Baba's House

"Life can be hard, but we don't have to be" - a story from small town Japan

This is Baba:

She is 86 years old, and her full name is 高橋美智子 [Michiko Takahashi], but her grandchildren call her Baba. We don’t speak a lick of the same language, and I am the first person to photograph her.

Baba lives in a tiny town called Iruma. It’s outside of Tokyo, and you can easily arrive there by train from Shinjuku station. If I am being truthful, the commute vaguely resembles that from NYC to Connecticut — not always in architecture or language, but definitely in energy and vibe.

Areshi Rogers, grandchild of Baba, on the street of their family home.

My day with Baba reminded me that we are so much more alike than we are different.

Upon entering her home and removing my shoes, I drew another parallel: Baba’s kitchen felt eerily similar to my own Great Grandmother’s house. It had the same warm feeling that only someone who’s lived a lot of life can cultivate. I spent the afternoon learning how to make gyoza, eating veggies from her garden, and being treated like a family member. Even after we were all stuffed to the core, Baba brought us a box of fresh oranges, picked from the tree out back. She is the heart of her home, as all the best grandmothers are.

In the kitchen with the Takahashi family.

It was easy to recognize that Baba is fabulous because she is simply living. She sews her own stuffed animal figurines for every lunar new year. She owns a computer to learn Karaoke songs to sing with her friends. She’s beat cancer, and she has experienced some unimaginable things (which I am not going to talk about here), but she’s youthful and beautiful and very, very bright.

Baba taught me that kindness and softness are actually strength, and you don’t have to speak the same language to understand someone.

I think we can learn a whole lot from the elderly, even if it’s to be a little more giving, a little more kind, and that life can be hard, but we don’t have to be.

Kitchen prep!

All hands on deck

These little gyoza stations were set up for us on arrival.

Fry ‘em up.

Slightly under-exposed gyoza master. Baba can whip so many of these out in just a few minutes.

I really like this image. It was an accident.

After our meal, the family retired to the living room. Baba sat down next to her husband of many years. She flipped through channels of infomercials and soap operas and reality tv — the same motions that my grandmother would go through after meal time. This is one of my favorite photographs of the day - just a tender, mundane moment of day-to-day life.

Same pic as the poster, but without the text, just because I like it. You might want to take a closer look. This image is worth taking it all in.