Tears, relief and the ‘smell of Ukraine’: A daughter’s reunion with her mother in Japan

Narita, Chiba Pref. – After two flights, a pair of long bus rides and a train journey that lasted a combined seven days, Maria Dovbash, 71, arrived safely in Japan on Friday, greeted by the embrace of her daughter in a reunion 8,000 km from home that was filled with joy but also relief.

At Narita Airport’s arrival gate, Nataliia Lysenko, a Tokyo resident, held her mother tightly as tears streamed down her cheeks.

Dovbash was now safe from the fighting in Ukraine.

“I still can’t realize it’s real,” Lysenko, 42, said after her long-awaited embrace with her mother. “I can have my mom and can talk to her here, not by phone.

“(The reunion) reminded me of the days when I used to live in Ukraine when I was younger,” she added. “She smelled of Ukraine.”

“I’m happy to see my daughter and my grandchildren,” Dovbash said in Ukrainian as her granddaughter translated into Japanese. “I don’t have anything to fear now that I’m with my family.

“Arigatо̄ gozaimasu (Thank you),” she said in Japanese.

Dovbash is one of dozens of Ukrainians who have fled their home country for Japan. Japan had accepted 73 Ukrainians as of Wednesday. Initially, those who have family or friends here were prioritized, but the government further loosened its rules Friday, accepting even those without guarantors.

Lysenko, who lives with her husband and two children in Tokyo, had been trying to persuade her mother, who lived in the southern Ukrainian city of Zaporizhzhia, to come to Japan for weeks following the start of Russia’s invasion last month. But her mother, worried about leaving her two sons behind, wanted to stay. The Ukrainian government is not allowing male citizens between the ages of 18 and 60 to leave the country as it tries to hold off the Russian military.

But after Russian troops fired heavy weapons at facilities on the premises of the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant — Europe’s largest — she decided it was time to leave.

“I was so worried, especially after the news about the nuclear plant,” Lysenko said. “There are no safe places in Ukraine.”

Lysenko scrambled to coordinate her mother’s safe passage to Tokyo. She found two other women in Zaporizhzhia via social media who were able to accompany her mother, and another supporter in Warsaw who helped secure her visa.

“She can’t speak English,” Lysenko said. “She would have panicked if she had to go to a different country, filling out the necessary paperwork to apply for a visa on her own.”

On March 12, the three met up at a train station in Zaporizhzhia, heading by rail to the western Ukrainian city of Lviv and then to the Polish border by bus. Both were packed with Ukrainians fleeing Russia’s bombardment.

Upon reaching the border, the trio headed to Warsaw, where they applied for a visa at the Japanese Embassy. Dovbash flew on her own to Tokyo via Zurich, adding to Lysenko’s worries ahead of their reunion.

“I was able to come here with the support of many people,” Dovbash said.

Lysenko was not the only one who had been desperate to reunite with her family fleeing Ukraine.

Nika Koriyama, 25, a Ukrainian living in southern Kagoshima Prefecture, helped her mother, sister and aunt flee the eastern Ukrainian city of Dnipro by car to the Polish border — a roughly 800 km trek — earlier this month.

For the three days it took to reach the border, Koriyama, who lives with her Japanese husband and their 1-year-old son, tracked them day and night with an app that showed their location and speed, and another that detailed air raid alerts.

“It was as if I was with them on the ground,” said Koriyama, who along with her husband, helped her three relatives prepare the paperwork needed to enter Japan.

“Because of a curfew, they couldn’t drive at night, so they would stop during air raid alerts and at night,” she said. “I was worried for those three days.”

Koriyama’s family has arrived safely in Warsaw, received their Japanese visas and are attempting to book a flight to Japan.

Still, both Koriyama and Lysenko, however, are concerned about what happens next for their loved ones in Japan.

In the short term, neither will be covered by national health insurance, though the government has begun accepting applications from evacuees to receive new one-year visas that would allow them to work and receive government benefits, including health care.

Koriyama’s 48-year-old mother — Viktoria, an architect and art teacher — hopes to find work in Japan and become self-reliant. But the language barrier could pose a challenge.

Lysenko, on the other hand, is worried whether her mother — who speaks neither English nor Japanese — will be comfortable living in Japan, where she only has her daughter and her family.

“When she visited us for about three months a few years ago, she became homesick and depressed, and wanted to go back home,” she said. “She may feel lonely during the day when I’m working.”

In hopes of fending off a repeat of this scenario and bringing together others in similar situations, Lysenko is planning to organize a group of Ukrainians who fled to Japan as war ravaged their homeland. She’s also looking into organizing a cultural exchange group bringing Japanese together with Ukrainians.

For now, though, her reunion with her mother is more than enough.

“We’ll have dinner together. She loves sushi so we’ll eat sushi and have family time,” she said. “I’m happy now, very happy.”