Lunch with Chieko

Last year, when visiting my 97-year-old friend, Chieko, at the Seniors' Home where she lives in the countryside, she wanted to go out to eat some meat. I helped her into my car, strapped on her seatbelt, then did the reverse when we arrived at the nearby kurobuta (black pig) restaurant.

We both ordered tonkatsu. Her eyes opened wide when our trays were brought, "Woah! Look at all this food! We'll never finish it all!"

Chieko saying, "Woah!"

I asked her, pointing at the small dish of simmered vegetables with tofu and meat, "Do you eat this type of thing at the seniors' home?" I thought it looked like the kind of soft food they would have.

"They serve it, but I don't eat it. I also don't eat miso soup."

"How often do they serve that?"

"Morning, noon, and evening. And I don't eat rice either."

"What do you eat?"

Apparently, not much anymore.

Her story is long and amazing - like her life. Arranged marriages being the norm before the war, she met her husband for the first time on her wedding day. Soon she was living with him in Japanese occupied Manchuria, and after "we lost the war," as the old folks say, they came back with just the clothes they were wearing to a completely flattened Kagoshima. There was no food in the city, nothing at all, and people would be stopped by guards if they brought in so much as a few sweet potatoes from the countryside, so she and her husband went south to her in-laws' farm, where she worked growing rice and vegetables.

Some time later, her husband got a job as a teacher of engineering, and feeling the married life just wasn't for her, Chieko got divorced and went back to school. She graduated five years later with a teaching degree. She worked as an elementary school teacher, eventually becoming the principal of the prestigious kindergarten that is connected with the university here - the second of its kind in the country, first established in the Meiji Era (1879, according to Japanese Wikipedia). She retired at 60, took up studying English, traveled widely. She never married again and has no children.

She has a niece who looks after her and visits her a couple times a month. The doctor who opened the seniors' home where she lives is the father (and PTA chair) of one of her former students, also a doctor. (The dad has a clinic next door and looks after her personally. He is 82 and is also widely traveled, and an artist. Many of his drawings adorn Chieko's walls.) Pretty much anyone who is anyone in this city is her former student. She is well-known and well-loved.

She was right about the lunch. What we could finish, though, was delicious. Kagoshima kurobuta pork cutlet.

Update, March 31, 2017

Tea based meal and the brownies I brought

My two teenage sons and I drove in the rain an hour south to see Chieko. As we perched on round stools in her little room, she sat on the edge of her bed and regaled us with stories. After the excitement of her 98th birthday, which included 20 people coming from around the country who had been in her kindergarten class in 1962 to a celebration of her 99th year that was also on TV, then a week later, a lunch of green tea dishes that I attended on her birthday, she was worn out. Her liver and her heart have started to fail, and she still has the infection in her lungs that she's had for several years. It is hard for her to sleep, because when she lies down, she coughs. She said, "ima kara, kurushii," from now, it will be painful.

Then she went on to complain about how her former kindergarten is run these days. Entrance to the school is no longer limited, as in the interest of fairness, students are chosen by lottery from those who have passed the entrance test and interview. That, together with the fact that teachers are not taught effective class-control, has led to trouble. She went on to tell us the history of those types of elite kindergartens, how class control was never a problem and a teacher would never raise their hand to discipline a child - they would never have to, nor would they dare - the well-behaved students, including the emperor's kids in times past, came from a higher class than themselves. (Interesting perspective, eh?)

Then she went on to compare her seniors' home to a kindergarten, and that it was not being managed properly - class control is an issue there during their activity and exercise times - the old folks just do their own thing, talking among themselves, and don't listen to their overseers. "They need to get all the people sitting in a circle, looking at the teacher. Get their attention first and eliminate distractions, then go on with the activity."

Next came politics, first Japanese and then American, "Make America Great," she said in imitation of the current President. No one there is at all interested in such things, so she yells at her TV during news shows, but she told us, since the TV never gives any reaction, she was happy to have us to talk to. She said she felt all light and happy when she was done "vomiting out all her complaints."

We were happy to oblige.