主婦。ホストお母さん。日本舞の達人。

41 years ago, Hashimoto Matsuko wore a beautiful rented kimono and became the wife of Kataoka Kooji through a Shinto ceremony when she was 22 years old. Today, the retired 63 years old Kataoka Matsuko is an experienced housewife, a professional host mother and a talented dancer who is trying to make my life in Japan fruitful and unforgettable.

Before I met my host mother, all that I can relate to housewives in Japan is a life which follows the same routine every day, cooking, shopping, and picking up children from school. But my host mother gave me a whole new view of Japanese women. On one hand, my host mother is an ordinary housewife and mother like any other married women in Japan. She is good at cooking both Japanese food and western food. For my host mother, who has been a housewife for 41 years, the most challenging task now is to think about the daily menu. She is trying her best to offer different food everyday so that I, a foreign student, can taste different Japanese food from which I learn about Japanese culture. It is from her that I knew the four seasons have an important role in Japanese cuisine. It is from the every meal which she prepares and cooks that I start to sense the depth and richness of Japanese food culture.

My host mother always knows where I want to travel to or what kind of information I may be interested because she has been hosting international students for 20 years. She told me the first day we met that I am the 18^th foreign student she is hosting. My host mother first host students when her son is in college and her daughter is a high school students. The initial reason for her to become a host mother is simple, she wanted to learn English herself and she also wanted her children to become better at English. The beginning of her life as a host mother does not surprise me, while I was completely amazed when she told me about her being an exchange student in New Zealand. When my host mother was 49 years old, she went to New Zealand in order to improve her English where she stayed with her host parents who were at that time both over 90 years old for a month. According to my host mother, that one month is too short for her to have any major improvement in English. But the study aboard program allowed her to experience the life of home stay students.

It was in the same year when my host mother started hosting students that she also became one of the first few members of Minatsukikai, a local Japanese dancing community. At the beginning, my host mother did not enjoy her dancing activities very much since she was busy with her part-time job at Resona Bank and housework. She joined the community mainly because her sister is both the founder and the teacher of it. However, as my host mother continued to participate in more and more dancing performances, she became deeply into Japanese dancing. Today, there are 30 members in the community. Every October, the community will hold a dancing workshop at Kansai Gaidai in which foreign students are taught how to wear kimono and some simple Japanese traditional dance. It was in this year’s workshop when I had the chance to see my host mother performing for the first time. She participated in both feminine and masculine dances in which she worn female kimono or male kimono. The performance allowed me to discover another side of my host mother. She was very confident, skillful and passionate when she is dancing.

The life of my host mother is definitely a multi-dimensional one. It is she who shows me how colorful and energetic the life of an ordinary Japanese woman can be. This year’s dancing workshop at Gaidai is the 24^th one, and my host mother will continue it as long as she can.