An online story
by Tommy Schmitz
Chapter 1 -- a bit about the tokyo twins
(here is the link to the story's introduction on June 21 2006.)
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This is a story of two Japanese girls
whose names are Katie and Susan O'Brien.
Sisters.
Identical twins.
Fourteen years old.
Born on New Years Day, 1992,
the holiest day in the Japanese calander.
Except these Japanese girls were born
one pacific ocean and a continent away
from this Japanese holiday,
in the middle of a corn field, sort of,
in the capital city of Iowa.
No big deal in Des Moines.
At nine months old,
in the arms of their parents,
Henry and Mieko O'Brien,
and tagging along at a distance
their three-year-old brother Jack,
they landed, to live and to grow
as a traditional Japanese family
in the dense and dollhouse suburbs
of Chofu-shi, Tokyo.
Typical
Japanese teenage girls.
(Yes, the word typical does apply here.)
Good students. Good piano players.
Good friends between themselves - mainly,
good friends to many friends they share.
Way busier than they need to be.
Without too much complaint.
It's some basic nature
alive and inside
Katie and Susan O'Brien -
seemingly acquired
before birth -
to make serious ways
of being serious,
like practicing
their particular sport
five hours per day
six day per week.
Not counting
lengthy daily travel times.
Not counting practices
performed at home.
And they have been running this weekly schedule
for almost three years.
Serious about their day-to-day lives,
Regardless of what else is going on,
merely growing up a kid in Tokyo
is, by itself,
rather serious stuff.
Katie and Susan O'Brien are athletes.
Nationally ranked rhythmic gymnasts (shintaiso) for their age,
and naturally shooting for a spot
on the Japan national team,
and ultimately the Olympic team.
Surprisingly capable of practical jokes.
Not the worn out jokes for twins
- they find these boring -
but subtle and devious jokes
played upon those who would dare
hurt the feelings or the physics
of either or both...
be they family, friend, or foe.
You'll just have to get to know them and see for yourself.
You could sum it up this way:
Katie and Susan O'Brien
are cute as hell and tough as nails.
And I suspect they still would be
whether they were growing up in Tokyo Japan, or
Des Moines Iowa, or St Petersburg Russia or
County Cork Ireland, home of their Irish ancestry.
Perhaps you are thinking,
(afterall, many do and have,)
how can they *really* be Japanese
with names like Katie and Susan O'Brien?
Their fellow citizens
from time to time
continue to raise the issue.
And here's how they handle it:
Katie and Susan O'Brien simply don't care.
They see themselves as Japanese,.
So, in this land of pucker and bow
they are somehow able to radiate
nonchalance
about: their foreign sounding names.
about: their place of birth
about: their no-doubt-about-it
dark Irish features.
They seem to wear in-place
not a smirk so much,
but a shrug,
about such matters
knowing it isn't the Japanese thing to do.
Ever since Susan got clubbed in the mouth
with an aluminum baseball bat
at the age of four
by an older bully kid at day-care,
people that know them,
know this about them:
Nobody challenges
what makes them different
from other Japanese children.
The girls established their intolerance
for being singled-out
early in their lives.
And they do so still today,
non-verbally
for the most part,
with eye contact
that is eerily confident for anyone in life,
let alone for two foreign looking teenage girls
in a culture that considers
such aggression with the eyes
impolite or far worse.
Besides these few character traits,
you couldn't tell them apart
from any other 14 year old Japanese girl.
Except, oh yeah,
that dark Irish look about them.
Or maybe Mediterranean?
Olive skinned, black hair, huge Castelian black eyes.
They would yearly travel with their father
on one of his business trips to the US or to India,
They are born travelers.
But they still make faces at each other
whenever someone presumes
they are native speakers of Hindi or Spanish
or Arabic or Greek or French .
Besides these things mentioned,
Katie and Susan O'Brien know the rules
of Japanese life
and play them to a tee.
Moreover, in this culture that doesn't recognize
the "natural" human tendency
to occasionally make a mistake --
(besides what has just been discussed above,)
neither and never do they.
They don't accept mistakes of themselves,
nor mistakes of others,
and they are, at once,
rather proud of that
and they are rather frustrated too.
*****
