#What I Want to Tell You Now (25) My Best Chinese Friend I Met in Kobe - The Overseas Chinese Family and the Days I First Thought About Working

During my university days, I had a best friend who was a Chinese national.

She wasn't very tall, but she was a very beautiful person.
She was also smart and capable at everything.

Her family ran a large Chinese restaurant in Kobe.
However, at one point, they were caught up in a scam-like incident, and the family experienced great hardship.

I heard that her father and older brother went to work in America, and the family struggled a lot.
Even so, they managed not to sell the house, and her sister worked, and her mother supported the family.

Her mother was Japanese.

Overseas Chinese families have complex backgrounds that are difficult to see from the outside.
Talking with her made me think about "working" and "labor issues" for the first time.

I grew up in a civil servant family, and my father was a teacher.
There were many teachers around me, and I only knew a world where salaries were stable, even if they weren't high.

But listening to her stories made me realize that there are completely different ways of working and different kinds of hardships in the world.

She attended a Chinese school until junior high.
Since it wasn't a Japanese school, she often said this:

"I didn't graduate from a Japanese junior high school."

She went on to a Japanese high school and entered Kobe University.

Because she knew Chinese, she was also very good at English.
She was the type of person who would learn things quickly if she studied.

At that time, it was also difficult for foreign nationals to become public school teachers.

Perhaps that is why she never considered the path of becoming a teacher from the start.

What she chose was an airline.

The Japan Airlines of that time, what was called a "stewardess."
What we now call a flight attendant.

It was a very popular profession with high competition at the time.
She passed the exam.

When she had early morning or late-night shifts, she would be picked up and dropped off by taxi.
Seeing that, I thought it was amazing.

Perhaps it was because it was the city of Kobe that I was able to meet a friend like her.

There were many foreigners in Kobe, and various cultures were mixed together.

Come to think of it, there was also a senior at Kobe University who was a Korean national.
I think they were one year older than me.

That senior became an elementary school teacher in Osaka.
It was a school in an area where many Korean nationals lived.

Perhaps at that time, there was a system in Osaka that allowed even foreign nationals to become teachers.
Honestly, I don't remember the politics of that time very well.

But when I recall those events,
I think the issue of nationality and work has been in Japanese society for a long time.

Yesterday, when I heard a foreign language at a convenience store,
I suddenly remembered those old days.

I think the people you meet when you are young
are things that come back to your heart at unexpected moments, even after many years have passed.

About my friend's family I met in Kobe,
and about the society of overseas Chinese, I never ended up knowing everything.

But thanks to the people I met back then,
I think I learned a little bit about how vast the world is.

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#What I Want to Tell You Now
#Memories of Kobe
#University Friend
#Overseas Chinese Family
#What It Means to Work
#Foreign Nationality and Work
#Daily Essay
#Memories of Life