Oyabaka with a Point 💕 (Patreon)

"A Little (lot) Personal Life Story" or "More Than You Ever Wanted to Know" or "A Bit of a Tome"

I've been debating posting this. But here goes. I don't usually do super personal posts, but this one does have a point, a roundabout point, but a point nonetheless. It may take a moment to get there. I’ll try not to go on too many tangents and try to make it interesting along the way. 

First, let me introduce you to the word: oyabaka (親バカ). Oya meaning parent or parents and Baka meaning fool or foolish. Or an idiot. Stupid parent. 

I’m not sure what the equivalent would be in English. I’ve read “helicopter parent”, but that’s not right. Also seen “overly doting parent” but not exactly right either. 

To get the feel for oyabaka, keep in mind that Japanese — at least during the years that I raised Julyan and probably pretty much before that — don’t brag about their kids in front of others. Humbleness is a wonderful virtue that extends beyond just yourself and your own accomplishments. To brag about your offspring is bragging about yourself.

So when a parent is proud of their kid and shows it, it’s called oyabaka. The parent(s) is(are) seen as foolish to other people around them. Now this isn’t necessarily always a bad thing. As I’ve seen it used throughout the years, it sometimes borders on endearing. Imagine a father who is so proud that his daughter’s volleyball team is going to the all-Japan championships he can’t help but tell his coworkers. (Note: even this incredible accomplishment shouldn’t be shouted from the rooftops. Humility.) The wife finds out he’s saying it and might shake her head and say, “Oyabaka.” 

It’s a little sweet, though, that a parent would buck the culture to root for their child. Just don’t make it a habit. 

I’ve never been able to really root out loud for Julyan. I’ve tried really hard to follow the usual rules here. Because, believe it or not, it's even more of a touchy subject when your kid is biracial. All my friends and family here assumed that because Julyan was “half” (as they are called), he had so many more lucky breaks. That is 100% not true. Don’t get me started on bullying because the child is “different” or the weird jealousy because of their looks or that you simply can’t help your child with school work because the system is so odd and they surpass your ability and dad’s (at least his) are pretty much non-existent. 

Julyan was playing drums by the time he could stand. He always loved music. Took piano lessons for a few years, guitar when he got older. He was quite good but I couldn't boast about it.

What is true is that recently, at this ripening old age of mine, where I'm finally not in panic mode, I’m reflecting on life and how I really wish I had done more, been there more, helped more, protected more, just been more of everything for my kid. 

Everyone has a hard life to different degrees, and I can only compare his childhood to my own. But even mine that involved many years of SA by a close relative, well, other than that and the moving from State to State every two years, it wasn’t as hard as his.

Poor kid was excited to hear when he was five years old that he was going to have a little baby brother or sister only to come home one day to me, passed out on the floor trying to reach the phone to call an ambulance. Then hospitalized for a couple weeks. Miscarriage.

At six, I wanted him to have a real Halloween experience (trick or treating isn't done here), so we went back to the States. Only, he learns his mom is suddenly very sick and we end up staying for the year while I get treatment for stage 3 breast cancer (surgery, two rounds of chemo). The little tyke really liked school there, though, and took to English. One day I noticed he was carrying around a notepad and writing everything down. My heart swelled. A week later, he broke his arm badly in a jungle gym fall and spent most of our time in America in a cast. That year was definitely a turning point for both of us.

After returning to Japan, his father started tanshinfunin. This is a baffling concept where a company sends husbands to work away from their families, for months and years even. They won’t pay for the family to move with them, and it’s much too expensive to move on your own here. Plus we’d just built a house.

When he does come back home it turns out ‘most of the year’ Absent Dad turns into ‘when he’s here’ Functional (quickly becoming non functional) Alcoholic Dad. I try to keep everything together. Happy family. Hide the bottles. Etc. Etc.

High school ended up being even worse. His high school life was hell. It was a highly ranked school but highly militaristic and just brutal. We couldn’t change schools because I learned too late, that’s not a thing. You literally can’t change high schools in Japan. He began cutting. Writing some pretty good angsty and terribly depressing songs. I’m trying to be there, but he’s angry, I’m spiraling because of my ex’s alcohol and growing emotional abuse. I remember dragging myself from the futon most mornings and praying, praying, praying on the walk down the hall that I’d find Julyan okay that morning. 

I’m trying to find help for us, but no family or friends are nearby. My dad has a “pull yourself up by your bootstraps” attitude and that’s the end of that. Japan is woefully behind on finding/getting mental help. We were very much alone.

