Rebecca Otowa may have lived in the Japanese countryside for 40 years but this gifted artist, author, and gardener remains a deep observer of ordinary life in a country village that has lost all of its shops and much of its younger population since she arrived. Yet Rebecca paints a loving picture of the life that she created from the point of view of her 350 year old beloved family member, the samurai farmhouse she calls home.
In At Home in Japan, Rebecca opens up like never before about her time alone to appraise her life choices. This groundbreaking series of essays looks beyond the possibility of a foreign woman taking up permanent residence in the Shiga countryside, outside of Kyoto, discussing the joys of bon ordori dancing on a midsummer night as well as the challenges of fitting into her mother-in-law’s traditional expectations.
In this fascinating interview with presenter Liane Grunberg Wakabayashi, the third podcast in the Goshen Books Meeting the Memoir Series: Finding Home Far From Home, Rebecca offers both wisdom and pragmatism about what she calls the elusive certainty that wherever we go in life, we too can choose to be part of the place we call home.
