The Transcript

Karthika: Welcome Sachiko. I’m so glad you’re here. I’m so glad to be talking to you.

Sachiko: Thank you so much for having me.

Karthika: Yes, it’s going to be wonderful conversation. So you were born in Japan and you’ve spent a lot of time there, well into your teens, right? So can you just give us a sense of what life was in Japan when you were growing up? A little bit about Japanese customs, lifestyle and culture.

Sachiko: Sure. So I was born in Japan in a town called Kobe in 1966. I did all my education there, including four years of college. I went to a small women’s college, a four year liberal art school and studied English in a British literature. During my college years I decided that I would come here to the States. I would move here to continue my English study. So that’s how I ended up here. And I came to Urbana Champaign to go to University of Illinois.

Karthika: Thats excellent. So you talked about a women’s college. Is that very common in Japan to have a girls and boys separated in school?

Sachiko: It used to be more common earlier. I believe now there are more coed schools. It’s a very traditional that I even went to a women’s or all girls school. I even went to an all girls junior college. So when I wanted to come here to go to college, I choose a big university here.

Karthika: Even in India where I grew up and we had a girls and boys convent school. In India school is till second year of high school and then we go into college. So for me too I was in a to school and then went into a coed college and it was pretty interesting dynamic. So growing up, what was some of the things that you really liked about Japanese culture and just the way you grew up? Can you share some stories or anecdotes?

Sachiko: There is a lot of history and culture in Japan and I realized this after I moved here. Art is also big in Japan. I would like to talk about later that traditional culture in arts that, you know, I started involved in recently as an older adult. A lot of things are connected to nature, history and a respect to everything. Respect to nature, people, even things that are not living, like buildings and statues. I love about the Japanese culture. So much respect.

Karthika: Yes and I’ve been kind of reading a little bit too. It is such a deep rooted culture that goes several thousands of years, but this to me I feel like there’s a sense of humility. Even like the tradition of bowing. I know there are different kinds of reasons and variations to that, but it just felt like that was a lot of humility and humbleness and just like you said, being in touch with nature, being in touch with everybody and everything around you. It just really spoke to me quite a bit. Now obviously from Japan you come to Illinois. How was that transition like, I mean, did you have any sort of culture shock or  did you assimilate like really well and did you have any challenges kind of assimilating into life here?

Sachiko: Yes. I’m sure there are small things, you know, I had trouble with like just dealing with phone companies, speaking on the phone. My English wasn’t that good and trying to get the phone service and people on the other side of the phone not understanding or not being nice because they probably did not understand me either. They were kind of small challenges, but I was just so excited. I was young, I was excited, I was happy. I was living my dream, you know, move to United States and going to school.

Karthika: When you came to school here, was language any issue or did you kind of transition from a language perspective pretty well? Or did the school have any tools or resources that kind of helped you.

Sachiko: Yes, I was okay with conversations. I could communicate with people. But because I wanted to go to graduate school here, I  had to perfect it from an academic sense. They require certain English proficiency test. So first I enrolled in English as a second language course at UofI, so that I could take the English proficiency test. And then I studied English as a second language.

Karthika: Yes, I remember we had that too in Graduate school. And even though in India, a lot of the schools are English medium. For us Hindi and state languages are second languages but still I think its just the way the education system works. We have to take a test and a class or two to get up to speed with the English here. So tell me a little bit about life here in Illinois after grad school.

Sachiko: After finishing graduate school, I got married. I actually met my husband in Japan as an exchange student from college in Japan. And that was one of the reasons I moved to Illinois. I also met a lot of other students there. So I thought it was a good choice for me because I already knew a bunch of people. I was familiar with the school because they have an exchange program, so my husband to be and I became friends in Japan and there was a good thing that. I knew he would help me when I moved here. There are other friends who also helped as part of the student body at university. After my undergraduate studies, he went on to an MBA program and I finished my masters program. I was studying English and teaching English as a second language. I wanted to keep my options open after finishing graduate school on living here or us moving back to Japan.

