Coming of Age in Jerusalem

Since moving to Israel, I’ve been working toward completion of a memoir about my transformational marriage and family life in Japan. That was when I had a different ending–or so I thought. It was  tale about doing my best to root myself in a Japanese family and come out nearly thirty years later reconciled to spending the rest of my life in Japan. Instead, what happened? I decided to come last summer in Israel to reflect on where I was going and the small  voice inside stunned me by saying what my heart was feeling: “You are here. You are home.”

I found a house overlooking the old city of Jerusalem within stone’s throw of where Adam and Eve were plausibly born. It took two suitcases to get here but thirty years to wake up to wanting a Jewish way of life where I was no longer in the nano-minority. In October I became an Israeli citizen.

In future blogs I’ll tell you more about the art and writing life in Israel and the daily challenges I face navigating the surreal. Thanks dear readers for following my story.

Author: admin

I'm a Jerusalem-based artist and writer of a memoir in progress about rediscovering my Jewish roots in Japan.