As the road began to meander gently, a radiant, rippling sea appeared in the distance.

I slowly turn the steering wheel right and left. The horizon sparkles in synchrony with that rhythm. At some bend in the road, Rita in the passenger seat rolled down the window, letting in the fresh sea breeze.

“Oh, how nice. This reminds me of my friend’s summer house I often visited as a child.”

Rita Randstad was born and raised in Boston, and remained there all the way until she completed her PhD in Art History at Harvard University, so she is a true Bostonian. Her friend’s summer house is in Cape Cod, a one-and-a-half-hour drive in her father’s car, and the thrilling anticipation of arriving there suddenly came flooding back, she tells me joyfully.

The sea breeze was so magical, it even made a curator working for the world-renowned Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York feel like a child again. Excitement also billowed inside me like towering summer clouds.

Having rented a car at Toba station, we drove along the coastal road for about thirty minutes before arriving at our destination: Ijikacho.
“Are we already here?” Rita said, with a hint of disappointment. It seems like she wanted to ride the sea breeze a little longer.

A cluster of white, sun-bleached tin shacks huddled together by the shore. From within one of them, a petite woman wearing a wetsuit sprang out. “Over here!” she called, waving her arms back and forth.

Rita noticed and exclaimed, “Aomi!” — the name of our beloved old friend.
Aomi came running down the beach, hopping over the breakwater with ease, and made a beeline for us where we had parked by the side of the road.

“Rita! Roka! Wow, you’re really here!”

We jumped and embraced each other just like back in our graduate school days. Never mind that we are 47 — an age where one is expected to be mature. The sea breeze made us feel that way, as we reunited for the first time in 15 years.

Rita, Aomi, and I are fellow alumni of Harvard Graduate School and lifelong friends who shared our precious student days together.

Rita specialized in medieval art and is a talented scholar who once even studied at Oxford University. She pursued a career in European medieval art history because she wanted to delve deeper into the world of “The Lord of the Rings,” which she read as a child. Since becoming curator of the Department of Medieval Art at the Met, she has organized numerous major exhibitions and developed into a leading authority in her field. Yet when she is with me, she sheds the heavy armor of the Middle Ages and engages in lively, witty conversation just as she did back in our student days.

I majored in Journalism at graduate school. After graduating and joining a publishing company in New York, I became an in-house writer for an art magazine. Upon turning 40, I set out on my own and became a freelance art journalist, a profession I continue to this day. While I did consider returning to my parents’ home in Tokyo, I’m fully enjoying life with my American partner, just the two of us, and after all this time living in the US, I think I might stay for good.