Michiyo

A number of weeks ago, we met a woman named Michiyo at Jusco (the Japanese equivalent of WalMart). Initially, Lana and Lara approached her because she was standing with a foreigner, and since that was the weekend the school kids from our sister city of Sequim, Washington were visiting, they assumed he was one of them. He wasn't, his name is Gareth and he's here for about six months working at a center for the elderly and disabled. 

Michiyo, as it turns out, speaks almost perfect English, since she studied in the US for a while. She's middle aged and very sweet. She's an artist, and invited us to have lunch some time. About a month ago we went to her house and cooked hot dogs and edamame and spent several hours chatting and hanging out at her place. She has a sister names Makiko who is disabled. She's almost 60, but she can't speak and she has the capacity of a child. She's tiny and frail, but very sweet and friendly. She's really cute, she has no teeth and a neat little cap of white hair, and she kind of totters around and makes little baby noises. 

Michiyo's house is amazing. Her parents built it, by hand I think, and its very, very traditional. Even more so than my house. The front door is a slab of wood with metal fittings and pegs, and along one entire side of the house, there is a wide wooden hallway, the entire exterior wall of which is sliding glass screens which can be opened to turn the hallway into a porch in the summer. It looks out onto the little garden. 

We've gone over there twice now. The second time we went Michiyo started to show us how to do oshie, a Japanese craft. Her mother was a doll maker, so she had all these amazing scraps of fabric we could use. We're hoping to make it a regular thing, visiting and doing crafts.