When I was six years old, my mother came home one day with a Sailor Moon VHS tape. The case cover had a pink background studded with a pair of cunning eyes, and centered in the middle of them was the long-haired blonde Sailor Moon. Her raised right hand held a crescent moon scepter in the air; her left hand was balled in a fist. Tuxedo Mask, Sailor’s long-term boyfriend, hovered above the glow of her scepter, while Luna, her purple cat, stood in between her legs, her tail wrapped around Sailor’s right leg. I’m not quite sure why my mother brought me that tape. I assume she did because I was obsessed with pink, and that was the extent of her thinking. I wasn’t an anime fan. My mornings were spent watching traditional cartoons like Hey Arnold!, The Angry Beavers, The Ren & Stimpy Show, and Rocko’s Modern Life. My nights were spent watching a mix of new shows like All That and Kenan & Kel and reruns of The Brady Bunch and The Mary Tyler Moore Show. It wasn’t like I needed any more VHS tapes. I pretty much had all the movies from the “Disney Renaissance,” and repeatedly watched them with the same excitement I would have if it were the first time.
Either way, as a child I couldn’t turn down a gift—especially not one with a pink cover—so I promptly watched the first three Sailor Moon episodes, and that’s how my affinity for Japanese culture began. My eyes beamed whenever I saw Sailor Moon transform in midflight, a dazzling array of colors enveloping her body. I clenched my hands into fists just as she did whenever she called for the power of the moon to help her fight her enemies. I swooned every time Tuxedo Mask assisted her in fights after she’d lost her confidence or her willpower to persevere. Instead of voraciously devouring Disney, I began to consume Sailor Moon, buying more VHS tapes featuring full-length episodes as well as movies. It was a solitary passion until I was around eight or nine and I found out that twins from my church, three years my senior, were just as big of fans as I was. Candace and I were more passive in comparison to Bianca, who could draw accurate depictions of all the Sailor Scouts, sometimes as we watched episodes together. She was much more knowledgeable about Sailor Moon, and it was through her that I was able to draw the connection between the show and Japan. It had never occurred to me before that “Usagi Tsukino” was a Japanese name and that Azabu-Juban, where Sailor Moon lived, was a posh Tokyo neighborhood. Unfortunately, once I realized how far away on a map Tokyo was from New Jersey, my connection to Sailor Moon shrank. This had less to do with the fact that she was a blonde-haired, blue-eyed Japanese teenager who looked nothing like me and more to do with the realization that I couldn’t be with her because of how far away she lived. Sailor Moon was more real to me than any other animated character, and I wanted to be her friend.
However, I wasn’t ready to give up on her yet. I decided to learn about Japan. I Google-searched images of Japan, my heart fluttering at the sight of Shibuya Crossing, traversed by millions of people every day as bright, neon buildings buzzed behind them. I watched Travel Channel specials on Tokyo and saw white women eating sushi cooked right in front of them at Tsukuji Fish Market, taking a subway ride that was free from rats and trash, and passing by cosplayers around Yoyoji Park near Harajuku station. To me, Japan seemed like a portal between the real and the surreal, and so it excited me more than any other place on earth. It was a place where talking trash cans moved through the streets as freely as people, robots were mistaken for humans, and cell phones could be used to pay for treats at vending machines.
I didn’t think that it was possible for me to visit Japan until I discovered the People to People Student Ambassador Program, which led a two-week excursion throughout many Japanese cities, such as Tokyo, Hiroshima, and Kyoto, and organized a two-day stay at a host family’s home. I don’t remember mine being a particularly friendly group of people. It was very cliquish, the factions easily discernible through where we sat on our tour bus. The farther back someone was, the more popular they were. I sat closer to the front, near the chaperones. I was the only black girl. There was one black guy, but we didn’t even speak to each other until midway through the trip. One of the more popular white guys even asked me why I spoke so loudly while everyone else snickered. It seemed like the majority of them saw the trip to Japan not as a learning experience but as a vacation, and their raucous and frequently disrespectful behavior would often go without reproach. They would scoff when they patronized shops and restaurants and couldn’t find a Japanese salesperson who spoke English. Some of them laughed while we spent the day at the Hiroshima Peace Memorial Museum, an experience that left me so traumatized that I couldn’t sleep that night. The guys horseplayed around in an onsen (a Japanese bathhouse), disturbing the tranquility of the traditional ryokan (inn) in which it was located. I didn’t feel like I established a rapport with anyone until halfway through the trip, and by that time I was more engrossed by Japan than by any person in the program.
From the moment we landed at Narita International Airport, I was in disbelief. I thought that the Japanese signs had been purposely hung to deceive me into believing that I was in Tokyo and not a much cleaner version of Manhattan. My body had found its way to the literal other side of the world, yet I saw not a single reflection of myself in anyone around me. I was treated with the utmost respect and fascination wherever I went. I wasn’t ignored when I went into stores. I constantly received bows, which I reciprocated. Essentially, I forgot that I was black; I was simply a foreigner, a gaijin, and this was a relief even at fourteen years old. Yes, politeness and modesty are integral elements of Japanese culture, but they made me, a young black American girl, feel special.
On the long train ride to Matsuyama, where I was going to stay with a host family, I worried that separated from my mostly white group, I could no longer hide behind the simple identity of a gaijin; I would be seen and treated as a black girl, just as I had been my whole life. Much to my surprise, when I met the family of four, the father spoke to me in Japanese and, although I could only say “Wakarimasen” (“I don’t understand”), I was delighted that he assumed that I was bilingual. My only regret is that I couldn’t have stayed with that family longer. I discovered that they had been a host family for years, creating large scrapbooks celebrating the people who they’ve hosted, and those who have hosted them. The father was a businessman who left in the early mornings before I had breakfast and didn’t return until I had my bath in the evening. The mother was a housewife who shuffled their daughter to violin lessons and their son to playdates. In between, she took me on shopping trips to local bazaars and events with other host families in the area. Matsuyama was described to me as the countryside, but I quickly learned that the Japanese countryside is not the same as rural America. I had expected few to no people, tumbleweed, banjos or mandolins playing from some imperceptible place. On the contrary, Matsuyama was the capital city of the Ehime Prefecture and contained onsens, castles, several universities, and art museums. There was, though, a small Christian church not too far from a rice field, where I went with my host family, who were also Christian. On my last day, the daughter gifted me with a gimp bracelet that she stayed up every night to handcraft while I slept in her brother’s bed. The whole family waved to me as my carrier transported me away. Years later, I still think about their warmth, and I wish that I could write to them. Because I couldn’t speak Japanese at the time, their names and address have long since slipped away from me.