When he was small, the world was a little frightening
As evening came on, the sky slowly turned red.
Playing in front of the house, FIGO would stop still whenever his mother slipped out of sight.
The same familiar place.
And yet the one he wanted beside him was nowhere to be seen.
The world outside was wide, and still a little frightening.
“My father was strict. But he taught me: ‘Choose your own life.’”
Those words stayed with the boy, deep in his heart.
To choose his own life, for himself.
Even years later, when he left the place where he was born and raised,
his father’s words were still with him.
The day he stepped out, toward Japan
Beyond the airplane window, the clouds stretched on and on.
The country where his family lived grew farther away.
A life he did not yet know drew closer, little by little.
“Scared or not, I’ll try.”
With those words in his heart, FIGO took off from Indonesia.
When he first came to Japan, he couldn’t make himself understood.
The work, even the rhythm of each day, sometimes left him at a loss.
“Japanese people treat time as something very important. It surprised me at first.”
He was shown, he faltered, he learned again.
An unfamiliar language.
Unfamiliar work.
Some things only make sense once someone points them out.
Day after day like this,
little by little, he became one of the people who work here.
The warmth beneath the strictness
The leader’s loud voice, ringing across the site.
At first, it frightened him.
But when the work was done, that same man would smile and call out to him.
“Otsukare.” — good work today.
A face unlike the one he wore at work.
A smile that came with a few short words.
At the end of a day in an unfamiliar country,
there was that small exchange.
“It was scary at first, but now they kindly show me, ‘Try it this way.’ In Japanese workplaces, there is warmth inside the strictness.”
Working side by side, being taught, trading words.
As the days went on, he began, little by little, to see the feeling behind that loud voice.
“They correct me because they expect a lot from me. Behind it is a feeling — ‘We want you to get there.’”
We want you to get there.
Taking that wish to heart,
FIGO, in turn, works to get there.
Even across the sea,
there were people who hoped to see him grow.
For the family to come
“I want to tell myself, ‘You did well, coming to Japan.’”
Words he has learned.
Work that has grown familiar.
And beyond the voice that once frightened him, a smile he found.
When he looks back along the road he chose,
there he is — the one who has walked all this way.
The dream is still unfinished.
But now there is a life he can picture, somewhere up ahead.
“Someday, I want to build a house on my own. A house where the family I’ll have one day can feel safe.”
A house not yet built.
A life with a family, not yet begun.
What he learns today
will one day become the strength that sustains that life.
The little boy who stopped still whenever his mother slipped out of sight.
Now, that same boy
talks of building, with his own strength,
a place where his family can feel safe.
Beyond the fear, a future was waiting.
And there stands a home, shared with the people he loves.
Afterword
Listening to FIGO, we found two scenes overlapping in our minds: the front of the house where he played as a small boy, and the house he will someday build.
A child who once drew his sense of safety from the people beside him
is now trying to build a place where others can feel safe.
Between the two lay the decision to cross the sea, and days that took getting used to.
And there were the words and smiles of the people he met in Japan.
A person’s future, we believe, grows this way too — through the small connections of everyday life.
A word exchanged in passing
can make someone’s tomorrow feel a little steadier.
We, too, hope to be the kind of presence that can offer such words.
We look forward to the day
FIGO tells us about his house.
