Welcome HOME

I grow up in Sendai, Japan which is about 190 miles away from Tokyo. Sendai is my hometown and a city where I call as home. My home was rebuilt 2002 to protect from a huge expected earthquake which Sendai will have it 98% of possibility in 10 years. . .

On the image above, this is a chart of family members drew by my younger sister. From top left father, mother, bottom left, me, younger sister, and younger brother. (Family website: http://sugarsfamily.hp.infoseek.co.jp/index.htm). My family has strong bonds and we go out everywhere together.

(drew by Rena.S)

Because of that, I have a strong feeling toward first floor at home where includes kitchen, living room, dining room, family room, and father and mother’s offices. When my parents decided to rebuild our old house, they wanted to have huge rooms instead of individual/private room for each. So at the first floor, we only have the main room, a bathroom and entrance. At the second floor, we have a small kitchen, a small bedroom, and a huge bedroom. All of my siblings share the huge room. My family has less privacy than any other families typically have.

(image from flicker.com)

A significant furniture piece is the ping-pong table to my family. Because father, sister, brother and I play table tennis, my mother, who plays tennis, desired to have it to share family time. Unfortunately for the ping-pong table, we mostly use it as parent’s extra working station, family meeting space, studying desk, and dining table for more than 7 guests. It is useful.

(image from flicker.com)

Japanese household typically have a family Buddhist alter and a household Shinto shelf next to each other at home like the photo above. Without exception, there are a Buddhist alter in my house which enshrine my grandparent, father’s younger sister, and a dog my grandmother had. We also have Shinto alter to worship. Whenever I leave home like trip, or coming back to U.S., I worship the Buddhist alter to pray a safe trip and when I arrive to home, I report grandparents to thank for the safe trip and great memories. If they were still alive, they could listen my stories and see pictures I took. All family members miss them so much even though it has been for 10 years after they passed away.

Left:old home before destroyed, Right:memory is gone?

I had similar feelings with the sentiment toward grandparents when our old house was broken down to build the house we have now. The old house was owned by my grandfather and I have lived there since I was born. We have so many memories are both good and bad. The house was like grandparents themselves to me. I went to kindergarten, elementary school, junior high school, and high school from the house. I played games and many things with my sister and brother. We had great family gatherings. My father locked me out to shed once to punish me and grandmother rescued me soon after. I felt a lot of loss when the old house was destroyed to build new one on the same site. The feeling was similar to a loss of a family member.

It has been about 8 years since my family lives the new house. We have new furniture, events and memories there. It seems different from the old house because the most of surroundings are new and different; however, I can think the new house as my home. I believe that because all of my family members share same memories and events, the house becomes a simple shelter than the symbol home. I can say that if my family moves to the U.S. with some of furniture we have at home, I would consider a place all of us stays as home. Home has more ambiguous definitions than the definition of house/shelter. So when I saw my family, I feel that “welcome HOME”.