The salt tablet
In one of the team-building exercises, we were given a scenario in which the airplane you were on crashed in the middle of the desert. There were about a dozen […]
New classmates
The MBA program started in September. The first week was spent on orientation and getting to know one another. There were about fifty of us, and as the program promised, […]
Waning passion
Stuart came to Japan for an annual business trip at the end of July, so I went to Tokyo to spend a week with him. I waited for his arrival […]
Grandmother – part 3
My grandmother passed away four years later, a few months after the 2011 earthquake. My employer at the time worried about my mental state and let me call home from […]
The despairing fate of women
My mother would drown herself in the work of “caring others.” She was a full-time kindergarten teacher. She had two daughters, but my sister and I were just like “additional […]
“IT”
The afternoons in a rural village were almost soundless except for the noise of nature. There were still a couple of hours until my father returned and turned on the […]
Grandmother – part 2
My grandmother is from a family who lived just a 15-minute walk from my grandfather’s house. My grandfather was a year senior in school, but they didn’t get married until […]
Grandmother – part 1
I went downstairs to see my grandmother one afternoon while Hana was asleep on her parents’ bed. Grandmother was watching a period drama on TV. I sat on her bed […]
Homebound
After the respite of spring with Stuart, I flew to Japan. My parents agreed to have me stay with them for a couple of months until I got the student […]
Faking confidence
I received acceptance letters from Cass Business School (now Bayes) and Imperial Business School by early April. It wasn’t necessarily easy to gain the minimum GMAT score, write an essay, […]