Sachiko: So I thought that I could always go back and become an English teacher if we decided that’s what we were going to do. That will be a wonderful career for me or I could stay here and find a job. I wasn’t sure what kind of job I can find. But I kinda thought, okay, either way, you know, it’ll be good for me. I didn’t really have one choice that I definitely want to do. So right after we graduated we got married and I just followed wherever he got a job and then I would find a teaching job. For example when we first moved to Augusta, Georgia, I found a teaching , for example. Uh, we first moved to Augusta, Georgia, and I found a teaching job at a community college helping students. Actually it  was for American students who wanted to go to a community college but didn’t have enough English writing skills. So I would teach them very basic English grammar. After we moved back to Illinois I taught Japanese school which is the weekend school that Japanese children would go on all day Saturday because they are expat children who are here temporarily. So they know that they will stay here three or four years and then go back to Japan. So those children would go to regular American school, local school, Monday to Friday, and then they go to the special Japanese school on Saturday all day so that they’ll study Japanese language and also math and science and social study.

Sachiko: Its funny people would always say Oh these poor kids must be exhausted. But those kids loved Japanese school because they got to see their Japanese friends and we had events, athletic festivals,  music festival. It was a little community and the kids loved it.

Karthika: So is all the teaching in the Japanese school done in Japanese?

Sachiko: Yes

Karthika: So is there a huge Japanese community here in Chicago.

Sachiko: Yes – not like in say New York or Los Angeles but yes. And so these Japanese schools are very popular because they not just teach education but also culture.

Karthika So you did that for how long?

Sachiko: A few years. Probably three years after we came back to Illinois and then my son was born. I took a little bit of break when I was raising my son when he was small and I don’t want it to do it. The teacher aspect has always been a part of my life. I didn’t consciously choose to be a teacher to begin with, but that’s really something that I enjoy because when I was in Japan, when I was going to the four year college when I was in undergraduate program. I did tutoring the high school students because they need help with their schoolwork. So I really like doing that. I go to their house and help them with their English homework. So I did a little touring because I really enjoyed teaching it.

Karthika: Now your husband is American, right? And your son has these two cultures at home. How was that growing up? Did you consciously do a lot of Japanese introduction with him.

Sachiko: Oh yes. When he was growing up I only spoke Japanese to him and my husband only spoke English to him. So you know, to him, he has his dad’s language and his mom’s language because he spent so much more time with me when he was very young. His Japanese was stronger actually and we would go back to Japan and visit my parents. Also back then we had the VHS tape. So I would record kid’s program on TV onto a BHS and bring it back. We would play it here and he liked it. He liked watching Japanese kids programs.

Karthika: That’s really wonderful. And that’s one thing I do regret for my own family because both my husband and I, even though we’re both Indians were from different parts of India and so our language that we speak at home is also different. So for us, when the kids were young, we did not speak either his mother tongue or mine. We just stuck to English because between the two of us also, English is like a common language. I wish I had done that, but I know at that time I was just, I was working and it was just too much to deal with typical parenting.

Karthika: So when I met you a few years ago, we actually met through photography. So how did you transition from English language to photography?

Sachiko: Photography was always my hobby is just something I enjoyed doing. You know a lot of Japanese people have photography ingrained in them. Because of Canon and Nikon it is more than a hobby in Japan. Those are all Japanese companies, right? So like a lot of people, I loved taking pictures. A lot of people in Japan would take a small camera everywhere they went and for a few dollars would get the rolls developed. It’s almost like a cultural thing. You take pictures.

Karthika: Thats such an interesting way of looking at it. When I was growing up in India that was not the case. Perhaps because we didn’t have the resources readily available. Having a camera was a big deal.

