While I Was Away

5.0

0.0 (0)

215 0

Write Review Add to favorites

User Photos (1)

Author(s)

Brown, Waka

Publisher

Quill Tree Books

Genre(s)

Age Range

Release Date

January 26, 2021

ISBN

978-0063017115

Buy This Book

When twelve-year-old Waka’s parents suspect she can’t understand the basic Japanese they speak to her, they make a drastic decision to send her to Tokyo to live for several months with her strict grandmother. Forced to say goodbye to her friends and what would have been her summer vacation, Waka is plucked from her straight-A-student life in rural Kansas and flown across the globe, where she faces the culture shock of a lifetime. In Japan, Waka struggles with reading and writing in kanji, doesn’t quite mesh with her complicated and distant Obaasama, and gets made fun of by the students in her Japanese public-school classes. Even though this is the country her parents came from, Waka has never felt more like an outsider. If she’s always been the “smart Japanese girl” in America but is now the “dumb foreigner” in Japan, where is home...and who will Waka be when she finds it?

In Japan, Waka struggles with reading and writing in kanji, doesn’t quite mesh with her complicated and distant Obaasama, and gets made fun of by the students in her Japanese public-school classes. Even though this is the country her parents came from, Waka has never felt more like an outsider.

If she’s always been the “smart Japanese girl” in America but is now the “dumb foreigner” in Japan, where is home...and who will Waka be when she finds it?

Editor reviews

2 reviews

Back when the world sent Air Mail letters

February 02, 2022 (Updated: July 07, 2026)

Overall rating

5.0

Plot

5.0

Characters

N/A

Writing Style

N/A

Illustrations/Photos (if applicable)

N/A

In this memoir, Waka's family has moved to the US from Japan, and although she was born in the US, her father is always saying that they will move back in three years. She has visited several times, since relatives still live there, but she is very much a 1980s American kid. Her parents, however, feel that her Japanese isn't as good as it should be, so they arrange for her to spend five months living with her grandmother and going to school in Japan. She's been to school there before, briefly, so had made a few friends, but had attended an American school. Now, she will be going to a local one, so she will have to improve her Japanese. She's disappointed that she won't get to spend the summer with her friends, although they promise to write. When she first arrives, she stays with her aunt, uncle, and cousins, and very much enjoys being with them in their bustling household. When she moves in with her grandmother, who is 80, she has to deal with her grandmother's silence and strict rules. The grandmother's life has not been easy; her husband died, and she had to raise nine children during the war on a seamstress' salary. Waka spends little time at home anyway, and is quickly drawn into the drama of middle school. The girls are nice to her, giving her small charms for her backpack because she doesn't have any, but the boys called her "baka" (stupid) because she doesn't read well, and "gaijin" (foreigner). Her teacher is very understanding, protecting her from the students and giving her a lot of help and encouragement. The girls start to demand that Waka pick a "guruupu". She can't just play with everyone at recess or walk home with a friend from another class; she needs to pick a group of girls and hang out exclusively with them. The girls give her some time to decide, and help her navigate the sometimes difficult waters of Japanese social customs, such as attaching -san or -chan to someone's name. (But never to your own!) Used to being considered "a brain" in the US, Waka is determined to figure out writing with kanji, reading, and improving her conversational skills. She bonds slowly with her grandmother, hearing bits about the past and learning to sew. When her time in Japan is over, she is sad to leave, but feels that she learned a lot about her culture, her family's past, and her grandmother.

Good Points

This was a brilliant combination of the familiar and the unusual. Waka has to struggle with drama similar to that which she would face in the US, but with added layers of cultural differences unique to Japan. She has to deal with academic work that is harder than it has been in the past while being considered a foreigner. Living away from home is always difficult, and her grandmother is different from the grandmothers she has experienced in the US. I love that letters are included, and that the process of sending and getting them is described. This was an integral part of being out of the country in the 1980s, and readers today will not understand the importance of a 30 cent aerogram or a care package of Twix! I was not surprised to read that the author based this book on some journals and letters she had from her trip. This has lots of good details, and some very true middle grade emotions!

The cover should have included some 1980s pop culture or that the very least, some bright colors of geometric designs. Maybe a backpack with those charms! Hello Kitty was a HUGE thing in the 1980s.

This is a great book for young readers who want to learn more about living in a different country. Like Chapman's All the Ways Home , this gives a lot of details about what it is like to leave the US and make a life in another country.