by Lucinda Ruh
When we arrived in Tokyo, Japan, my parents were determined to make it a wonderful new home for all of us, knowing that this transition might be the most extreme and trying of all, but we actually didn’t even have a physical home to go to at first. In a way a HOME for me was more of an emotional state of being wherever my parents were because I moved places so many times, so I felt at home, but our actual physical home became an incredibly beautiful hotel. Since it was a hotel, I think that in my mind the long vacation had not ended. I didn’t really realize we were going to live in Japan rather than returning to my home in Paris.
Coming from the influence of Paris where children seem to be more of a nuisance than a celebration, Tokyo was pleasantly the polar opposite. The staff at the hotel was incredibly courteous, gentle, and respectful. They treated me like a doll and treated the whole family like royalty, giving us gifts and showering us with compliments. (If they were just this way on the surface and it was not truly genuine is another matter, and if they were bickering behind our backs, at least we had no notion of that at the time.) All of the staff members became our family. Another difference from baguette to sushi was the cleanliness of the place. You could have eaten from the sparkling marble floor any time of the day.
Every morning after awakening I would prance around the lobby in my smocked dresses and marvel at the flowers in the huge vases that were larger than life, with every single stem and petal facing exactly in an artistically correct direction, glistening in the morning light. They often changed the arrangement and it was such a nice surprise to see what was on display that day. The fragrance of the various flowers filled the lobby with wonderful perfumes and the pitter-patter of the Japanese women’s traditional getas on the floor gave the day a rhythm to follow and dance to. The hotel staff wore their traditional costume but once they were out on the street the normal and monotonous clothes of the West hung loosely on their thin-boned Japanese frames.
It was a joyous, fairy-tale time as I lived the life of a princess. Not many foreigners were living in Japan in the 1980s and especially not little kids with blond, curly, long hair bouncing around. To them we were like aliens (they actually called foreigners living in Japan “aliens”) or Barbies landing from another planet. When they constantly wanted to touch my hair and look into my blue eyes it sometimes made me feel awkward, like something was wrong with me, or as if they wanted to have a little piece of me. Unfortunately I would always feel judged by them.
I was always a child of nature, liking to tend to the bees and birds. I will never forget the wonderful stone and tree garden that engulfed the area outside of the hotel. Here, too, it seemed every stone, plant, and tree had been planted with thought and meditation in mind. I would feel guilty if something moved due to my existence. Yes, guilt was a huge emotion that would reinforce itself as I lived in Japan, feeling guilty perhaps of my own existence. The pond was filled with golden carp, a lucky fish in Japan signifying good fortune in all areas of life. I would bring the left over bread from our meals here and feed the carp every morning and evening and say a prayer or two. They were my friends and my mother and sister accompanied me many a times as we played hide and seek throughout the garden. We stayed there for three months and our stay there was the best playtime ever.
During this time my dad went off every day to his new office and my mother, my sister, and I explored the hotel grounds. Slowly my mother ventured with us outside into the big and rumbling city of Tokyo. As our stay became longer and longer I started to realize that we were not leaving this place. I unfortunately became very sad. Paris has the Eiffel Tower and Tokyo has the Tokyo Tower, and for years every time we would pass by this Japanese tower I would cover my eyes and cry and scream, “I do not want to see this tower. I want to see the Eiffel Tower.” I was struggling inside and longed for Paris and my friends and life there but I had to get used to my new surroundings.
On the other hand, this was in the mid-1980s, so it was the bubble time of the economy here and everything was flourishing. There was an abundance of anything you would want in the world, plus all the new and interesting foods and products and accessories that I had never seen before while living in Europe. It was all at your fingertips. For any kid it was like being in Disney Land materialistically, but emotionally I was deprived. On top of all the new surroundings we were becoming accustomed to the language, which was intriguing and completely incomprehensible to us. A secretary from the office came with us most of the time to help by translating for us, from Japanese to English and back and forth, but to me it was still all gibberish since at that time I did not speak any English either. My mother, having lived all around the world, already had her method of starting over and getting accustomed to a new culture, language, and land and I never ever heard her even once complain about anything. My mother was and still is very courageous and I wish even now I had half her courage.
It was still the summer holiday when we arrived in Tokyo. School had not started yet but would soon, and my parents were visiting the various top private schools around the area to see where my sister and I were to attend. My sister who was born in England had always attended English-speaking schools while so far I had only attended a French-speaking kindergarten. Therefore my mother and father wanted to put my sister in the international school and me in the French-speaking school. That would have been wonderful since my parents wanted to keep as much as they could as similar as possible while everything else around us had changed to the utmost extreme.