I know. I know. It gets worse for a moment then it’ll get better. I promise. There’s still the point I’m aiming at. Hang in there. We've only had one near death experience.

Then the Tokai Earthquake hits. We felt it but had no damage. Quite far away. I did, though, just say “Ef it” and bought tickets to Hawaii. We just needed to get away for a week. It was in Hawaii Julyan and my parents lazed on a toasty beach at Hanauma Bay while I got sucked through a reef barrier by a sudden riptide. sigh

I was pulled so far from shore that when I came up, I could literally not see people on the beach. Just a distant strip of land. That’s a story for another day, too. There were long moments of this is it I was sure this was it. But the thought that cut through my exhaustion, panic, leg cramps, gulping water and sinking fast was that the thought of poor Julyan (after all the things he’s had happen in his life) having to witness his dead mother pulled from the water. That really pissed me off. Later throwing up salt water, I vowed to try harder. Be better.

Wew.

Now through it all, he and I did have joyous, hilarious times, of course. We had each other and we had the pets. Whiskey and Soda, the cats, but especially Cha Cha Maru, our beagle. That dog kept Julyan and me together and laughing more than anything else, I’d guess. Also through it all, I wrote and he made music.

Palate cleansing photos:

[The arrival of Cha Cha Maru]

[Later as a teen, seen here chilling with Cha]

[That time he came back from university and I said, Hey, you sitting like that staring gloomily into your phone, you look like Robert Smith from The Cure]

Julyan got so good at song writing that Avex scouted him and were set to launch him as a new act. That’s another story for another time. Jesus. The abbreviated version: They wanted control over his image and the type of songs he wrote. He told them thank you, but no thank you. Kid’s got integrity. He’s also so incredibly kind.

Poor bug, though, had another gonna-lose-mom scare after graduating university while I was in the States just about ready to go to my first ever World Con in 2016. I called him from a hospital bed being rushed in for surgery. Seems I had a large blood clot that had broken loose from my leg and had somehow lodged and stopped just before my heart. Woke up on the operating table, too. Yeah. Had to have two surgeries. Another tale, another day. Cue another critical turning point in my life. I made it to World Con, by the way!

So, the audio bit I attached to the top of this post is just one minute of something Julyan made for me last week. I wanted to do a new intro/outro for the show and Richard and I talked to him. My direction was something “Shogun-y” but discordant, a little uncanny. Also, I love shakuhachi and drums. That’s what he came up with and both Richard and I when we heard it were like, it’s perfect. Julyan apologized it wasn’t good enough. 

Allow me a moment of oyabaka. I’m very, very, very proud of him. His life has had some harrowing moments, the above and in university and afterward, too. Because of what I’ve been through, he usually kept his bad stuff from me. I learned about the years bullying in a roundabout way. Why did he never carry a pencil case to school? He told me many years later because other kids would take is and smash all his pencils.

I learned a high school teacher was also being an absolute asshole when I read something he wrote in J’s notebook. That ended up with me driving to the school in a blind rage and losing my shit (another dramatic story, that one! I became kind of infamous, too).

The reason Julyan is in the wilds of Hokkaido now is because he and his long-time girlfriend wanted to heal. Yes, they might not have expected what being snowed in for six months a year would be like, but that's their story and they tell of falling off roofs and having their front door completely snowed over while they were hiking for food one day hilariously. Mom here, mortified, nervously laughing. You did what?

But now! Finally! They are being super creative, working from home, and together they’ve started making games. K-chan is an ‘out of this world’ Blender artist and Julyan makes the music and sound design. Their current game is a horror one and they are doing very well now. Dare I say, happy!

[Here's one of the characters she created]

I still haven’t gotten to my point. Almost there. But first!

[Here J is as a kappa for Halloween. He and his ten buddies all dressed alike and danced and won $1000 bucks, first prize. They were invited to go to a kappa shrine in Tokyo, I think, and be given the red carpet, but one of the moms said no. Embarrassing. She didn't want to have to explain it to friends and family.]

Okay, Julyan left for university. I somehow got into Clarion West, which was another enormous watershed moment in my life. Back home things were still rough and getting rougher. Then Cha Cha Maru got very sick. I called J in and we took care of him, slept beside him, and tried to give him half the love he had given us during his magical little doggie life. His passing was so hard. It left me unmoored. Which in retrospect is what I needed perhaps to get the guts to leave. 

