Letters Home: My 35th anniversary in Japan

One of the most frequently asked questions I always get from people back home is when and why did I move to Japan?

July 31, 2024 marked a milestone anniversary for me as an expatriate living in Japan. So, this column will outline and explain how Japan became so central in my life since I have now lived well over half of my life here.

I first relocated to Japan in 1989, and what was originally intended to be a one-year stint/adventure has turned into 35 years and counting. Amazingly, this occurred quite effortlessly, prompting me to ask myself, “Where did the years go?”

The two photos included with this column depict me in my early years in Japan. Of course, I am now bigger around the middle and have much less hair, but overall, the years have been good to me I would say. 

It has been an incredible journey, indeed, and one that I cherish deeply. I am quite aware how privileged I am to have been able to live and work professionally in this country, meeting a variety of wonderful people, and being able to grow on a personal and cultural level. Interestingly, I never initially planned to live here for so long, it just sort of happened organically.

In 1989, after finishing a graduate program in history, and teaching Spanish full-time in the Department of Foreign Languages and Literatures (FLL) at Purdue University, I was offered an opportunity to teach in Hirosaki, Aomori Prefecture as an Assistant Language Teacher (ALT) on the Japan Exchange and Teaching (JET) Program(me). For two and one-half years, I taught English alongside a Japanese Teacher of English (JTE) in elementary and junior high schools all over the Chunan District of the Tsugaru region of Aomori.

It was during this tenure as a “one-shot” teacher traveling around the countryside to visit rural schools, that I was offered an Associate Professorship at a local university — Hirosaki Gakuin University — in the Faculty of Liberal Arts, where I continued teaching for the next 18 years. I taught courses in Cross-Cultural Understanding, Comparative Studies, History, and naturally English. 

In 2010, I was then offered a full-professorship, and an opportunity to teach graduate classes, at a national university in Kyushu called the University of Teacher Education Fukuoka (UTEF). I must semi-retire in March of 2025, but I plan to teach on for several additional years at my current institution because I really enjoy being in the classroom and lecturing.

My first introduction to Japan, however, was as an elementary school child when a Japanese art teacher taught classes at my school. I had heard about Japan from TV programs, magazines, and books (there was a huge “Japan boom” for some years after the Tokyo Olympics took place in 1964). This teacher, though, really intrigued me. She left her home and family — everything that she knew and was familiar and dear to her — to come to my little town of Shelbyville, Indiana, to teach American kids art.  Her accent, mannerisms, and style of dress fascinated me.

This fascination continued throughout my life and as a 17-year-old high school student, I finally had a chance to experience Japan first-hand. I initially wanted to go to Spain, just like every other American high school student, which meant the program filled up quickly and was closed. The local YFU coordinator, Mrs. Jackie Polakoff, suggested I think about applying to go to Japan. She informed me that I would be the first exchange student from Shelbyville High school to study abroad (we had had many exchange students come to our school, but no local student had ever gone abroad on the YFU program).

So, I applied and subsequently received a scholarship from the Lilly Foundation, and off I went to spend the summer of 1979 as a Youth for Understanding Exchange (YFU) student living in a suburb of Tokyo. This experience quite literally changed my life. I had been bitten by the Japan bug and I was chronically smitten by its people, culture, traditions, and history.

That same summer, the son of the family I stayed with came to the United States with me and lived with my family as an exchange student for a year. This further cemented my relationship with Japan and by the end of his year in Shelbyville, Indiana, my entire family and circle of friends were “Japanophiles.”

As an undergraduate student at Purdue, I settled for studying European History and Spanish, with a related area in Japanese history, because in the early 1980s, few Japanese language programs existed. I did have an opportunity to return to Japan for a summer as a participant on the 35^th Japan-America Student Conference (JASC) in 1983. After this trip to Japan, I would not return to Japan for a number of years. I did have an opportunity to study at Universidad Complutense in Madrid, Spain, for a year during my junior year abroad while at Purdue, also in 1983 through 1984.

Later, after I finished my graduate work at Purdue, I did post-graduate research at the Universidad de Costa Rica in San José, as an ambassador of goodwill through Rotary International’s Graduate Scholar Program. I owe a huge debt of gratitude to the Shelbyville Rotary Club who recommended and sponsored my application and forwarded it on to the regional and national committees.

My former high school teacher, Mr. Bill Murphy, was my Rotary liaison with the local club and helped me with the application process. Each of these experiences overseas were enriching and valuable, but they never fully substituted my sincere desire to somehow return to Japan. So, in 1989, I was given an opportunity to return to Japan as a teacher on the JET Program.

Fast forward 35 years, and as I am now well into my fourth decade of living and working in Japan, I count my blessings on a daily basis for having had the great fortune to create a life and career here in Japan. Little did I know, as a little boy sitting in my art class at Hendricks Elementary School taught by Miss Ino, how much Japan would figure into and become such an integral part of my personal and professional life.

I, the same as my Japanese art teacher, made the decision to leave all that I knew and loved in order to teach Japanese children and young adults in a country far away from my roots and home.

My yearning to experience foreign cultures and cross-cultural understanding has indeed turned into a lifetime vocation.