| Chapter 1: | Autobiographical Self |
Tulip Festival
Weaving a dream of friendship
Discarding the past
(Yoshimoto, 2005, p. 39)
I remember the day I decided to come to Ottawa to do graduate work in linguistics. In my search for a Canadian University, I had identified four possible Canadian cities for my studies. These were Ottawa, Montreal, Toronto, and Vancouver. I had no reliable way to choose among them. They all seemed welcoming and frightening. To decide, I simply rolled a pair of dice and the number that appeared corresponded to Ottawa. It seemed like my destiny at the time. I tried to imagine myself surrounded by tulips in the spring in a strange city with no friends, no money—an invisible presence. I hesitated; I was very scared about my decision to leave Japan. Yet, deep inside something insisted that I go. In Kyoto, Kiyomizu is a famous theater with a stage that is set high above the audience. The expression, 
, Kiyomizuno butaikara tobioriru (lit., leaping off Kiyomizu stage), refers to the courage required before leaping into a new stage of life.
In 2004 the Tulip Festival in Ottawa was held from May 5 to 23, and the theme was “a celebration of peace and friendship.” I remember that same picture of the tulips that I examined intently in the travel magazine before I came to Ottawa. Every spring, I see many Japanese tourists with their cameras standing near me at the Tulip Festival, but at the same time, standing so distant. I walk along Dow’s Lake with my friend and see the same things that I saw in the travel guide, but differently now, because I have a story behind the tulips.
Unlike the spider
Tangled in the web I spin
Foreign arachnid
(Yoshimoto, 2005, p. 39)