( tell me about tatsuya's family life [smooches] please and thank you! )
[*hugs and smooches lots* ( ˘ ³˘)♥ I’m the one who needs to thank you since I should have written down most of those headcanons on my blog for a while now. Thank you for giving me the perfect excuse… and a kick in my butt! I took the question in the largest possible sense and made a huge headcanon for both Tatsuya’s family and childhood.
雄彦氷室 [Takehiko Himuro], his father, worked as a sales manager at Toyota Tokyo before a position as chief commercial officer at Toyota Hollywood Los Angeles vacated, one he applied to for it was a raise of both position and salary that he wouldn’t have been able to get while staying in Japan. Thanks to his excellent work, his bilingual skills and the fact that he had studied in New York for two years, he had been able to get the position, having to relocate along with his wife and son as a result. Takehiko is a very serious man who’s extremely career focussed, his skills as a salesman are top notch thanks to his observant eyes and knowledge of people’s wants, he’s able to push just the right buttons in others to make them buy his products, like he is able to recommend what will satisfy their needs in the best way possible as well. Tatsuya’s observations skills and ability to manipulate people mostly stem from his father, from watching him working on the very rare occasions he has been able to but mostly when they would spend vacations or just time together since it’s not a rare occurrence for his father to try to negotiate with salesmen, or any other person when he is unable to get what he wants.
明美 氷室 [Akemi Himuro], his mother, worked as an assistant accountant for the Japan Post Bank before moving to Los Angeles with her husband and son. There, she took an intensive English course considering her English was good enough to survive but not good enough to work yet, allowing her, a few months later to apply for a job herself since she didn’t want to stay at home even though Takehiko’s salary would have been more than enough to provide for both Akemi and Tatsuya. Akemi is also very career focussed and wanted a promotion in her own position just as her husband had gotten upon moving to America, what she eventually got since she was recruited as an accounting specialist for the closest Big 5 Sporting Goods shop from where the Himuro family lives, a dream for her as well considering how fond of sports she has always been. Since then, she’s become the manager as a replacement to the previous one. Akemi has practised a lot of sports in her childhood from karate to archery, to rafting, to cycling but she’s most fond of high risks sports. The bigger the risk, the bigger the sensations, the more she will like the activity, something that Takehiko doesn’t really approve of. Tatsuya took his own love for danger from her even if, being aware of his father’s disapproval of it, he has learnt to be secretive of it, more so than Akemi is, his love for sports coming from her as well even though his mother has never been too fond of team playing or ball sports.
His parents being busy with their respective careers, Tatsuya doesn’t see them very often, one day per week for his father seeing as he works 6 days a week, two days a week for his mother. He is able to spend some time with his father in the morning, during breakfast, considering Takehiko is the one taking him to school, his work hours arranged in a way that allows him to start later and finish later. His mother has a similar arrangement even though she is unable to finish work early enough to pick Tatsuya up at school, leaving him to hang out outside for a couple of hours before going home. In Japan, it was a nanny his parents had hired who took care of him while his parents were at work but in America, they deemed him old enough (he was 8 years-old when the Himuro family moved to Los Angeles) to handle himself on his own so Tatsuya ended up spending more time outside rather than at home where he had little to nothing to do.
It was extremely hard for him at the beginning because even if he was used to not seeing his parents much, and not spending as much time as he would have wanted to with them, America was a whole different country from Japan, and he had next to no knowledge of English, no friends there either. While wandering around the neighbourhood on his first days in Los Angeles, it didn’t take him long to notice that the most popular sport the boys of his age practised outside was street-basketball, what made him want to start if only to not stay alone and make friends. Communicating was fairly hard at first but thanks to his observations of the other children’s plays, he was able to get a good grip on the way basketball was played in a fairly short amount of time, the fact that he was ambidextrous and thus could handle the ball with both hands a feat that gave him an edge on the other children quickly. Admiration for his skills followed and it only got better with time. With him understanding and being able to speak English more and more by the day thanks to school and his own studies of the language at home (he ended up stealing his mother’s courses when he felt he was reaching a wall in his progress, he took the notes when she wasn’t here and put them back where they were before she could notice, Tatsuya still doesn’t know to this day if she knew of this or not), he was able to communicate with other children to make friends, his mastery of basketball growing by the day and with a rapidity that wasn’t often seen for a child of his age giving him the respect of many of his peers. He soon hit a wall though seeing as his ability to handle a basketball with his two hands made his ball handling mediocre to his growing expectations of his skills, what he was determined to overcome with more and more training on his own, more time spent outside to play basketball, mostly in the goal of getting more and more attention and friends, not so much for a love of the sport.
