Kindred spirits, kindergarten connections: From Buenos Aires to east Tokyo

Japan Times

2 days ago

A year and a half after moving to Tokyo, I found Buenos Aires in the shitamachi.
The working-class districts in the eastern part of the city seemed so familiar. There was something about the dirty stairs from the South Exit of Uguisudani Station that reminded me of Avenida Rivadavia on a Sunday morning. I thought of the smoke of Argentinian asado, the barbecues that we had for every holiday, when I passed the smoky yakitori place on the street. The bright lights from the love hotels in Taito Ward gave me flashbacks to Flores, the neighborhood where I grew up.
And these discoveries quickly made me feel at home.
I was born and raised in Buenos Aires and lived 29 years of my life more or less in the same area. In 2014, I joined the Teacher Training Program run by the Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology. After I finished, I ended up living in Uguisudani, Taito Ward, and commuting an hour and a half each way to teach at an international school in the Kawasaki area.
Most of the people I've gotten close to in life are connected to me through my identities as a teacher or a writer. I was an avid reader of J.R.R. Tolkien and Arthur C. Clarke in my youth, and was drawn to writing around the same time. Once I became an adult, I naturally gravitated to teaching as well, becoming the third generation in my family to pursue this occupation. You could say it's more than just a career to me.
In 2018, through the introduction of a friend, I started working at Koganji Kindergarten in Kiyokawa, a neighborhood northeast of Asakusa. It wasn't an international school, but rather a kindergarten founded in the postwar period and operated by a historic Buddhist temple.
A much shorter commute — from one east Tokyo neighborhood to the next — was a big perk of the job. But beyond that, Koganji opened its doors to me as not just a teacher but a human being, allowing me to find common ground with the community while bridging the gap between our differences.
Lay of the land
This didn't happen all at once, of course. Part of the adventure was the literal path I took to get there. Instead of my hour-and-a-half commute, I went to Koganji Kindergarten by bike or on foot, discovering places and people along the way.
Whereas in Flores, I'd been surrounded by the houses of writers like Roberto Arlt and Alejandra Pizarnik, my favorite poet, here I found traces of Kafu Nagai and Ichiyo Higuchi. In Flores, I'd been obsessed with the former residence of the poet Baldomero Fernandez Moreno; in the shitamachi, I was invested in learning about the histories of the Kappabashi kitchenware district and Jokan Temple.
The characters of Edogawa Ranpo and Yasunari Kawabata reminded me of 'The Chronicles of the Grey Angel' by Alejandro Dolina, a fictional portrait of my childhood neighborhood, with its odd characters and mundane yet peculiar landscape. All of these writers filled my head with myths and made-up historical characters, maps and secret societies.
The shitamachi is one of the few areas of Tokyo where people usually reside their whole lives, where people make a life from their surroundings. A few of my co-workers at Koganji had gone to this same kindergarten and, nowadays, some of my students are the third generation in their families to attend.
How could a foreigner ever belong here?
It all started with a group of parents who love soccer. As soon as they heard I was Argentinian, they invited me to join them — and the embrace was mutual and absolute. Over hours of soccer, ramen and beer, we became fast friends.
Soccer was just the beginning. The shitamachi spirit brought me into the fold, whether over beers after school events and birthday parties, or during random run-ins at the neighborhood matsuri (festival). I returned the favor by introducing my friends to a ramen shop owned by one of the parents.
The empty streets of east Tokyo at night suddenly felt like the same streets where I'd spent Saturdays as a teenager, now that I was armed with intimate knowledge of the neighborhood's hidden gems and tucked-away corners. I made mental connections with every step I took, comparing my eagerness to walk down Senzoku-dori to the comfort I felt at the tiny SportsCenter on Calle Condarco back home.
Joining the crowd
The working class in Tokyo is not the same as the working class in Argentina, but both groups value a sense of community. I wanted to know the people of Koganji as much as they wanted to know me. What had been love at first sight has, by now, blossomed into a years-long relationship.
Students made me part of their lives, inviting me to their band concerts or end-of-year ballet performances. Parents asked to see the tattoos I can't show during working hours. Kids who saw my tattoos by accident promptly forgot about them, because this didn't matter as much as whether I had time to play.
Francisco Villarreal was invited to participate in Asakusa's famed Sanja Matsuri by a local family he had befriended. |
KENICHI OTANI
Exactly 18,358 kilometers separates my house in Tokyo from the one I grew up in. And as much as I miss my friends and family, I've been lucky enough to find people who care for me — and allow me to care for them — on this side of the world.
A year into the job, a co-worker called me the yōchien no papa (kindergarten dad) of a girl in my class. It wasn't like she didn't have a dad; it was about the connection — the love and admiration of a real 3-year-old. And I steadily became the yōchien no papa for a bunch more kids, loving every single minute, cherishing every smile, saving every drawing and letter in a box at home.
Some kids wanted to spend their entire lunchtime with me, or repeatedly invited me to their houses. The mother of a 3-year-old girl told me how her daughter said she wanted to be Fran — not 'an English teacher,' just Fran — when she grows up. A father sent me a picture of his daughter crying her eyes out with a sign that said 'Thank you' right after the last day of school.
My co-workers introduced me to their families. They brought me food when I got COVID and was stuck at home alone; they gave me little Valentine chocolate hearts their daughters made for me. My biggest motivation to go to work was, and still is, the people — and seeing what new adventure lies in store each day.
Writers, teachers and most people in this world want the same thing: to be remembered. I don't know if I will ever write something to be remembered by, but teaching, both in Buenos Aires and at Koganji, has given me the opportunity to live forever in these little places, and in the little lives of the children who pass through them.
In May this year, a family invited me to join them for Sanja Matsuri, the biggest annual event in the area. And I even managed to do one of the things I'd always dreamt of: carry an o-mikoshi (portable shrine). My days as a spectator were over. The dad led me through the crowd and I quickly became one of them, one of the many.
It was such hard work on a hot day. It reminded me of concerts and soccer matches in full stadiums back home. I felt comfortable enough to move, to shout. And it will last in my memory. Even when I rode my bike home later, I kept thinking that I had found some Flores in the streets of the shitamachi.