the LADDER PEOPLE!

Miho Yoshioka is a Japanese actress

Miho Yoshioka is a Japanese actress born 1980. That year is close enough to 1945 for her to feel the affect of the contradictions of being Japanese and submissive to American influence after the atomic bomb Americans dropped on their heads and changed the nation's perceptions and identity. What does it mean to be Japanese today? I don't know. I read about it and watch with awe the way Japanese respond to American dance, and the music of Black Americans, whom they reportedly look down upon culturally.

I learned this opinion, or perception the Japanese hold of Black Americans during a short friendship with a Japanese man living and working in Chevy Chase, Maryland at the turn of this century. He was a very professional man, a teacher. He was in the United States, he told me, to teach Japanese at a small, but prestigious school housed in the building I was serving as a corporate concierge. For a time reference his time in the U.S. started early in 2001.

Of course I saw and greeted everyone who entered the building. He was typical of Japanese men living and working in the Washington DC area. He drove a modest car, walked with studied purpose. His suits were immaculate and neat. Hair cut was neat and never but so long, or short enough to draw unnecessary attention to himself. He penetrated deep into every eye he looked into, and that trait led to an intimate and honest conversation about Japanese thought in the context of business.

I was either very formal, or very relaxed and funny when I greeted people as a concierge. My wife dressed me each day and made sure I was immaculate from my long hair to polished shoes. You see, in sales one must match the people he/she needs to impress. That is how I met and befriended a Japanese man new to this country back in 2001 and new to the job he held teaching Japanese to English speakers. He was a serious traveler, who traveled to see and to know where he was and in depth who he was living amongst. In that respect we were kindred spirits.

One day he told me how he and other Japanese were prepared for travel to the United States. There was a process and in that process the intangibles were fascinating to me. They were given practical knowledge, but their insights into the souls of Black Americans left me aghast! He said he and all others are told that Black Americans are known as and called the Ladder People because one can place a ladder upon their shoulders and climb and build a fortune! ~ Gregory E. Woods, Keeper of Stories 9.21.14

Miho Yoshioka 

Miho Yoshioka climbing a building!!!!

The Beauty of Black & White photography!