I got nothing from my ex when I left. He kept the house, everything in it, savings (not that there was much). Oh, I did get the car. My best friend sold me her Cube many years ago. So it’s actually mine, but still in his name. I only got it because he was driving his father’s much more expensive car at the time. My Cube may be on its last legs, but I love it. One day I’ll get that camper and travel around Japan. That big dream is still alive and thumping in my heart.

But anyway, I didn’t raise a fuss about the unfairness of the breakup, because my ex really didn't care that I had gone, he was in late stage alcoholism (if that’s a thing). I was so exhausted from decades of begging him to get help and for the first time was trying to help myself, I just didn’t have the energy and didn't want to push him over the edge (so to speak) by asking for anything. I just. Needed. To leave. 

So I lived in an empty one room apartment for several years, teaching for a boss who should be in jail (even the police agree with me–another story). But it was heaven. No money, no possessions, but I had ME back. Space. Quiet space is an incredible thing. When I told Julyan I’d left he said he was proud of me and did he remember when he used to beg me to leave when he was in elementary school? I have that vague memory. I must have been all mixed up in my own mind, plus trying to make things work. Another incredible thing is how much we humans can endure.

 And this is around the time I started Uncanny Japan. I was losing my mind and needed something to ground me, help re-identify me. I was terrified to talk into a microphone, to say anything at all. I had all but forgotten how to speak English, only speaking Japanese for so many years, English only with Julyan. But  I'd had enough run ins with my own mortality to stop thinking I could start something at some later date. That later date might never come.

When Richard and I met he was also in a similar-yet-different hell. That’s his story to tell. It’s a doozy, too. But he was the one who had podcasted before and both encouraged me, wildly believed in me, and did ALL the behind the scenes audio and website magic.

Years have flown by and I think I can say that we've endured and are now working from home, being creative, dreaming big dreams, and doing very well. Dare I say, happy! 

All I've ever wanted is what's best for my kid, him to be happy, healthy, making music, and enjoying a life that isn't filled with one tragedy after another. That's been number one.

Then I met Richard and learned what he had been through and wanted to see him in a better place, too, where he can thrive and use his big brain and do his creative things.

As for me, I know i'm living on borrowed time (three times over), and I really do feel this boiling sense of urgency to get more of my ideas out there, work harder and more efficiently. All that. Then along comes...

The new book.

It kind of knocked me sideways a little when it came out. I have no idea how it will fare. I think it’s well known that writers can’t really support themselves writing unless they’re one of the Special Ones. But in its little way, it feels like something has shifted again, another pivotal moment is here. But in a good way, calm way.

This time I’m not projectile vomiting sea water next to a plumeria or waking up on an operating table to hear the surgeon screaming, "Why is she awake?" and a frantic nurse sobbing back, "Her vein blew." (I know. Right? And I haven't even told you about the botched D&C in a very run down, shady Japanese hospital. That was even worse.) Still, this time, too, I am promising myself to work harder, better, enjoy it, though, get out and breath some fresh air, hang out with ancient wooden temples and stone Buddhas and share the stories I learn with you.

Because it took awhile, but here comes the point. 

You.

If it weren’t for patrons, for you, each of you, every single one of you, I would right now be working full time at some English school, or factory, or Family Mart noshing on fami chiki, and not writing at all. I might still be putting out the show once a month, but more than likely, not. I know for a fact, if not for you (and Richard and Julyan), I would not have been on the radar of the acquisitions editor at Adams Media and approached. I would not have had the time or energy to write the pitch, accept the offer, and then research and write The Book of Japanese Folklore: insert long description in 57 days. 100% that would have been impossible. 

I also wouldn't have met and befriended David Dastmalchian and been asked to help on his incredible upcoming comic Knights Vs Samurai (Sooon! people, sooon!).

I want to thank you all from the bottom of my heart for that. For believing in me, supporting the show (and me), rooting for me, and allowing me to be able to take advantage of these opportunities. Of course, thank you, Richard and Julyan, too.

Being able to live a safe, quiet life, on my own with a partner whom I love, and in a position to help Julyan and K-chan and hang out with them when we can, is more than I could have asked for. Then on top of that getting to meet and get to know those of you whom I chat with behind the scenes or on Discord or Fb or wherever. That is pure joy.

My dreamy dreams don’t end here, though. There are more books, visual novels, travel to places to research more tales, myths, and superstitions, dig deeper, find the stories that haven't been told in English yet, things that I can share with others and just you here.

Thank you, XO,

Terrie

From us 💕

And us　💕