Lee An­na Ma­haraj

Re­porter

leean­na.ma­haraj@guardian.co.tt

When far away from home, there is of­ten a part of us that longs for even the small­est piece of fa­mil­iar­i­ty. That was how 28-year-old Aman­da Ar­joon felt when she first moved near­ly 9,000 miles away from Trinidad and To­ba­go.

“When I first came here, I felt ex­treme­ly home­sick, be­cause you could count how many Trinida­di­ans live in Japan, and it’s just around 200 Trinida­di­ans,” Ar­joon said.

Orig­i­nal­ly born and raised in Bar­rack­pore, Ar­joon cur­rent­ly re­sides in Kobe as part of the Japan Ex­change and Teach­ing (JET) Pro­gramme. She es­ti­mat­ed that there are around 15–20 Trinida­di­ans in the city, which has a pop­u­la­tion of ap­prox­i­mate­ly 1.5 mil­lion peo­ple.

She added that the lack of a Trin­bag­on­ian pres­ence can some­times be felt in more tan­gi­ble ways.

“When in the US or Cana­da, you could still go to West In­di­an gro­ceries and feel a sense of home. But over here, there is no such thing at all. When you go to the gro­cery, you can’t see any of our lo­cal prod­ucts at all,” Ar­joon shared.

Bring­ing a lit­tle piece of home to Japan

This long­ing for a piece of home in­spired Ar­joon to es­tab­lish her project, Iki­gai Pub­lish­ing. She ex­plained that iki­gai is a Japan­ese con­cept cen­tred on find­ing pur­pose and ful­fil­ment in some­thing you love.

“Iki­gai Pub­lish­ing is a project of try­ing to unite our di­as­po­ra, and to prop­er­ly en­joy Trinida­di­an cul­ture. Es­pe­cial­ly in a place like Japan where there are so few of us, it can be so easy to lose your­self, and get swept away in the reg­u­lar day-to-day liv­ing, and this is a whole new dif­fer­ent cul­ture and en­vi­ron­ment. So, I want­ed to cre­ate some­thing that can bring peo­ple back to where they came from, which is es­sen­tial­ly what I need­ed as well,” Ar­joon said.

Her first pub­li­ca­tion, A Road Trip in T&T Col­or­ing Book, was re­leased in Ju­ly 2026 and fea­tures pop­u­lar lo­ca­tions and cul­tur­al el­e­ments as­so­ci­at­ed with T&T. These in­clude a dou­bles ven­dor stand, a snow cone cart at the Queen’s Park Sa­van­nah, Pi­geon Point Beach, Queen’s Roy­al Col­lege, an il­lus­tra­tion of a per­son wear­ing a sari, and more.

“I tried to ex­plore dif­fer­ent ideas, and thought about how I could bring about this con­cept, not just for one age brack­et, but for every­one, and some­thing re­lax­ing as well. And then I thought maybe it could be a colour­ing book with dif­fer­ent scener­ies, places and el­e­ments of our cul­ture, all in one. So that no mat­ter wher­ev­er you are in the world, when you open that book, you’re look­ing at these il­lus­tra­tions, and im­me­di­ate­ly you’ll be brought back to Trinidad and To­ba­go,” she ex­plained.

So far, Ar­joon said the re­sponse to her book has been over­whelm­ing­ly pos­i­tive, with Trin­bag­o­ni­ans from the UK, Cana­da and even Italy reach­ing out to get a copy.

Shar­ing Trinidad and To­ba­go with the Japan­ese

Be­yond the di­as­po­ra, Ar­joon has al­so in­tro­duced the book to peo­ple in Japan who are un­fa­mil­iar with T&T’s cul­ture.

“Re­cent­ly, I had the re­al­ly amaz­ing op­por­tu­ni­ty to share the colour­ing book with a group of women in my com­mu­ni­ty in Kobe. We met with lo­cal peo­ple from the com­mu­ni­ty to have an Eng­lish ex­change ses­sion, where they teach us Japan­ese and we teach them Eng­lish. Dur­ing that ses­sion, I in­tro­duced my book and my coun­try and where I’m from. And they re­al­ly want­ed to know more about Trinidad,” she said.

At the school where she teach­es, Ar­joon said she was pleased to in­tro­duce T&T’s cul­ture to Japan­ese stu­dents and staff.

“The kids I work with are re­al­ly in­ter­est­ed in know­ing about the world, es­pe­cial­ly our coun­try and our cul­ture. For ex­am­ple, when I told them we eat bake and shark, they had nev­er heard that be­fore in their en­tire life. They thought that was crazy, and asked ‘why are you eat­ing a shark?’,” Ar­joon shared.

Bake and shark was not the on­ly lo­cal del­i­ca­cy that in­trigued them.

“I was chat­ting with some cowork­ers, and they said that they like spicy food. So, I brought scor­pi­on pep­per for them, and when they tast­ed it, just a lit­tle dot, a lit­tle taste in their mouth, im­me­di­ate­ly they said, no, they can’t,” Ar­joon re­called.

Plans to bring T&T’s his­to­ry to life

The Uni­ver­si­ty of the West In­dies grad­u­ate, who stud­ied His­to­ry and An­thro­pol­o­gy, told Guardian Me­dia that she plans to in­cor­po­rate T&T’s his­to­ry in­to her next pub­li­ca­tion.

“I want to teach kids about dif­fer­ent parts of T&T’s his­to­ry. And in the fu­ture, I want to have more events just like the ex­change in my com­mu­ni­ty, where a lot of oth­er peo­ple could be ex­posed to Trinidad, even if it’s just in such a sim­ple way as a colour­ing book, to them. And not on­ly to Japan­ese peo­ple, be­cause a lot of for­eign­ers from dif­fer­ent coun­tries al­so live in Japan,” she said.

No place like home

While Ar­joon said liv­ing and work­ing in Japan is ex­cit­ing, there are times when she miss­es the coun­try­side where she grew up and the fam­i­ly bond­ing mo­ments she shared not on­ly with her par­ents, twin sis­ter and grand­par­ents, but al­so with her Bar­rack­pore com­mu­ni­ty, which gath­ers at her grand­par­ents’ home every Sun­day for lunch.

“While I’m here and liv­ing life over here, I’ve come to re­alise that there tru­ly is no place like home, be­cause that close-knit­ted­ness, that uni­ty that we have in Trinidad, you can’t ex­act­ly ex­pe­ri­ence that over here, you know? There are cer­tain lit­tle tid­bits of dai­ly life in Trinidad that you can nev­er find any­where else,” she said.

Un­til she can re­turn to the fa­mil­iar sights and sounds of Bar­rack­pore, Ar­joon con­tin­ues to car­ry a lit­tle piece of T&T with her, shar­ing its cul­ture and mem­o­ries with those she meets in Japan.