When New York native Brett Iimura visited Japan for the first time in 1976, the teenage girl spent an "absolutely amazing" time here. Visiting a Japanese friend she had met at her school in New York, Iimura stood out everywhere she went because back then there were very few foreigners in Japan, even in Tokyo.
"We were very visible, and I was young," Iimura, director of the Tokyo-based Childbirth Education Center, recalled recently at a cafe in Tokyo's residential Setagaya district. "I was considered exotic, and given presents at every store I went to."
While she recounts the experience favorably, her feelings toward Japan, a country she and her Japanese husband have made their home for the last 17 years, are a little more complex.