Q: what were the circumstances/reasons which prompted your leaving japan to go abroad?

Junko: For me, these events happened before I knew it....

Q: what do you mean?

Junko: due to my father's work, I lived with my family in the US when I was kindergarten age to the second grade; then returning to Japan, we moved again to the US for a second time when I was 15, I felt that my English was still strong and going to the US will be a nice break away from the pressure of the Japanese high school exam-oriented education....so I preferred that, but I also remember at that time that my younger brother resisted going away from Japan, he was in a different situation and I felt bad about that....

Q: how about in your case, Mayu?

Mayu: I was raised in Japan and my education up till my Junior year in high school was all at a girls' school, I was brought up in a very traditional way I guess. But in my second year of high school, I began to notice that whereas my older and younger brothers were encouraged in their studies, there was less attention by my parents about my school work and more about my piano lessons, for example. I began to question this very particular channel that I was going through and decided to venture out as an exchange student. So in my senior year, I went to Denmark. I picked Denmark because I wanted to go somewhere I knew very little about,.....like there was not even a Danish-Japanese dictionary, right?; and I had some nice image of Denmark from pictures my mother often had around her work as an architect; and the people there would be tall , you know (Mayu is about 6 feet tall).

Q: so you were brought up in a traditional, "proper girls' education" path all ready for college and marriage, but you broke away from that in this one year in Denmark. How did you parents feel about this initiative you took?

Mayu: my father felt OK because the Rotary Club was behind me, who sponsored this exchange program; and my mother probably thought that this was a temporary thing, and that I will return to the expected standard path soon enough anyway..... But that one year experience for me was the beginning of a new direction that neither my parents nor I even had foreseen.

Q: this experience then probably influenced your coming and living in the US now?

Mayu: yes, but before that move, there was the experience of my high school senior year when I returned to japan which I want to talk about ....