A blanket of snow covers the strip mall parking lot, isolating Sayaka Fukuyama’s restaurant, Sushi Kamon, in a desolate, icy wind. Fukuyama, 57, peeks from a curtain corner.

“No customers,” she says mournfully, tucking her arms together against the cold. After wiping down the spotless tables and countertops, prepping lettuce for small side salads, refiling soy sauce containers to their brims, and setting placeware for the umpteenth time, there is little to do but hope for a customer to venture out for her Japanese/Korean cuisine.

Despite positive Yelp reviews, business has dwindled enough for her to reduce the restaurant’s open hours. She shuffles to a table to quietly sip on green tea as she tells her sushi chef, Song Min Hyuk, to go on break until customers arrive. They both sigh heavily. Business has been like this for a while.

“It felt like freedom when I was younger, but now...it’s not freedom. I feel like I don’t know what else I can do here. I wonder if I should have stayed,” Fukuyama said. She first came to Chicago in 1984, at 25. Her siblings, an older sister and younger brother, first immigrated to the United States from South Korea, which she said was left in uncertainty after the Korean War.

“Then, jobs might include [being] a housewife or not working at all for women. You could be a good wife, maybe,” she chuckled. “Most of my experience has been working in restaurants here. I remember asking my husband, ‘what else can I do?’ I still don’t know the answer.”

Fukuyama and her family’s immigration is part of the third wave of Korean immigrant stories. A high proportion of third-wave Korean immigrants were well educated, emigrating to the United States in their prime working age to seek a better life, pursue education, and join family members. Between 1965 to 1990, a lack of job opportunities and political insecurity under Major General Park Chung-hee’s military dictatorship prompted many Koreans to emigrate, according to the Migration Policy Institute.

“I came here for more opportunity,” Fukuyama said. “I was anxious and excited! I didn’t know what to expect. Though, the longer I stayed here, the more I disliked it. The cold was especially new. I hated being trapped in the winter,” she said, frowning at the snow piling outside her windows.

Her first job in Chicago was working at a Japanese restaurant in Streeterville, Hatsu Hana, where she worked part-time as a waitress. Though barely making ends meet, she had no negative feelings about working or feeling alienated in a new culture.

“I had to make do. I was here. I didn’t have a choice to go back. It was not a thought I could have had to think about failing.”

That sense of survival, combined with the independence she lacked in Korea, was inspiring as a new immigrant. She was determined to make a living for herself and her family.

Nowadays, it feels tiring as business wanes and her community dwindles. Faces come and go, and trying to mingle with Japanese or Korean communities can be difficult as a newcomer. Both siblings eventually returned to South Korea, as they felt they had less opportunities and less freedom in the United States. “My sister returned because she failed her driving license test so many times! She couldn’t get around, she couldn’t speak English very well. It was too much for her,” she said. “I tried to make ties in the Korean church. It was hard to get to know people at my age.”

However, she did have her husband, Allan Fukuyama, as support.

When Fukuyama was pregnant with her first child, she and her husband moved to the suburbs in 1989. Her daughter, Marian, would arrive in May.

“I wanted the best opportunities for her,” she smiled. “Perhaps the suburbs would be better, I thought.”

The new family would flock to Arlington Heights and open the first incarnation of Sushi Kamon in 1994. Her husband, originally from Japan, helped as the sushi chef, and with a welcoming Japanese community in Arlington Heights, business was decent. “It was the best our restaurant ever was,” she remembered. “[In 2013] We couldn’t afford it. We had to move locations. Business has dried up since.”

Fukuyama was reticent to share further details about her life, showing an ambivalence in staying in the United States. She shrouded herself in a thick cardigan, while looking around at the empty chairs, perhaps self-conscious about the agoraphobic emptiness of her restaurant. It was apparent the current anxiety she faces as a third-wave immigrant today. She mentioned her husband passed away 17 years ago, which made things extremely difficult for her.

“We talked over everything together. Business, family, retirement, our whole lives. Now, I have to think and do everything on my own, whether I like it or not,” she said.

Opening the restaurant six days a week (as the restaurant is now closed on Sundays), Sayaka can end up working twelve-hour days. “I am the waitress, the cook, I clean, I manage money, everything. It’s not easy.”

With the restaurant only staffed by her and her sushi chef, Min Hyuk, she’s exhausted running Sushi Kamon, with panicking worries about it staying in business.

Though Yelp reviews have felt “welcomed by [Sayaka]’s sweet personality” and admire “her personal touch” with authentic Japanese and Korean dishes, the restaurant frequently has empty chairs.

“Though we work hard together, especially Ms. Fukuyama, it’s tough maintaining a restaurant nowadays. Business is unstable. Ms. Fukyuama is a capable, resilient person, but this kind of unknowing can wear on anybody,” Min Hyuk said.

For the most part, she hides it well. When a family of four regulars came into eat, she wore a welcoming smile and made heartfelt recommendations. There was no sign of weariness or loneliness, as just moments prior she was wistfully looking back at old baby photos of her daughter on her husband’s lap.

Her daughter, Marian, now 26, lives in St. Louis as a teacher. Though she wishes she could be closer, they keep in contact through Facebook and texting, gigabytes of photos saved to her phone.

“When Marian’s dad passed away, I wanted to go back, very much. But Marian wanted to stay here. But, now that she’s an adult with her own life, I think about going back.”

Marian has always admired her mother’s hard-working ethic, but feels just as torn about Sayaka returning to Korea.

“I do want her here. She’s my mother. But she’s allowed to live her own life. I know the restaurant is hard on her, especially with my dad gone. She’s exhausted, isolated, alone. Her friends are mostly in Korea. Facebook is the only thing she has close to a social life. She keeps joking that she’ll surprise me in St. Louis to move in with me!” Marian said.

“I should return. I should visit my family again,” Sayaka said. “I’m not sure what there is for me here anymore, or what can I do. I can’t be in a restaurant for my whole life.” Marian agreed.

“I wish my mom happiness. She hasn’t felt it in a long time. I owe my life to her coming here. If she hadn’t left Korea, who knows who or where I would be now,” Marian said. “For her sacrifices, she deserves so much more.”