From across the Pacific: Pen pals and friends for 35 years

Published 6:23 pm Monday, November 24, 2008

Four-thousand eighty-one miles separate Karen Choyce of Mercer Island and Chieko Takatori of Tokyo, but that hasn’t stopped them from exchanging letters for the past 35 years.

“We don’t use e-mail, either,” said Choyce, who has hand-written and mailed approximately 500 letters to Japan in her lifetime.

What began as an assignment between their two grade schools in 1972, continues today, as Choyce and Takatori still write to each other approximately once a month. Choyce said the project began with about 30 students from her Cle Elum, Wash., elementary school matched up with pen pals in Japan, but she was the only one who continued writing beyond the first two letters.

The two women describe themselves as complete opposites, but that hasn’t stopped them from sharing their lives with one another and forming a close bond.

“I’m almost 6-feet tall and she’s barely 5-feet tall,” said Choyce, speaking of just how polar opposite they are. “But it’s funny, because I drive a Toyota here in the U.S., and Chieko’s got a Jeep in Japan, so there’s definitely a mixture of cultures.”

The differences go beyond physical traits and into the cultural realm as well. Choyce can be heard across a room, but Takatori is reserved and soft-spoken. Takatori says her spoken English has deteriorated since she left school, but it doesn’t matter because Choyce does most of the talking.

“I sort of think of the difference in the way we act in terms of nature,” said Choyce. “Chieko’s like a delicate cherry blossom, and I’m like a big Cedar tree in a forest.”

And an American forest, at that. Choyce doesn’t speak Japanese, and all of their letters are written entirely in English.

This week marked the sixth time the two friends have gotten together, with Takatori flying over to visit Choyce and her mother in Mercer Island. The pair’s first in-person meeting took place in 1979, when Takatori visited a then-19-year-old Choyce in Cle Elum for summer vacation.

“That was the first time she’d seen a horse outside of a zoo and she’d never driven a vehicle,” Choyce said. “But by the end of the summer she was riding horses and learning to drive my car.”

In fact, the two took a road trip across the United States that year to visit 23 states, so that Takatori could see, among other things, a Kentucky Fried Chicken restaurant in the actual state of Kentucky.

On her current visit, Takatori — clad in cowboy boots — got to see a wide variety of Seattle-centric sights, including Safeco Field (Takatori is a huge Ichiro fan), Costco, the Smith Tower, EMP (Takatori was excited to hear Paul Allen is an Island resident), the graves of Bruce Lee and Jimi Hendrix, and the original Starbucks.

“It tasted the same as Starbucks in Japan,” said Takatori, who attested to the coffee brand’s popularity in Japan by noting that the tiny country contains more Starbucks than any other nation on Earth, except the United States. Takatori also compared the cherry trees blossoming on her visit to the University of Washington campus to those of the cherry blossom festivals currently going on in her home country, which she said were almost as stunning.

Takatori got to meet the drummer of the band Yes, Alan White, who is a friend of Choyce. The experience was meaningful to Takatori because Yes was extremely popular in Japan in the 1970s. White was also the drummer on John Lennon’s song “Imagine,” which lends to his popularity as well. White even gave Takatori a pair of drumsticks he used in concert.

However, Takatori’s favorite sight in Seattle was the visit to local artist Dale Chihuly’s studio.

“It was very beautiful,” said Takatori.

Choyce and Takatori, now 47 and 49 years old respectively, say they’ll continue to be pen-pals for many more years, a demonstration of the life-long friendships that can blossom even across two very different cultures.

“I’ve had Chieko for three-quarters of my life,” said Choyce. “I can’t imagine it without her.”