Keiro Residents Participate in Japanese Writing Workshop

In the fall, Edgar Award-winning mystery author Naomi Hirahara teamed up with former Rafu Shimpo Japanese Editor-in-Chief Yukikazu Nagashima to offer residents at Keiro Retirement Home and Keiro Intermediate Care Facility a second round of the writing workshop "Mukashi Mukashi: Once Upon a Time in My Life." Like the bilingual writing class taught by Ms. Hirahara last spring, the ten-week workshop was supported by Poets & Writers through a grant from the National Endowment for the Arts.

"The first time the class was offered, I wanted to participate but I couldn't understand English," explained resident Kotoko Toji. "When I heard that the class would be offered again in Japanese, I really wanted to go because I like to write."

While a few of the students had participated in the previous writing workshop, the majority had never taken a writing class before coming to Keiro. This posed interesting challenges for both the students and the teachers.

"I really had to go back and think about the process of creating a story - the preparation - so I could explain it to the residents," said Mr. Nagashima, a graduate of Waseda University in Japan who has been writing for thirty years.

While the class covered the basic technicalities of writing, residents were also challenged to maintain the flow of their stories. Like the first workshop, this writing class gave residents an opportunity to not only become better writers, but also to share their memories and express their thoughts and feelings about their own life experiences.

"We were free to write about anything, and then each person presented their story to the class," said Mrs. Toji. "Listening to other people's stories was very interesting."