{"id":38562,"date":"2015-10-18T14:23:52","date_gmt":"2015-10-18T18:23:52","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/jetwit.com\/wordpress\/?p=38562"},"modified":"2015-10-18T22:10:44","modified_gmt":"2015-10-19T02:10:44","slug":"jq-magazine-book-review-here-comes-the-sun","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/jetwit.com\/wordpress\/2015\/10\/18\/jq-magazine-book-review-here-comes-the-sun\/","title":{"rendered":"JQ Magazine: Book Review \u2014 \u2018Here Comes the Sun\u2019"},"content":{"rendered":"
\""Here<\/a>

“Here Comes the Sun<\/em> conveys how with persistence, perseverance and patience, seemingly impossible hurdles in Japan can be overcome.” (Stone Bridge Press)<\/p><\/div>\n

By\u00a0<\/em><\/strong>Rashaad Jorden<\/em><\/strong><\/a>\u00a0(<\/em><\/strong>Yamagata-ken<\/em><\/strong><\/a>, 2008-10) for\u00a0<\/em><\/strong>JQ<\/strong> magazine<\/strong><\/em><\/a>. A former head of the JETAA Philadelphia Sub-Chapter, Rashaad is a graduate of Leeds Beckett University with a master\u2019s degree in responsible tourism management. For more on his life abroad and enthusiasm for taiko drumming, visit his blog at <\/em><\/strong>www.gettingpounded.wordpress.com<\/em><\/strong><\/a>.<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

\u201cSometimes, you have to travel a very great distance to find a home within yourself.\u201d<\/p>\n

That saying could certainly describe the journey of Leza Lowitz<\/a>, a Californian who has worked extensively in Japan. She chronicles her path through several eventful periods\u2014such as adolescence during the tumultuous early 1970s, her romance with a Japanese man named Shogo (whom she eventually weds), and her attempts to adopt in Japan in Here Comes the Sun: A Journey to Adoption in 8 Chakras<\/a><\/em>, an autobiographical story that captures the ups and downs of Lowitz\u2019s efforts to carve a niche in Japanese society.<\/p>\n

As indicated by the subtitle of the book, Lowitz utilizes the influence of another culture to best integrate herself into Japanese society. But first, you might be asking\u2026 what\u2019s a chakra? Derived from the Sanskrit root car<\/em> (\u201cto move\u201d), a chakra represents a major wheel of energy in the human body, and each chakra contains a particular function. Chakras regulate, distribute and balance the energy and nerve functions of their locations.<\/p>\n

Lowitz calls the chapters in Here Comes the Sun <\/em>\u201cchakras\u201d and each one contains a certain theme. For example, the first chapter in the book is titled Muladhara<\/em>, derived from the Sanskrit word for \u201croot\u201d or \u201csupport.\u201d Some chapters in Here Comes the Sun<\/em> deal directly with the yoga practices that balance a chakra\u2014Lowitz tells us when the aforementioned primary chakra is balanced, you\u2019ll feel stable and secure while being in a better position to succeed.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

Ah, yoga. Lowitz starts practicing yoga while living in Northern California. She falls in love with it and credits yoga sessions with bringing her strength, joy, and peace. Yoga also provides her with the motivation to treat herself better and trust Shogo more.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s only natural that when Leza decides to return to Japan with Shogo\u2014and faced with the question of how to make a living in Tokyo\u2014Lowitz decides to open a yoga studio. After surviving the expected struggles of trying to establish a yoga community, she gets an enormous boost when a representative from Nihon Television contacts her, asking if she would like to teach restorative yoga to prominent Japanese comedian Takashi Okamura. Lowitz agrees to do so, and the ensuing television coverage catapults her into fame and popularizes the yoga studio, which she names Sun and Moon Yoga.<\/p>\n

However, Lowitz\u2019s calling in life is not to be a yogini\u2014it is to be a mother. She exhausts every effort possible to enhance her ability to conceive a child, including traveling to India to try Ayurveda<\/a>, which she hopes will increase her fertility. When she realizes that the likelihood of having a child naturally is very low, she and Shogo decide to go the adoption route, which is exhausting and challenging. Eventually, the couple is approved as adoptive parents of a boy named Shinji.<\/p>\n

Lowitz excels when she details the arduous adoption process and the hurdles she and Shogo face. Here Comes the Sun<\/em> paints a picture of Japan being a closed society, especially for those trying to adopt. Adoptions are rare in the country as there is a long-standing stigma about the practice (most adoptions in Japan are kept secret) due to the emphasis Japanese put on bloodlines and koseki <\/em>(family register), which lists every birth, marriage, and divorce. While reading detailed descriptions of a never-ending, complicated process, you get the sense that Shogo and Leza will become so fed up they\u2019ll abandon their quest to become adoptive parents.<\/p>\n

But they don\u2019t, and even after Shogo and Leza succeed in adopting Shinji, Lowitz illuminates some of the struggles a bicultural family in Japan might face. One of which relates to identity: Shinji\u2019s classmates bombard him with questions such as \u201cwhere are from you?\u201d and \u201cwhat are you?\u201d In addition, parents in such families often have to ensure that the children feel connected to both sides of their families. Indeed, Leza wants to give Shinji a Western middle name so he can feel a connection to that side of his family, but adding a middle name (a concept that doesn\u2019t exist in Japan) requires a lot more than slapping a name on a certificate. Since Japanese koseki<\/em> have no space for middle names, Leza and Shogo need a judge\u2019s approval for Shinji to be officially granted his middle name.<\/p>\n

Although Lowitz effectively captures how she\u2019s fitting into Japanese society as a parent as Here Comes the Sun<\/em> concludes, she devotes less space to her yoga studio. Although Sun and Moon Yoga experiences a boom in popularity due to Okamura\u2019s involvement, other than a section in the sixth chakra devoted to a yoga session dedicated to those who are suffering, it\u2019s unclear how life at the yoga studio is going. Also, information about whether yoga is growing in popularity in Japan would have enhanced the story. Lowitz mentions that while planning the yoga studio, a Google search revealed there were only two yoga studios in Tokyo. It is possible that the attention she received might have encouraged more people to try yoga. Furthermore, I wonder how long Lowitz\u2019s fifteen minutes of fame last and if she received any long lasting benefits from being profiled on TV\u2014she does mention that people recognize her on the street and ask her, \u201cAren\u2019t you that yoga lady?\u201d<\/p>\n

In the end, Here Comes the Sun<\/em> conveys how with persistence, perseverance and patience, seemingly impossible hurdles in Japan can be overcome.<\/p>\n

For more\u00a0<\/strong><\/em>JQ<\/strong>\u00a0magazine book reviews,\u00a0<\/strong><\/em>click here<\/em><\/strong><\/a>.<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By\u00a0Rashaad Jorden\u00a0(Yamagata-ken, 2008-10) for\u00a0JQ magazine. A former head of the JETAA Philadelphia Sub-Chapter, Rashaad is a graduate of Leeds Beckett University with a master\u2019s degree in responsible tourism management. For more on his life abroad and enthusiasm for taiko drumming, visit his blog at www.gettingpounded.wordpress.com. \u201cSometimes, you have to travel a very great distance to […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[40,291,58],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-38562","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-books","category-jq-magazine","category-reviews"],"aioseo_notices":[],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pkZ7m-a1Y","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/jetwit.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/38562","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/jetwit.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/jetwit.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jetwit.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jetwit.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=38562"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/jetwit.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/38562\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":38568,"href":"https:\/\/jetwit.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/38562\/revisions\/38568"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/jetwit.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=38562"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jetwit.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=38562"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jetwit.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=38562"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}