While her heart may belong in Tokyo, Mayu Laes has made a beautiful, thoughtful and deeply personal home in Stevens Point, Wisconsin.
Inside a historic brick house, which she shares with her husband Pete, a logistics broker at a transportation company, Mayu homeschools nine-year-old Quiana (nicknamed Kiki), five-year-old Quentin and two-year-old Quassia (called Kuku) part-time, mainly for Japanese reading and writing.
She offers a peek into their home and life.
What brought your family to Stevens Point?
I was born and grew up in Tokyo, Japan. My husband’s from Green Bay, Wisconsin. We met in Japan and moved to L.A., where we had lived for ten years and had our first daughter, Kiki. Then we moved back to Japan when Kiki was a baby and lived there for four years. Quentin was born there and we decided to move to Green Bay when he was a baby so we thought we could raise our family in a laid-back countryside with lots of nature as opposed to a big city like Tokyo. As we were having a hard time finding an ideal school for Kiki, we found this charter school in Amherst, Wisconsin, where children spend a lot of time playing outside in a beautiful woods learning nature, arts and other creative skills. That is what attracted us to move to Stevens Point area.
What do you like about living in Stevens Point? What are your favorite things to do there?
Thanks to the University of Wisconsin-Stevens Point, which is well-known for natural resource study, we have found a wonderful community of progressive people and business owners whose priorities are emphasized in protecting our environment and improving our community. We live right near by the campus and there are bike trails called Green Circle and big parks along with cafes, a bakery, a co-op, a library and a farmers market, where we can bike to during good seasons. We like to go hiking, biking and picnicking to those nearby parks and trails if the weather is nice.
How often do you visit Japan? What’s it like to go back and forth between there and Wisconsin? How do the two places relate?
Having three children, it has become more difficult for all five of us together to go back to Japan physically and financially. Our oldest daughter Kiki traveled to Japan by herself last year for the first time and she loved it. I and our youngest daughter Kuku went back there just a few weeks ago.
I get homesick every time after I come back from Japan, and I feel like it has become even harder as I get older. That’s probably because now I am a mother of three and I realize how much I adore quality time with my own family and my old friends in my hometown. So to me, it is definitely an adjustment between those completely two different places, the U.S. and Japan, speaking second language and speaking my mother tongue, country life and city living, the list goes on. But I try my best to enjoy positive things in each place and not to crave for what they can’t offer.
How long have you lived in your house? How do you like your home to feel?
We bought this eighty-year-old brick house last summer and this is our first house bought together after fifteen years of marriage. We were moving a lot and the idea of buying a house somehow always scared me because I felt that meant we had to settle. But after having three children, I figured it’s a good time and we have found a beautiful place to settle for now.
So our house is still very much in the process of making it our own. We still need to paint two thirds of the house and our kitchen and bathroom need to be updated. As for decoration, we have a mixed style of modern, natural and vintage. We both love mid-century modern style for its timeless and playful manner. Some vintage pieces are from family and also from thrift stores. Both I and Pete are trying not to buy pieces for the house just to fill the empty space and corners because we’d like each item to have a story behind it and that requires both time and patience.
Our home is a sanctuary to feel welcoming, and loving. Keeping our house clean and organized and surrounding us with what we like helps us feel calm and relaxed. We have lots of books on shelves and pictures on walls that remind us of our roots and good memories. We have plants in every room and string lights to make us feel lively and fun. Handmade items by me and my kids are found everywhere in the house. Those little moments of connection with personal items spark our life in our living space. Also, I am very active in the kitchen and none of us minds the delicious smelling spreading the entire house.
What is your favorite room in your house and why?
I love our dining table in our dining room. It’s where we share meals daily, it’s where we listen and talk about everything. It’s where the kids get most creative with their art supplies and it’s where we read and write together. There’s always somebody on action on this dining table and, wonderfully, our table is really hard to tell even if there’re marker or crayon spots because it’s made of reclaimed wood with some parts painted and other parts scratched. To me, the table shows the memories and history of our family.
What are your favorite things to do with your kids or as a family?
Eat and chat! We all love eating and thankfully our kids are (usually) well-mannered little people in public, so we enjoy exploring different cafés for lunch or just for coffee and sweets. And that’s something we can do all year round. Other things we enjoy are taken place mostly at home like reading together or family movie night on the weekend.
What are the most important things you try to teach your kids?
I think most importantly, we all need to nurture our kind soul to be grateful for our life, our relationships and what we have, and to be honest and humble with who we are and where we come from. It is important for children to feel loved and cared for and to know they are accepted for who they are and not for who the parents want them to be. We spend a lot of time as family at our dinner table. As we share a warm meal, we talk about our day and listen to each other. Sharing a meal and chatting as family keeps us together as a tight unit and hopefully encourages our children to express their voices.
Secondly, being international family, I constantly remind them half of their identity come from me and that is Japanese. We FaceTime with my family in Japan every week and I cook Japanese food all the time (my two-year-old has already mastered the art of chopsticks). I speak only Japanese to my children so that they are expected to speak to me in Japanese as well (which is very hard for them). I want them to feel proud of their mixed heritage and try to teach the beauty of cultural differences.
Photos by Mayu Laes.