Part of the application for the foreign spouse’s green card includes an in-person interview with the United States Citizenship and Immigration Services. In it, an immigration officer will question the couple to make sure the marriage is legit.  While the interview usually includes basic questions about the relationship, immigration officials may also ask very specific questions about your significant other. One question that is so bizarre that immigration office eventually took it out: What color is your spouse’s underwear? ( I got this story from NPR Wait Wait …Don’t Tell Me). Somehow I know not only the answer but recall a childhood memory.

When I was in elementary school in my hometown, Peitou, a prefecture geographically surrounded by volcanic mountains and famous for its hot springs, hotels and prostitution. The hot sulfur steam would come out of the sidewalks, streams, and hillsides. To go home I had to walk through narrow alley, passed houses with stone walls and crossed a couple of bridges. I could hear the water flow and could see steam out of every gaps. However, on top of, and underneath the roofs, I could always spot colorful women’s underwear hanging on string. My friends and I would play the counting game. Later on I came to realize that behind those tall walls were living quarters and these girls lived there. The colorful underwear, waiting lines outside health clinic, as well as motorcycle engines roaring through the mountain passes, transporting the prostitutes to and from the fancy hotels,  became a vivid memory, growing up this “so-called” Japanese Men’s Paradise, my hometown.