A Story of My Roots and Routes--Part 5 "FINDING HOME"

By Atsushi Furuiye
Part 4 "CONNECTING WITH TCKs" is here.

I got divorced near the turn of the century. We had a family discussion with both my boys, too, and because they did not want to move away and change schools, they chose to stay with their mother in Yokohama. I looked for a new apartment for myself and found a nice one in northern Kawasaki. The fact that it was in the city where I had spent my childhood was just the first of the coincidences.

Several years later, I found a new girlfriend. She rented an apartment in Kawasaki. She knew I was in the city but didn’t want a place so obviously close to where I was, and she chose a place somewhat to the south. This was the biggest coincidence. It was so near to the place where I first lived in Kawasaki (see the picture in part 2). I don’t have any particular memories from my earliest childhood there, but the river close by is definitely where I enjoyed chasing crickets and butterflies, the nearest train station to her apartment was the one with the shopping streets that Mom used to go for her errands. I asked Mom where precisely we used to live, but she couldn’t remember the details. I assume it was on the other side of the train tracks from where my new girlfriend started to live.

Kawasaki side of Tama River, where we often go for a walk.
We currently live on the nearer side of the bridge (upstream),
and I believe I used to live downstream of the bridge when I was little.

Yet another several years passed. It seemed ridiculous to pay for both her and my apartments. We started to search for a new place where we could live together. We didn’t think that we were going to purchase it, we were looking for a place for rent. But one day, a friend who was in the real estate business told me he would find a nice place for us and that he could arrange a reasonable mortgage to buy it. He kept his promise, and the apartment that he found for us was a mere street away from where my girlfriend lived! One of the important reasons I went for the purchase is that I wanted to leave the place for my girlfriend when I pass away. She is much younger than I am. It was in 2011 that I owned a house for the first time in my life.

We two are drinkers. We do not cook dinner for ourselves very often. We go out to local bars for dining and drinking. We have several places where we are regulars at, but nowadays we have one place that we go to most often, maybe four times a week. It is a pop-and-mom-operated small place, and the pop is an alumnus of a local public school here. His former classmates come to enjoy the night. The parents of these guys also come. A member of the City Council is one of his friends from the school. Bosses of the local community hold night meetings there. My partner was once invited to participate in a local festival. When a construction or demolition is going on in the neighborhood, someone will tell us what is happening. We got admitted into their community, and now we are locals here.

There is another reason that I like this place. There is a professional soccer club in the city, with their home stadium standing right in our neighborhood. Just after my partner moved here, we went to watch a game. I was immediately captured by a Brazilian player. The team lost the game, but he was so friendly and kind to the fans until he withdrew from our sights. The team got promoted to the top tier at the end of the year.
It was their second promotion from J2 to J1, and the club had learned from the experience of diminishing crowd while in J2 that they had to commit to the local community as much as to win the games. Its banners and posters, including public announcements featuring the top players, are all over the town. Every new year, players in groups of two or three visit local shopping streets in various parts of the city to greet their sponsors and fans. It has been named by the league as the club that most contributed to the hometown for ten consecutive years.
Meanwhile, they struggled in the games, only achieving second places as their best for quite some time, gaining criticism that they focus too much on community relations. Winning the league championship in 2017 changed all that. Now they are seen as a successful role model for a football club in Japan, with seven titles in seven years while keeping up the commitment to the local community.

It was in 2017 that Kawasaki Frontale first became the champion in J1 league.
Cerebrating banners and flags were everywhere.
LEFT: Nearby shopping street. CENTER: Town hall.
RIGHT ABOVE: In front of the train station.
RIGHT BELOW: Inside the station.

I became a supporter not because they were strong. I have become an ardent supporter because I know they take pride in making Kawasaki a better place. They have made me proud to be a Kawasakian.
At the bar, fellow regulars ask us how was the team in the most recent game.

Together with my partner and my local friends, I can now say this is my home.

FIN.

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This story was originally written in English for a fellow TCK who doesn’t read Japanese. I revised and rewrote it for general readers in Japanese, and the two are not exact translations of each other. You can read this part of the story in Japanese here.