But, unfortunately, something else we definitely had to get used to and overcome our fear of was the ongoing movement of the land. This was a new word for us: earthquakes. They were terrifying and one of our first experiences happened within the first month of moving to Tokyo. We were in the hotel and suddenly everything started to shake and a rumbling noise became louder and louder. The windows were shaking and books and clothes started flying of the shelves. The alarm in the hotel went off and instructions were heard over the loudspeaker. My mother quickly handed us helmets that every hotel room was conveniently equipped with. She took my sister’s and my hand and off we ran down the exit staircase.
My mother kept a calm face, as she knew she was my sister’s and my only support. After a couple of hours of being kept in the lobby to make sure all was safe, with all of us quite traumatized from our first time experiencing this, we slowly all treaded back to our rooms. Following like sheep was the correct way; no emotion was to be showed. That was to be learned in Japan. To be respected you needed to speak no words, show no tears, and voice no screams. Silence, although with trembling hearts, was necessary to keep face. I was holding my mother’s hand so all would be good.
There was no discussion afterward about it, other than saying this is what needs to be done when this happens. I truly wonder how scared my mother was, if at all, because she never showed it. I wanted to follow suit and be just like my mother. We were told that the helmets were placed everywhere so that people could use them in time of earthquakes. In our school we were told where they were kept, right in the beginning, and many, many earthquake drills were done throughout the year. Later in our home we would have a separate container near our beds with helmets inside, as well as some food and water to be taken with us in case of a serious earthquake. We would always be on high alert for earthquakes and throughout the thirteen years there were many more serious ones we lived through.
Since the two different schools we were supposed to attend were about a long, one-hour drive apart, my mother decided after this incident that she would put both of us in the same school. Then in case of an emergency my sister would be able to take care of me. Again, I had no choice except to follow my older sister. I wasn’t asked or talked to about any of this. I would go where I was guided, and it was really necessary for my own safety. This comes with living in foreign countries. Our parents needed to make the decisions and we needed to follow, because as kids we already had so much to contend with by never being in the same place for very
long and not being familiar with our surroundings or people that our parents did not want to burden us with one more thing on our plate.
Not having any familiar faces or places around you that you see all the time can be very scary to a child. It really has had a profound effect on me. So in one way it was wonderful of my parents that none of this was ever discussed so that we as children could be sheltered and feelings like this could be overlooked. They provided everything to me and in the best possible way and in the most beautiful wrapping. All I had to do was to play when I was young and to produce when older. So I.S.S.H, International School of the Sacred Heart, it would be, and we would start right away while still living in the hotel.
I.S.S.H was the most prestigious private school in Japan. Even the Crown Princess of Japan, Empress Michiko, had attended it. The classes went from kindergarten all the way to the university level. It was an all-girl, English-speaking Catholic school with classic uniforms. My sister would enter the eighth grade and I would enter my first year of kindergarten there. However, in Paris I had already gone to kindergarten and the plan was that after the summer I was to skip two years and enter first grade at four years old because I was advanced. I was so thrilled since I was done with the cutting, drawing, and singing. My brain was working overtime and I was very ready for the advanced learning. Even when I was older I loved to think ahead, and at seven years old I said to my mother, “I am not content with the books in the school library. I think further than the library.”
So you can imagine my parents’ and my reaction and disappointment when my new school in Tokyo informed us that they would not budge on their policies, saying I had to do another two full years of kindergarten before being allowed into first grade. My parents were very angry but the nuns were adamant and so was the Japanese culture weighing on them. Nothing could be done.
I started kindergarten in September and during the next two years my French, bubbly, confident, and I must admit, a little cheeky, personality came through. In those two years of kindergarten there were frequent episodes where I had to wait in front of the dean’s office to be later scolded for no reason that made sense to me. My mother would be called in to meet with the dean as well but it never was big enough to be taken really seriously. It was for things like my picking flowers when and where I shouldn’t have been, or throwing my shoe out of the kindergarten gate so that I could climb over and get it. Even when another girl started a fight I always seemed to be the one to get blamed. It was my way of rebelling and wanting freedom since I was so bored with what they were teaching me in kindergarten. I wanted to learn and to explore and I felt they were holding me back. But what I did learn during this time was the English language.
In October of 1984 we moved into our new home. This was the most beautiful and huge apartment I had ever seen. My mother always wanted the family to live right in the middle of the city so that we would be near to the embassies, hospitals, schools, and my father’s work in case of any emergency. My mother was always on alert and thinking for everyone. I think this mentality and the strength my mother needed for the whole family put a lot of strain on her and she became very tough on us. I am also sure, although it might be hard for her to admit, that my mother was scared.
The new home was wonderful. It was big and spacious and I was totally elated when our furniture had arrived from Paris. My parents were adamant that when we moved around the world for my father’s job, the furniture would always come with us to keep some things consistent for the children. It was the best idea because it made me feel so much at home. Each piece of furniture was filled with wonderful memories.