Sachiko: I had a film camera. I still have little prints of my son’s baby pictures and then the digital camera started become accessible to us as a consumer camera. So I wanted to have one. I bought it, started shooting digital. So it just kind of my everyday life, just having the camera and taking the pictures. And then here we entered the facebook era, right? So I started putting a picture of my son, you know, school events in the picture on my dogs running around putting up and then the facebook and people, people liked it. Oh, you take good pictures, can I hire you? And at first I kept saying, no, no, no, no, I never thought of becoming a photographer or a professional or charging people. I kept saying no and people kept asking. And I said okay. So I started taking picture for other people.

Karthika: I think that is how a lot of us get into it. We start taking photos of our kids, our environment and we get interested in it, develop an eye for it and start getting good at it. It is a natural progression.  But now from photography  you’ve moved on to yoga, tell us about that.

Sachiko: Actually, I think I started a yoga earlier. Yoga was something I was interested in. You know we all like exercise. Well, maybe it’s a love hate relationship whether we like it or not, we should do it. So I was doing little weights and aerobics and things like that. Then I found a yoga class through the park district. So that was almost 17, 18 years ago. I was getting tired of a real vigorous, rigorous exercise. I had never done yoga. So I thought I would try it since it was relatively inexpensive though the park district. It was an eight week class and I loved every minute of it. It’s still a physical exercise, but it’s exercise that go within yourself, not just how you look, but how you feel.

Sachiko: It is really important thing that you always tune into yourself within yourself and don’t push it. Listen to your body. Maybe that part of Yoga really spoke to me in a quiet part of the exercise. I’m thinking now maybe my cultural background,  we value a lot of things that’s similar to that concept.

Karthika: Yes, I was just going to ask that. Did you find that when you got into yoga you almost sort of were getting in touch with a little bit of your own culture. Really getting in tune to yourself, attuned to what’s around you, nature and just listening to the things that speak to you like wabi-sabi approach.

Sachiko: Yes. And it is interesting because yoga is from your culture. But it really speaks to me. Yoga is so universal. There’s so much that everybody can derive out of it.

Karthika:  That’s amazing. And you’ve taken yoga a step even further, right? You’re doing something really special and I think unique. Can you talk a little bit about how you’ve kind of taken it further.

Sachiko: Yes, I became a yoga teacher and I taught yoga for probably about 15 years. At different venues like health clubs, yoga studios, park district etc. But I also taught at hospitals, a cancer center and other places like that. And you know, I really enjoyed the teaching yoga this special population because, for example, at the cancer center the students are cancer patients. So there are a lot of things we need to consider in terms so, their treatment etc. We cannot really can’t teach a same way as for healthy people at the health club. It was a very rewarding process for me just learning how to teach those people. I was looking for a new field to teach yoga and I found people with special needs. These are people who have physical and intellectual disabilities. And there is a wonderful place near me that provides day activity program for special needs young people. So I approached them and ask them if they would like to have yoga program there. And so we started three years ago bringing yoga to differently enabled young adults. I loved it and it was so rewarding. Parents love it. Parents never thought their kids will take yoga class. And I wanted to take this farther. I established 503C non-for-profit called Whole Life Whole Yoga. And I became an accessible yoga ambassador. Yoga should be for everyone, but there are so many people that don’t have access to, to yoga even though yoga is so beneficial to them. And I spread that message.

Karthika: That is so wonderful and your non-for-profit is called whole life whole yoga. And we will link to it in the show notes as well. But it’s absolutely fantastic. And the more you talk, I realized is that who you are, um, you know, your background and your life and just your culture has come about in so many ways in your life. I mean you take the concepts of Japanese culture, you found an outlet to match it with Yoga, you took photography. Again, that was such a part of your culture. You became a photographer. So it’s just so amazing to see that even though no matter where we are from that part of who we are and where we sort of grew up in that culture somehow makes its way into our life consciously or subconsciously.

When I met you and talked to you that grace and sense of calmness radiates from you. I don’t know too many people from Japan, but I can say that I know Sachiko and she embodies so much of what in my mind is Japanese culture. And you are also doing something special with your Japanese culture and heritage. Can you talk about that?

