A Black Woman in Japan Finds Love and Raises Family

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Baye McNeil, Women of Color Bound to Japan by Love and Family. Japan Times, July 19, 2015 (in the blog Black Eye).
http://www.japantimes.co.jp/comm ... -japan-love-family/

Quote:

"I’d ask my black female friends their thoughts on why that was [few Japanese males coupled with black women]. These mostly American, Canadian and Jamaican [black] women would explain that while they were certainly looking to date in Japan, it seemed that foreign guys were focused fully on Japanese women [and not on them, the black women]. And regarding Japanese men, some sisters would tell me they simply weren’t being approached by them at all

“After dating for eight years, Shinobu finally popped — or rather, penned — the question.  ‘He wrote me a letter and gave it to me on Christmas Eve,’ Avril says, laughing out loud. ‘Which is interesting because I thought we were breaking up. But it was a proposal!’

Note:
(a) About Baye. Baye McNeil, undated
www.bayemcneil.com/#!bio/c18bc
(born and raised in Brooklyn, New York; departing for [Yokohama 横濱 (Tokyo's southern neighbor),] Japan in 2004; covered life in Japan from a Black New Yorker's perspective)

(b) "Avril Haye Matsui [her name in Japanese (mostly katakana): アブリル・ヘイ・松井] is a woman of Jamaican heritage hailing from Nottingham, England, who came to Japan with the JET (Japan Exchange and Teaching) Programme and wound up spending, to date, 20 years of her life here. In that time she’s done every kind of English teaching under the sun — from public schools to eikaiwa (conversation schools), children and adults — and is currently teaching at a university in Aichi Prefecture."
(i) French English dictionary
* Avril (noun masculine; Latin [noun masculine] Aprīlis): "April [month]"
https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/avril
(ii) Nottingham
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nottingham
(When it [place] fell under the rule of a Saxon chieftain named Snot it became known as "Snotingaham"; the homestead of Snot's people (Inga = the people of; Ham = homestead))
(iii) JET Programme
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/JET_Programme
(started in 1978; run by three ministries [of Japan] in conjunction with local authorities)
(iv) Nagoya 名古屋(市) is the capital of Aichi Prefecture 愛知県.

choi

(c) "She met her husband, Shinobu, about three years into her tenure here, at a less than auspicious place — a bar — where apparently somebody nampa‘d (pulled) somebody.  'He feels that he was nampa’d' she tells me, giggling at the memory."

Japanese English dictionary
* 英会話 【えいかいわ】 (n): "(1) English conversation; (2) (abbr[eviation]) school for English conversation [in this case, short for 英会話学校]"
* shinobu 忍ぶ 【しのぶ】 (v)
* nampa 軟派 【なんぱ; ナンパ】:  "(n) (1) seducer; smooth talker; ladies' man; playboy; playgirl; (n,v) (2) (col[loquial]) (usu. written as ナンパ) (See 逆ナン) picking up women (on the street); (n) (3) (See 硬派 [pronounced 'kōha' and meaning 'hardliner']) moderate party; moderate"
* Gyaku-nan 逆ナン 【ぎゃくナン】 (n,v): "(sl[ang]) (from 逆+ナンパ) women picking up men (on the street)"
* hada-iro 肌色 【はだいろ】 (n): "flesh-coloured; flesh-colored; skin-coloured; skin-colored"  (You know, the author of the online dictionary, Jim Breen" is Australian.)
  ^ hada 肌(P); 膚 【はだ(P); はだえ】 (n): “skin”
  ^ iro 色 【いろ】 (n): "(1) colour; colo * * * (4) love; lust; sensuality  <英雄色を好む。 Who loves not women, wine and song remains a fool his whole life long>"

(d) “She explained that he was a welder by profession, very hands-on, a good father and provider, and all-around good guy.”
(i) all-around (adj):
"(British all-round)
1: having many uses or abilities; versatile <an all-around artist>
1.1: in many or all respects <his all-around excellence>"
http://www.oxforddictionaries.co ... _english/all-around
(ii) For definition 1.1, www.m-w.com says it this way: "considered in a general way"

(e) “That’s why I think what (Miss Universe Japan) Ariana Miyamoto is doing is so important: because she is a reflection of my kids.”
(i) Baye McNeil, Meeting Miss Universe Japan, the ‘Half’ Who Has It All. Japan Times, Apr 19, 2015.
http://www.japantimes.co.jp/comm ... niverse-japan-half/

View photos only.
(ii) Ariana Miyamoto  宮本 エリアナ 磨美子
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ariana_Miyamoto

Why 磨?  You see, one of her given names is Mamiko. And one of kanji with Chinese pronunciation of “ma” is 磨 (as in Daruma 達磨 (monk) and takuma 琢磨 (defined in Japan as “polish (jewels)”).

(f) " 'Or I [Haye] can blow off some steam when my daughter comes home and says the ballet teacher told her that her hair was wrong — because it wasn’t in the ballet style, which is sort of straight and in a bun.'  From my [(author) Baye’s] friends with hāfu (mixed-race) kids I’d heard of a lot of silliness parents are liable to run into, but this was a first. So I asked Avril how she handled it. * * * what I had to do was get my husband to phone up this woman [ballet teacher] and talk to her about her cultural insensitivity towards my daughter’s hair . . . and then, suddenly, she [teacher] understood! Keeping my temper, holding my tongue, in those kinds of situations is the biggest challenge for me."
(i) hāfu = “half”
(ii) let off/blow off steam (phrase): "to express your feelings of anger or excitement without harming anyone  <The meeting will be a chance for the protesters to let off steam>"
www.macmillandictionary.com/us/d ... -off-blow-off-steam

Without losing one’s cool, that is.

(g) “one day, I went to my son’s school for one of those lesson observation things, and all the kids presented self-portraits. Now, the Asian skin color in a coloring palette is called hada-iro (skin color), but that’s not my son’s skin color, and that’s not my skin color.”

See (c) for the definition of “hada-iro."