hair seemed to be about to stand on end like a cat's. At the same time, however, such tough blondes could also act weak and coquettish according to time and circumstance. At night, in theaters and restaurants, they apparently liked men to caress their soft-as-down hair. Being blond seemed quite convenient. Everybody likes to be beautiful. I myself put on make-up and will color my hair dark when it turns gray. The blondes' straightforward way of living and their cheerful smiles won me over, as I was liberated from my way of thinking. Choosing a way of life depended on a woman's individual sense of values and aesthetic feeling. I got so that I took women dyeing their hair blond as a matter of course in Western countries. My view at the time was based on what I had seen in the United States.
    At the end of July 1990, our family spent two days in London on the way back to Japan after our five-year stay in the United States. When we took the subway trains and saw many commuters on the second evening, I knew that attitudes about women's hair color had not always been the same in Western countries. The British women hadn't dyed their hair. Their genuinely dark hair color seemed to modestly enhance London's grand, elaborate structures built in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. The women's appearance was so quiet, and the self-possessed expressions on their faces made me wonder if the traditions of England might have brought some pressure to bear upon them.
    We got off the train near our hotel and walked along the hard, worn-away stone pavement. I thought of the America we had left a day ago. It was a country whose people had chosen to become Americans. They must have been ready to make something different of themselves from the beginning of their American life. They also may have been apt to change their hair color much more readily than I had expected. It was twilight. The big moon rose in the sky with a purple tint. My black hair was swinging in the wind.

LIVING ABROAD with a family, generally speaking, is a wonderful experience. In the beginning, however, there are many problems to be overcome to fit into the new environment. One of them is the language problem.
    In April 1985, our family started a new life in Fort Lee, New Jersey, and our two sons were faced with this problem at their schools. In Fort Lee there were many foreign children whose fathers had transferred to companies in the New York metropolitan area. The language problem seemed to be serious for many of them.
    "When can I go to the bathroom? When can I get a drink of water? How can I say it in English? What are my American classmates talking about now? Why are they laughing? What do the letters mean on the blackboard?" For the new pupils who transferred from abroad, to be in a place where an unknown language was spoken seemed to be much harder than expected. They sat at their desks for six hours a day whether they liked it or not. Not all of them were from Japan. However, due to Japans expanding overseas business, many of them were Japanese children.