‘I’m not ready to become a Japanese housewife to an 82-year-old man.’

Molly Pier of Tarzana had traveled to Russia, Greece and China and she couldn’t remember all the cathedrals, bridges and art museums. Recently she found a new way to look at a foreign land during a “home stays” tour. In Tokyo and Sapporo she stayed in private homes and had close encounters with the customs of Japan.

My first hostess, Motoko Hamazaki, has a son, 24, a daughter, 23, and a younger daughter, 11. We met the young daughter at her dancing school, where she takes private, traditional Japanese dancing lessons. The teachers were so gracious. They served tea, and they put on special dances for me. From there we went to the home by taxi. The Ventura Freeway in the rush hours looks like nothing compared to Tokyo.

We got to her home, and I met her husband and her 82-year-old father, who lives with them. In Tokyo 80% of the older generation lives with their children. The house they live in is fairly Westernized, but the father’s quarters are Japanese. He has the low table and sleeps on the futon.

He invited me in to tea, and Motoko came as an interpreter. I expressed my philosophy of all being members of the human race, that difference in color, race, creed and religion are not really important. He seemed very pleased with all this.

That night I noticed the children started giggling, and I couldn’t understand why. She explained to me that he never dressed up to come into dinner, but because of me he had.

The next day my hostess invited some ladies to lunch to do some handicrafts. They thought they would feel awkward with me, and they wouldn’t know what to converse about. But I had made some guacamole and some cookies for them. Avocados are new to Japan, and they really don’t know what to do with them. The guacamole went over very big.

It had been suggested that we bring each of our families two boxes of cake mix, one to show them how to use and one to leave there. I wasn’t about to drag four boxes of cake mix to Japan in my suitcase. So, instead, I brought each of them a cookbook plus a set of measuring cups and measuring spoons so they wouldn’t have difficulty translating our measurements into their metric system. I won over the ladies in no time at all.

When I left Motoko’s home, I was very intrigued when I said goodby to her father. It took him quite a while to say goodby to me. He was smiling and talking in Japanese, and he indicated that he didn’t want me to go.

Later, in the taxi, his daughter asked me what I thought of international marriages. I didn’t think anything of her question. I said, “Any marriage is good if two people work at it.” But later on, when I told my daughter-in-law, she said: “Molly, she was proposing to you for her father.” I said: “Well, at this point in my life I’m not ready to become a Japanese housewife to an 82-year-old man.”

The last night before I left Sachiko Fujinami’s home in Sapporo, I offered to make dinner for my hosts. I couldn’t think of what I could make that would please them, but I looked out the window and there was a vegetable store across the street with a bin piled high with potatoes. So I made potato pancakes with applesauce and chicken.

They had a little boy of 8, and when he took the first bite of the pancake, he said, “ Oy shee !” I thought he meant oy vay, so I said: “Oh, he doesn’t like it, does he.” Sachiko said: “No, no, no, oy shee means very delicious.” I wrote out the recipe for her, and she has written to me that she has made potato pancakes on more than one occasion since I left.

This Japanese experience was one of the highlights of my life. As I left, I thought: Here I am, a nice Jewish lady from Los Angeles who was able to communicate and have a rapport with the people of Japan. Their thoughts might be so different from my background and my upbringing, and yet we were all the same. The friendships, the warmth, the graciousness I felt and the feeling that they loved me as much as I loved them, overwhelms me to the point that now, eight months later, I still feel it.