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Fuji TV program with Oyako Day theme.

The staff and I had a long day, but we were still ready to party after an energy packed day.

Mail OYAKO ESSAY CONTEST 2007
Hayama Post Office PO Box 13
Hayama-machi, Miura-gun
Kanagawa-ken §240-0190

TO
E-Mail: session@oyako.org
Mail: OYAKO DAY PHOTO SESSION 2007
Hayama Post Office PO Box 13
Hayama-machi, Miura-gun
Kanagawa-ken §240-0190

Apply if you agree to the following conditions.
1. Your personal information and photo you is only for gOyako Dayh related activities and will not used for other purposes or given to a third party without prior permission.
2. Your photo will not be returned.
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4. When sending by mail, write all the information on back of photo.
5. Bruce Osborn and Oyako Day Committee own copyright for all photos taken at Super Photo Session.
6. Photos that taken at Super Photo Session may be used as Bruce Osbornfs art work on his website, exhibitions, photo books, publications, TV, movie, and other media.

When motherfs friends come by dressed to the teeth, you always compliment them (lotfs of points here).
When you ride piggyback, youfre just the right size to massage my shoulders.
When wefre on our way home, you always say, ghome at lasth at the one-kilometer mark.
When you dress up Japanese, you look like gJapan number oneh and get spotted in the street by Noh and storyteller scouts who invite you to join their group.
You always love to draw and are very good at cats.
You always have an earnest expression, as if you were absorbed in some great creative effort
Especially when youfre folding origami corners, your forehead gets very intense.
Youfre best buddies with Pé the cat, and copy him when you come purr in my lap.
You wish Papa off to work and get out the beer for him when he comes home.
Youfre the gbrightest little kid in the worldh who gives Mama a kiss every day.
And enough! But who would have thought itfd be so much fun to be dumb and dote.
And that too is all thanks to you.
My very best and favorite one!

(translation © victor woronov 2007)

Koichi Yamazaki, husband (left) / Akira, son (center) / Mari Yamada, mother (right)

After that we never knew what kind of music he might be making. We never saw him perform. Then, this year, he showed up with this CD. Left it on the table and said gPlease listen to thish My husband put on the headphones and when I next saw him he just said, hI guess I was wrongh

Now wefre thinking of going to one of our sonfs live performances. My husbands feelings are so mixed, but whatfs a little bitterness in all the pleasure to be had. And thanks to my son, I get to go to a club for young people.
Part2
A few days ago I ate with some of the mothers from my sonfs time in kindergarten. Back then we were all one big family. We were young parents watching our childrenfs first steps out of the house together, This made us a very tight group that lived, played and vacationed like a tribe.

Once we sent our son off to YMCA camp. While he was playing up there, we all sat at home gossiping over gwhat if therefs an earthquakeh. My husband and I got so wrought up that we drove out to the campsite and brought our son home. But just him alone, because we were so distraught we just forgot about the friend he had gone with and whom we left behind, abandoned at the danger zone. When we talk about it now, it all seems so hilarious. But back then, we were all bringing our first child, all of them boys to boot. We were so do or die we didnft even notice how foolish we were being.
One of the boys who was in our group, who came from a family that even we thought over-protective, is now living the hard life of a salary man. He recently said, hI was brought up with such care. Whatever happens now, Ifll be OKh. We all thought that was wonderful, congratulating ourselves on how he had grown up, what a wonderful child he was, and how his mother must have cried when shefd heard that, all the while searching for our own handkerchiefs in our bags.
Such unbridled foolishness is the privilege of 20 years of child-raising together. But frankly, I think itfs really healthy to let out all the stops from time to time and just be the doting parent we all are at heart. Not to mention that, honestly, it really was such a struggle.
So I look forward to seeing my friends again, but mostly I thank my son for making it all happen.

(translation © victor woronov 2007)

Ryo Kagawa, husband (left) / Genki, son (right) / Fujiko Kosai, mother (center)

This small detail, my face, opened the door to a whole world of odd encounters, bringing more than your typical Kyoto girl might expect. Like once when the telephone repairman came to the house and asked me what country I was visiting from, or when Ifd step out and people would try their English on me.

My fortune brought me to Tokyo where I met and married a Japanese man and gave birth to one daughter. For better or for worse, my daughter looks just like me. So now she is out there getting her share of gMy, your Japanese is very good isnft ith or gOh you write Japanese so wellh. She eats Japanese, loves Kyoto delicacies, speaks Kyoto dialect and adores Rakugo. Like me, she couldnft be more Japanese. So how is it that the two of us, one after the other, got stuck with this face? In the future shefs thinking of doing Rakugo. Shefs thinking of establishing a whole new act based on our shared quirk of fate. I guess you could say itfs given her an ambition.

(translation © victor woronov 2007)

Tea ceremony is a job that you can go on doing no matter how old you get. And itfs a job that can be done just about anywhere. Whatever the place, once the utensils are out, a small universe comes into being. Therefs no real need for a stylish or resplendent tearoom. You can do it in the middle of a field or riding on a train. Itfs not about where you are. Itfs all in a conversation between the tea and the people who have made it.

My mother taught me that the way of tea is in a small universe of communication that we can make by ourselves.

To travel is to come face to face with onefs self, then to come face to face with others and finally to face each new place we arrive at. This has become the way I try to live my everyday life.

So, have a nice trip!
Life is a voyage. That is really what my mother has taught me.

(translation © victor woronov 2007)

From the time we were kids, with my two brothers and I, things were pretty wild at the house. My father used to take the three of us along to concerts. When I think of it now, it was an attempt to make us sit still and listen. Thanks to that, we all developed an ear for music. Especially for our fatherfs music, which was forever a thrill. Every new piece we heard was somehow naturally tied to his performance, making them easy to catalogue.

