1998; only weeks ago, is now a different era for me personally. It marks the end of a life of not knowing where my father*s family was from. It marks the end of a life of thinking Europe consisted of 4 nations and other little countries with quaint cultures.

I grew up with children of Spanish-speaking parents from the Southwest in the U.S.A. I had a best friend from Hong Kong and worked at her dad*s Chinese restaurant. I went with my father to study Polish at 10. We later studied Russian during my high school years. We went to many cultural events and ate all kinds of fun foods. I studied French in high school and Latin. These all served to improve my English and little else I thought.

It is a result of my parents exposing me to many different cultures as a child that makes it possible for me to live as an immigrant here. For my father*s 71st birthday, I decided to give him a brief family history. He grew up with German immigrants in Nebraska. Germans were of two groups there: one had come from the Volga area and the other from what was called "Germany". I took this for granted until January 1999. I punched in keywords like ancestry or genealogy on the Internet. I now suffer sleepless nights because I get 40 or so letters a day from people on my ethnic lists of Prussia and Poland and Pommerania. I had no previous connections to these areas. Now, I am learning about the archaic languages of the Baltic peoples and the history of border changes and wars and migrations of whole tribes of peoples.

The many ethnic disputes in the world today are falling into place as I become a detective to see where it all began. Asia, Europe, North and South America, Africa, the South Pacific have all transformed from places in newspaper articles to places that are all very complicated and intriguing.

I sit in front of my computer and get research papers from universities all over the world and questions are answered immediately. I am finding results for my own personal family and have started to study German language with my children and think about resuming Polish. I have found several German-speaking Japanese in my village of 12,000 people! A dear friend writes me sentences weekly for me to study.

Suddenly, Japan seems like a very familiar place. Because I have stretched my mind again I find I cannot focus on trivial neighborhood disputes and gossip at the trash bin. I am instead struggling to find out if I am supposed to contact a German, Polish or Russian office to find out pertinent information. I again feel a need to study Japanese because I live here and immigrants need to be fluent in the language of their country. I have gained a renewed perspective of my country here and the one I left and the ones from which my family originally came. Future generations will note the major influence that immigrant communities had on the culture of Japan in the 20th and 21st centuries. The saying that once a mind has been stretched, it can never return to its original dimensions can be said about a country that is permanently stretched by the varying cultures, languages, religions and ideals of its immigrants.