The in-Laws

Toyota City, Aichi

Oba-san...90 years old.

Toyota city. Home of Toyota motor corp. The first thing I notice about this place is the amount of late model expensive cars. Not just domestic models but Mercedes, BMW and American Ford & GM too. Kameoka is the town of the Kei car. Lots of yellow plates and cheap cars there. Rice farming obviously isn’t lucrative.  Here, you can see the wealth that the biggest car manufacturer in the world creates. It shows in the real estate prices too. Property here is a lot more expensive than in Kansai. Toyota the company has been very generous to Toyota the city. The parks and public buildings are second to none. I like Toyota city because like Kameoka, it’s easy to get around by car. There’s a large presence of foreigners here. Some are visiting the Toyota head office while some are working at one of the many plants. Shizuka’s family live in a house about 5 mins drive from the centre.  Like a lot of Japanese families, her brother and sister are still living there as well as grandma who is 90 years old. Grandma is wheelchair bound these days and a bit deaf but she is still pretty sharp and has remarkable eyesight.  She believes I am American. The only foreigners she ever met were Americans just after the war.  She knows of China and Korea but she doesn’t know of any other countries. Therefore all westerners are American.  This is the third time we have visited Shizukas parents this year, which is a record amount. Normally we go here once every 2 years or so. This time Grandma remarked that “America mustn’t be that far away”. Grandma is constantly talking to me, about what, I have no clue. Shizuka’s little sister is a bit of a concern at the moment. She is becoming a hikikomori.  This is a new phenomenon in Japan.  It is when somebody won’t leave the house for anything. She goes to sleep at 5AM and doesn’t wake up until about 7PM the next night. All she does is surf the internet. I think we will have to do an intervention. Shizuka’s father believes that all I drink is beer or sake and will pop open a can of Kirin for breakfast. He is normally on a no alcohol regime but that goes out the window when we visit and bottles of sake and shochu appear from the back of a cabinet, much to Shizuka’s mothers surprise. I get on well with my in-laws. This may be due to the fact that we live on opposite sides of the planet and don’t have a common language. I recommend this to everyone. As usual there was a large family feast with all kinds of food and drink. I am always treated like a king when I am here.