My wife's friend, Ms. Y, came from Shizuoka
to visit our house recently.
She used to visit us when we were newlyweds in our small
apartment in Sangenjaya, Tokyo.
At that time, an English newspaper was on
the wall of our house.
This is from when I was a student and
working in the U.S. I drove with my
brother, who came to the U.S. for his summer vacation, all the way to Niagara
Falls from my place in Baltimore and showed him around.
Everyone put on rain jackets, boarded the
cruise ship, and headed for the Falls. We were soaking wet.
This is what it looks like now.
The newspaper article was from “The Niagara
Falls Gleaner,” about me walking on a tightrope over the big river flowing out
of the basin. It was like this at the
time, too.
When Ms. Y saw this, she was so shocked
that she went home and told her mother,
“My friend married a tightrope walker.” Her mother said,
“Well, she must have married a very tough
person,” she said.
Many years later, when she went to
Disneyland with her kids, she found a similar type of newspaper for sale and
realized that the person her friend married was "an ordinary person.” Three
of us laughed hysterically!
Well, my whole life has been like a tightrope
walk, so I guess I'm not too far off the mark.