Collecting stuff comes from my father too. At the house, most of our electrical appliances were second hand out of offices and stuff. Our home was built of things that people didnft need anymore and we got for free. Making things was another influence. I mean, my father repaired all these appliances and musical instruments. And when we wanted to make a hole for example, we had everything imaginable to do it: drills, electric saws, visesc We had any and every tool imaginable and could do whatever we wanted.

My friends would say gYour house is full of weird stuff. Itfs like another world.h Since they all were saying that at the time, maybe thatfs the way it was. Silverware from forgotten embassies, pots and pans from defunct hotels...

Finding the things that match your lifestyle in all that has been cast away makes a great deal of sense. With no money but a little bit of imagination, things that seemed useless reveal a life of secrets. For me this has been especially true for musical instruments. Recycling, breathing new life into something, changes it. This is how I live my life now.

Back in school, during workshop, I remember that I never wanted to make what someone else made, whither it was sketching, clay, making a boat, paperweights or a footstool. When I was a kid I loved assembling plastic models. I just plain loved building things. So I started with models where every piece was set, went on to make things out of odd stuff that was thrown away, and moved on to the musical instruments I make now.

Cooking developed the same way. Ifve tried making sake, beer and wine. Things that are fun and things that taste good fascinate me. Cooking can satisfy all of our senses, but music speaks to what goes beyond them. Social relations are like playing an instrument.

Given that people perceive things differently, itfs probably a good thing to use onefs own senses as broadly as possible: tasting things, seeing things, staying open to different experiences. I think this way of sharpening onefs senses through experience comes from my father.

(translation © victor woronov 2007)

1) Mother and grandmother
If you look at mom and grandma together, therefs something interesting going on there. First off, my mom actually callfs her mom gmotherh. Therefs a kind of formality there that no one ever uses around our house. Well, sometimes, Grandma, when shefs being cute, will actually call herself gmotherh, but thatfs it. Mom is such a warm person. I canft imagine her ever being so stiff with Dad or me. In fact, if there werenft a relation of very deep trust between them, her formality with her own mother would be either impossible or just plain awful.

My mother runs our house in such an even-tempered fashion, a forever bright, forever young housewife. Ifm an adult now. Letfs just say I can feel it in my skin. For the first time I understand when they say that with age, beauty comes only with unceasing effort. I think I have a lot to learn from my motherfs example.

And Grandma! Shefs got a better figure than I do! Shefs so active. She travels more than anyone else in the family. Half the phone calls we get at the house are for her. Her cooking is so good that I heard my fatherfs friends visit just to eat. Shefs really something else!

2) Father and daughter
When I was little, I used to go out with my father. Recently I heard him say that a daughter makes the best girl friend. So I guess those were not just outings. They were all dates.

My father is someone who enjoys life to the fullest. Letfs say he likes himself. But then he also likes me. So, therefs no way I could ever be worthless, is there? Just like him, I want to enjoy my life to the fullest.

When I look at things from the childfs point of view, it seems like somehow in our own haphazard way we managed to be a real family. Personally, I think I was really lucky to be born where I was. My ambitions and hopes about my music have a lot to do with that. And someday later on, I hope to become a parent whose children feel just as lucky to be where they are as I did.

(translation © victor woronov 2007)

Up till then marriage hadnft been such a special word for me.
But there, in that moment, a whole new world of meaning opened up.
Marriage could be a word full of bashfulness, both bittersweet and a little oppressive.
But Ifll keep this little secret with Earth.

With kids, words can be lethal.

(translation © victor woronov 2007)

Whenever time and finances are right, my son and I take off traveling together. We donft go off after famous places, historic ruins or culinary splendor. Our thing is to just displace our daily life, out and away from Tokyofs Asagaya where we live. I have my picture postcards and my son Yuta brings his guitar.

We were at a small hotel (clean and cheap!) tucked back in a maze of backstreets. Itfs a place we know well where we always get separate rooms, where the days are steeped in the smells of grilled squid and pickled vegetables mixed with incense lit to fight off the same cloying odors. Besides eating meals together, wefre both pretty much on our own.

So it was that in the early days of our trip, on a day much like the others, we decided to have lunch in a local canteen (home-style Ho Chi Minh cooking: great taste at a small price!) just in back of our hotel, and once finished, went our separate ways. Not that I had any particular place to go. I never know where Ifm going. I just go out and run around, walking like some driven spirit looking for a home. And, now that I think of it, I remember it being said that my son has this same way of walking.

Ifd been walking around for some time while trying to keep clear of the blistering sunlight. I needed something cool to drink, tea, anything, so went into a café on the main drag (no taste at a big price!!). I was just taking my first sip when something attracted my attention. Way down on the other side of the street, across the current of bicycles and cars, Ifd spotted the back of a man walking down the opposite pavement. ???? By the time Ifd figured out there was something familiar about the silhouette, I realized that it was Yuta who Ifd just left behind me. His shoulders were slowly rolling down the street. He looked so much bigger than usual, as if he were somebody else. Or as if therefd been some transformation in the little time since Ifd left him.

And then, just as quickly, he was swallowed up by the oncoming crowd. For a moment I had the strangest feeling. I realized that I had just seen my son for the first time. At first, this filled me with emotion, but then, just a little pride.

The little part of me that had gone off so long ago and made its way to become Yuta was now showing me the next step in its evolution. Out of nowhere, it had sent the image of this gallant figure in the streets of Ho Chi Minh straight to the heart of my brain, where its winds blow still to this day.

(translation © victor woronov 2007)