Sachiko: Yes so very recently, I really wanted to get more in touch with my Japanese roots. And I found Anderson Japanese garden in Rockford. It’s only an hour away from me. And I started volunteering there as a docent. So I’m out in the garden and in helping people explaining what the architecture, about the Japanese garden etc. So for those people who maybe don’t know what it is, it’s basically a land that was purchased from the city and they have created a garden with a lot of Japanese aesthetics and plants. What I didn’t know when I started volunteering there is that they also provides load of programs that introduce Japanese culture to people, both Japanese people and in most mostly American people. So I started taking Japanese tea ceremony classes which is a very old, traditional, deep rooted history. It’s an art, Japanese art. It’s not just making any tea and serving it, it’s an art form. So you have to really study and learn how to perform a tea ceremony. There are some rules and things like that. I also started taking Japanese flower arrangement which is also a very traditional art form in Japan.The Anderson garden hires teachers with Japanese training to teach both these art forms. Many teachers come from hours away to teach the history and culture behind these art forms. So it is a wonderful opportunity for me.

Sachiko: My mother, who is still living in Japan, probably my grandmothers too, all studied these things as young women. So I just love knowing that I am also learning and it is a beautiful way to connect with them. It’s just keeping a connection to my Japanese culture and my family too in a sense that, the nostalgia knowing that my mother and my grandma, we’re doing it.

Karthika: Yes that sounds amazing. Did you learn these things when you were growing up in Japan.

Sachiko: No, the funny thing is when you in Japan, you are not too interested in Japanese traditions. You are more interested in other exotic cultures. Even after I moved here,I go back to Japan every year a visit. My family, my siblings still live there. Its like I am really almost like learning more Japanese culture probably because I’m so far away physically from Japan

Karthika: Yes I can totally relate. For me India is such a big part of lives. All the years we’ve moved away, we have kids, we have careers and then we pause and think who am I really, where am I from? And try to assimilate that. And the world is so connected. Even though you’re so far away, I mean it’s amazing that there’s Anderson Garden is kind of having these programs which maybe other places don’t have. I know from an Indian community perspective, we have a ton of cultural things that we as a community do as well as open it up to everybody else, just to build that understanding, just to give a sense of who we really are to everybody else. Anderson garden is a beautiful place.

Karthika: When I tell people I’m from India, they sort of asked me some of the sort of standard questions. Yes we have the Taj Mahal which is one of the seven wonders of the world and we have Bollywood. But I feel India so much more. So what does Japan mean to you? I mean from a cultural people place sort of perspective, what would you want to share?

Sachiko: Culture and history. When I take a flower arrangement or tea ceremony class, there are a lot of young people that come and listen because they want to understand and know Japanese culture. Yes they love Ninendo and pop culture and it’s fun and amazing. And I’m happy to those young people that become interested in more and try to explore older artists. So I think that’s wonderful. We really value harmony. A harmony among and within people.We always consider other people to make things comfortable for other people, to keep the harmony whether we work or we have fun or we learn or were in school. It’s very important for Japanese people to keep harmony within people that makes everyone comfortable and everyone can have a good time. It just makes everybody at peace with who and whatever they are.

Karthika: Wonderful. And that’s so beautifully said. So what’s next for you? Like I said earlier you’re a woman of many endeavors. So is that something else on the horizon that we should probably kind of know.

Sachiko: I am open to anything. The tea ceremony, lessons in flower arrangement lessons. I started doing it earlier this year. So I want to keep doing it. I would love to learn more about it. And introduce the Japanese culture through tea ceremony, flower arrangement and the Japanese Garden to people here, American people.

Karthika: Do you envision, knowing that, the teacher in you, at some point you would kind of maybe teach other people? Are you right now just focused on learning?

Sachiko: It’s not easy to get a teaching certificate to teach. I am not sure if I will start teaching but I love helping other people too. So I always volunteer.

Karthika: Well thank you so much Sachiko. This was amazing. Such an interesting discussion. I wish you the best. I know I’m going to be in touch and I’m going to follow you along again. But thank you so much for coming on the podcast and sharing your story.