I was looking at the painting of a black horse on the wall in a small room at Lloyds Bank on Camden High Street, London. A lady sitting in an armchair opposite me stopped talking and asked me, “Are you all right?”
I said, “Yes, I’m all right. I was just remembering my father. He liked horseback riding. He owned two horses: a white horse and a brown horse.”
“Oh, really. How is he? Does he still enjoy horseback riding?”
After a pause, I answered, “No. He passed away in October.”
“Oh… I’m sorry. I understand how you feel. I’m not just saying it, you know, my husband passed away recently. I still can’t believe it. I keep thinking he’ll come back soon.”
Our eyes met. We stood up. We hugged each other. It was the end of November 2019. I cried for the first time since my father had passed away a month before. The lady was a staff member of the bank. I had just met her. She was a stranger to me.
I was born and raised in the Kobe area. I entered Sophia University and moved to Tokyo in 2000. My peers and my teachers were nice to me. I could speak Tokyo Japanese, considered standard Japanese in Japan, but my friends wanted to listen to my Western Japanese accent and dialect. So, I sometimes talked to them in Western Japanese and entertained them.
One day, when I got together with my friends, one of the friends said, “My biggest fear is an earthquake. I have so many books piled up around my bed. If an earthquake occurred, the books would fall on me, and I would die!” Everyone laughed out loud except me. I am a survivor of the Great Hanshin-Awaji Earthquake.1 Our family’s home was destroyed. I lost four relatives and 6430 neighbours. Earthquakes are not a joke for me. I could not share their sense of humour regarding this matter. I realised that I was not one of them. I did not belong in Tokyo.
A few months later, I suffered from flashbacks of the earthquake. Five years had passed since the Great Hanshin-Awaji Earthquake occurred. It was like the lid of the memories suddenly opened. During the daytime, I was fine. But during the night, the image of the day the earthquake occurred became my nightmare. I could not sleep. I was shivering when I saw the word meaning “shake”. I did not want to see the doctor. I was afraid of being treated as a patient with mental health issues. Therefore, I started writing my story as my cathartic work. It was good therapy. I completed the story as my first novel and published it in 2009.
My experience in London is the opposite. I am an outsider in this city, but many of the people in London are outsiders. I am one of them. Most of the students living in this dormitory in Camden are international students like I am. My housemates are like my family. During this pandemic, we have helped each other. When I could not buy eggs at local supermarkets, for example, my Muslim friend let me know where I could buy eggs. It was a Turkish supermarket. I enjoyed buying food there, surrounded by the ladies wearing their veils. I joined the clapping for the NHS. When the sound of my clapping blended with the sound of clapping by the neighbours, I felt I belonged in London. When Captain Tom2 passed away, I cried. I felt as if my grandfather had passed away.
On my birthday, my housemates held a surprise party for me. One of the former housemates joined the party via FaceTime from Portugal. It was the best birthday ever. I am moving to a flat in St John’s Wood in a couple of days, but we will stay in touch.
My dissertation is a record of my history as an outsider. Tokyo let me know who I am. I am a survivor of the Great Hanshin-Awaji Earthquake, and I was wounded. I cannot change my history. I cannot change who I am, either. I have to allow myself to accept who I am. London lets me enjoy being an outsider. I am comfortable as one of the strangers living in this city.
There is one thing that I regret in my history as an outsider: I should not have had a negative thought about mental health issues. I would like to tell this story to encourage the reader to ask for help if they suffer from their own psychological scars. If they are wounded, they should accept it. We do not have to pretend to be perfect. We have hearts. It is all right that we have scars on our hearts. That is how humans are. I am still recovering from my scars caused by the earthquake, but I appreciate them. My scars let me write my stories.
Life is not always fair, but I would say life is beautiful. Sometimes, a stranger gives you the warmest hug of your life.
[1] Great Hanshin Earthquake (Wikipedia) Available at: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Hanshin_earthquake [accessed 18 September 2021].
[2] Captain Sir Thomas Moore (30 April 1920–2 February 2021), known as Captain Tom, was a British Army officer and fundraiser. During the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020, he raised over £ 36 million for the NHS by walking 100 laps of his garden shortly before his 100th birthday. He held two Guinness World Records: as the fundraiser who raised the greatest amount of money in an individual charity walk, and as the oldest person to have a number-one single on the UK Singles Chart.