During this time I continued with my ballet and skating and now started piano classes as well. Since school was not enriching my curious mind, my mother organized after-school classes for me that taught the Japanese language, Japanese arts and crafts, and various other subjects to keep my mind intrigued. We used to have these classes in our new home and have some of my best friends from school join as well. Or we would explore in the parks and catch tadpoles or play with my turtles I had as pets. I loved reptiles and bugs and refused to kill any living organism.
And yes, there was ice-skating. It was there, and boy-oh-boy, in a different way than it was in Paris. For my sister, of course, going to the ice rink was one of the first things she did upon arriving in Tokyo. She absolutely loved ice skating, I think more than I did then or ever would. My parents found the best skating rink in Tokyo and there my sister began lessons from a Japanese lady coach. She was the second-best teacher at the rink and my parents took her because she spoke English quite well and was a good fit for my sister.
I started with group lessons cornered off to one side of the rink while all the older skaters swished by. I would look at them in awe, wanting private lessons as well and wanting to skate on their side of the ice. I detested the group lessons and showed it. I actually never liked doing anything in groups. I liked to be alone, in my own world with my own thoughts. I didn’t like to be told what to do and having everyone else doing the same thing as me. I refused to go to the group lessons, but still wanted to skate, so my mother had me start private lessons with the lady coach. My sister went every morning and afternoon before and after school. I went just in the afternoon, as I was only four and my plate was already full with once-a-week skating lessons, three-times-a-week ballet lessons, once-a-week piano lessons, and of course skating on my own as well as attending school, so my parents didn’t want to push me more.
My sister and I were the only foreigners at the ice rink and so the teasing began. They used to joke about my sister’s long legs, about our blond hair, our freckles, and anything you could imagine. We were outcasts and although I was so young and did not understand the language, body language can express all that is needed to understand. Kids know more than they can say and unconsciously I started to get more and more insecure about myself. As years progressed it would get worse, and the kind of French self-confidence and bubbly characteristics I previously had would soon be frozen in time like the water I skated on.
By the time I was eight years old I was in second grade and absolutely loved school. I could sit in my room for hours studying and reading and making experiments or being out in the nature playing with God’s creations. But there wasn’t too much time for that since I had now had picked up cello to add to the piano and my skating, and ballet became more and more serious. At age seven I had received a scholarship to the Royal Ballet of London and spent a summer at the school to see if it was to my liking. On returning to Tokyo my mother told me that I had a very serious and important decision to make that would impact and change the course of my whole life with this one turn of fate. I had to choose to pursue either ballet, skating, piano, or cello, because I could not succeed in anything properly if I were to do them all. There just wasn’t enough time in a day, and I was excelling at them all so it was time to devote my energy and talents into one avenue.
I was always told, however, that school and academics came first. If I received grade letter A’s in school I would then be allowed the rest. I was only eight and I felt the weight of this decision-making tremendously and it was torture to be told that this decision would affect my whole life. On the other hand, how wonderful it was to have the luxury of choice. However, I had never really chosen anything in my life until this big dilemma and I was confused. Ironically for me, it really boiled down to ballet or skating, although just lately I found notes that my mother had written that I had said I liked cello much better than any other art form I had been doing. Nevertheless, maybe skating and ballet had seemed grander to me, or somehow I was trying to follow what my older sister was doing, and so I seemed to have narrowed it down to those two. I knew that if I chose ballet I would have to leave home at age eleven to go to the boarding school of The Royal Ballet in London, and if the choice was ice skating, I would be able to stay with my family.
I didn’t know anything about either lifestyle, but already I knew they would both
require serious work. But what did I really know when I was that young? It felt like I was being thrown two wrapped gifts at the same time. I had no idea of the contents of the gifts so how could I know which I wanted more to therefore catch first and let the other fall to the ground? It was a one-shot decision with no turning back. I would never be able to unwrap the other gift. I did not want to choose. I wanted both.
What did I love more, what did I want to do for years and years to come, which world did I want to spend hours and days of my life in, and what did I want to become? I had no time to decide. Both arts have short-lived lives. It was now or never. For months it was the only thing on my mind. My mother started to put ballet and skating stickers on my belongings and write notes on my lunch napkins that she would support me on whatever path I chose, and I used to tear up thinking I had to give up one or the other. I seldom have favorites in life, so it was a very hard decision for me. I didn’t feel one was better or worse than the other for me, I didn’t love one more than the other, nor did I hate one more than the other. I took life, and still take life, as it comes. I always flow with the tide and that may be good or bad. It is who I am and I don’t think I need to defend myself on that point, but this made me not quite understand why I had to decide at that time. In my child’s brain, I wanted to just see what would evolve in my life. But that’s not how an athlete’s or an artist’s life goes. You have to devote everything you have to it from a very young age or else it will be too late to succeed. Or so, that is what we all believed.
