Maiko Horita & Wil Loeng

Maiko Horita and her family left Japan for Australia when she was 14. At that time she had very little English and little idea of what her future held in Sydney. Her English improved remarkably while boarding at a local girls’ school where she thrived in the community of schoolmates, local and from other parts of Asia. To pursue her dream of becoming an artist, she went on to study at the College of Fine Arts at the University of New South Wales where she was to meet Wil Loeng, an aspiring artist himself. He was born in New South Wales to his first generation migrant parents, growing up bilingually in English and Chinese. Although he grew up in Sydney’s Asian community, he had had little exposure to Japanese people or culture until he met Maiko, the ‘most beautiful thing’ he’d ever seen, in his third year at university. In this episode of Japanese-on-the-Move, the story starts from the time they first met. Maiko then shares her increasing desire to return to Japan after 12 years of living in Australia as she dearly misses her family who have since returned to Tokyo. Being on her own for the first time in her life, she feels torn between two places she calls home. She wishes the two countries were “not nine hours apart by airplane but only a train away.” Wil’s attempts to learn Japanese are part of their preparation for their future life together in Japan, and until then, he’s determined to make her feel at home by recreating ‘Japan’ in their Sydney home.