Our softball team of the Richmond District and Rossi Playground played in the championship game of the summer CYO league.
Ramblings while on a slow suburban death.
Category: Japanese American
On the occasion of the San Francisco Giants’ first Japanese American Day at Candlestick Park, both the Rokushige Fujima Dance Troupe and the San Francisco Taiko Dojo were asked to provide the pre-game entertainment.
(St. Francis Xavier church, home of my first confession)
Father Guetzloe ushered five of us into his tiny little room where his gowns and sacred chalice were kept. We lined up and waited our turn, although I did not know what we were doing. Perhaps there was instruction that I missed, which was entirely possible since I spent many days in first grade just concentrating on the blinds that covered our giant classroom windows.
(short hair fused with long hairpiece, during the one year we were asked to wear our hair long)
I once had long, thick, straight and beautiful hair until I was 9, when both my grandmother and mother decided that I would survive a humid Japanese summer better with a short cut. We went to the beauty salon, where my hair was tied back and chopped off with one swift stroke of shears.
Among my mother’s group of Japanese friends, she was the only one that learned how to drive. I would sit the back seat of the driver’s training vehicle as she maneuvered around San Francisco to the exasperation of her instructor.
Somewhere between Dublin and Tokyo, Morning Star School in San Francisco began beating its own cultural drum.
“…you look Chinese!…”
Published by Anna Pirhana on June 16, 2014On a recent job interview with a local bank, the Vice President spent close to five minutes expressing her surprise that I was Japanese. “You look Chinese..,” she kept saying, as if waiting for me to get on my knees and confess that I lied. “Your skin is so white!,” she would continue, “and Japanese are so brown.”