His love for basketball was something he discovered thanks to Taiga and then Alex. No matter how much he trained, and as much admiration the other children of his age had for him, a small part of himself still felt like a stranger in America since he had managed to make no close friends, what he would have wished for seeing as he had one in Japan prior to moving to America, a boy named Akihiko he missed too much even if they still wrote each other a few letters on occasions. When he met Taiga, at first, he hadn’t believed they might have gotten along so well, the jabs Taiga gave him at times annoying him and the only reason he kept him around mostly was because he could relate to his, because he was a Japanese boy who had been thrown in the exact same situation as he, himself, had been one year back. Teaching him was only to fuel his ego at first, to show that he was better, that he could be trusted to teach someone else despite his young age. It didn’t last long though, before he knew it, he was enjoying basketball more than he had ever expected enjoying anything in his life and he had grown to consider Taiga as a more than a close friend, as a family he never had. With his parents being as absent as they were, the mere fact that he had a little brother to care for, that he had a friend who would play a sport he loved so alongside him was more than he had ever wished for.
Alex soon joined the family even though it was something he had never expected would happen either. The only reason Tatsuya had wanted to approach her was because he did think that there was so much they could both learn on their own and seeing that they both were very competitive people who desired to become the best of the best, who could have been better than a (W)NBA player to teach them? And yet, she soon became a big sister to them, and somewhat of a second mother to Tatsuya, a second mother who was a lot more present for him than his real mother was and one that was also tied to his little brother. From this moment on, he had two families, the one he had found on his own, and the one that was blood related to him. The former is the one he has the strongest attachment to, and has had for years, seeing as he has spent the most important years of his growth as an individual with them, that they’ve shared many moments of his life, the best and the worst, that, over the years, he has made countless of memories with them, memories that he’ll forever cherish. Alex might not have always been the best big sister/mother ever to Tatsuya (on top of all her terrible habits she’s the one who has introduced him to the L.A. mafia because she used to go bet against some of their members and brought Tatsuya along with her, or was it Tatsuya who actually convinced her to come along with her, I can’t decide because both are equally as probable), Taiga might have been the reckless little brother who preferred to turn his brain off in the worst possible moments, deep down inside, he believes that they are the best family he could have ever had, even though he wouldn’t voice it, least show it.
As for his blood family, Takehiko and Akemi aren’t too preoccupied about their son considering he has very good school results and is actively participating in his school’s basketball club as a regular, club that has won quite a few tournaments, which made them proud of their son. They know about Taiga and Alex, but don’t pay too much attention to them even though they used to keep frequent contact with the Kagami family when they were younger, aware that their sons tended to lie to them and that some of their activities weren’t very commendable for children of their age. The contact died down at one point seeing that the two brothers had stopped their antics upon growing up (not really, they just learnt to hide them better), and now, the most Tatsuya sees his family is during meals, his parents fairly often taking him to fancy restaurants, and vacations that they spend travelling, sometimes to Japan to see the rest of their family living in Tokyo, sometimes to other places in California that doesn’t take too much driving (to USA’s standards that is), sometimes to completely different parts of the Unites States, and once to Europe. (A small trip that allowed him to quickly see UK, Netherlands, Germany and France. He’d love to go back there someday.)
Tatsuya understands that his parents are busy and don’t blame them for their lack of presence but, even though he has taken a few personality traits from observing them and taking them as role models (his slyness, his charm, his love for sports and extreme situations, his desire for success through hard work…), he’s not as attached to them as he should be considering they value their own careers above him and don’t share any of his passions. This made his return to Japan a lot easier than it could have been had he been a lot more attached to them. He doesn’t really miss them, and the few conversations they have on skype is more than enough for him to keep up with them considering their lack of presence is something he has been used to ever since he was a child. As for Taiga and Alex, they are his real family, one he really wouldn’t want to let go off regardless of his anger toward Taiga, the result of a frustration that has built up for years. Even though, he once wanted to get rid of Taiga, in reality, he’s too attached to him to cut all ties with him and would never forget or consider Taiga as less than a brother to him no matter what he would like to openly admit.]
