Densho Digital Archive
Densho Visual History Collection
Title: Asano Terao Interview I
Narrator: Asano Terao
Interviewers: Tomoyo Yamada (primary), Dee Goto (secondary)
Location: Seattle, Washington
Date: May 19, 1998
Densho ID: denshovh-tasano-01-0018

<Begin Segment 18>

[Translated from Japanese]

DG: Back then, didn't you have grade school excursions?

AT: We did, we did. I went because my friends invited me to go during the break, and I was rushed into it by my friends.

TY: The trip to Kyushu.

AT: Because I had good friends. Also, my friend's sister, in the girls' school, I think she was already in her fourth year then. Because it wouldn't have been fun at all if she'd gone by herself, she invited her sister and us, and she took us there. It was great. Usually, about a group of four people. When her sister took us, we had the sister to handle all the payments, and I paid her afterwards. And, if teacher came, if teacher took us, each of us gave money to the teacher one by one later. We did it this way. So, relatively, it was easier to depend on the teacher. It was good because she adored us. It was also good that the teacher was single. It wouldn't have been that way if she had been married.

DG: That was Ms. Kobayashi?

AT: No, it wasn't Ms. Kobayashi then. Who, the teacher was one who came after Ms. Kobayashi. She only stayed just for a short, short while. What was the teacher's name? I can't recall her name. Ms. Kobayashi was a very good teacher. She was around thirty, thirty-one. She wasn't married. She said that she wanted to devote herself in the education for girls. She was from Miyazaki Prefecture, Miyazaki Prefecture. She spoke the northern dialect. At first, we repeated many times, "Teacher, we don't understand you. Teacher, we don't understand you!" [Laughs] We understood, although we only understood half of what she was saying.

TY: From the northern area.

AT: We used to say things like that. And, at the end, it was fixed completely. Then, she started saying gansu, our dialect word, at the end of the sentences, and we said, "Teacher, it is embarrassing if you say gansu too much!" [Laughs]

TY: Gansu is Hiroshima...

AT: In Hiroshima, the grandmas from the countryside often said, "this-gansu, that-gansu," so we were laughing about that. When I remember the things from back then, it makes me laugh, and I sometimes think it is nostalgic. After all, being a high school student was great. I had a great time during the three years in high school.

<End Segment 18> - Copyright © 1998 Densho. All Rights Reserved.