“I’m here, we are all Earthlings”

Issue 65 (July 27, 2022) I received the Protean baton from Keiko Toyooka. I am Tom's senior by half a year, 170cm tall, just like him, and I am Hiro (Hiroshi Okamoto), 61 years old and in my second year of extended employment. Nice to meet you ^_-☆ (I finally watched Maverick 💦)

The theme is “I’m here, we are all Earthlings,” which sounds like a summer vacation essay from an elementary school student lol. I wrote about something that has been in the corner of my mind for a while. Oh, and Chairperson Holly's famous quote: “Greetings and skirts should be short.” Yes, on to the main topic, Career Workout!

I spent my childhood being shy and not good at being in front of people. As a rebound and revenge for that, after I started working, I entered the workforce seeking career opportunities to experience people and cultures overseas. Reflecting on my roots and life abroad there, my current awareness of D&I and LGBTQ+ was greatly influenced by those experiences.

I still have endless interest in the people I meet on my travels, their cultures, societies, regions of residence, and their backgrounds and activities leading up to the present, as “a fellow Earthling.”

In particular, “Japanese overseas immigrants” are a special existence that I view as part of my own identity. Thirty years ago, I met Alberto Miyashita (Japanese name: Kiyoshi Miyashita), a third-generation Japanese-Brazilian living in São Paulo. His grandparents were first-generation immigrants, his parents were second-generation, and he is of pure Japanese descent. He grew up speaking Japanese at home and Portuguese in society. It seems that as a child, he questioned the need for Japanese in a place where Portuguese was the native language, and against his father's wishes, he stopped learning Japanese.

I was invited to his home and had dinner with his family, his third-generation Japanese wife, and their fourth-generation children. We are both Japanese, but we live on opposite sides of the Earth—the closest yet furthest existence. Our languages, thoughts, cultures, manners, and even nationalities are different. I was moved by the contrast in distance and time—a distance that felt “far yet near, and near yet infinitely far”—as if I could reflect on the distant past before we were born.

Perhaps if I had been born and raised in Brazil, and they had been born and raised in Osaka, we might have met somewhere and had the chance to think about our origins. We are both Earthlings with Japanese roots; I would be happy if that were the case. A miracle with a probability of 1 in 8 billion—a journey to look at such a mysterious and precious Earth and myself makes me feel the presence of many companions, my 3rd Place 🌎. Together with my family and friends, I want to enjoy this journey until the end of my life. Thank you for staying with me until the end.

Next time, it will be Mako Murai, a career consultant and labor and social security attorney who supports small and medium-sized enterprises with labor management and career consulting, based on the philosophy of “a society where all managers and workers can live freely”! I’m already excited, looking forward to it ^_-☆