Working life- Masako's New York

Keeping up the culture

By Masako Yamada

先日地元で開かれたお祭り

I work at a research center that employs over 1,600 people, many with Ph.D.s. Employees hail from around the world, but from what I've heard, there are only a handful of Japanese researchers at the center. In fact, the Albany area as a whole has an extremely small Japanese population.

For the first six months since I moved here, I had next to no contact with the Japanese language, except for reading magazines and talking with my mom on the phone. I recently heard Japanese being spoken by a mother and daughter while waiting for the bathroom at a recital hall, and I was tempted to go up to them and introduce myself.

This situation hasn't bothered me. I've always been quite critical of Japanese expatriates who can't seem to move beyond their own little world, and I've met so many interesting people from different countries - India, China, Portugal, Canada, England, Yugoslavia and, of course, the United States - that I haven't missed hanging out with people from Japan.

お祭りで、かき氷作りに精を出す筆者

Just in the past month, however, things have changed. A colleague at work invited me to a party sponsored by the Japanese Cultural Association of the Capital District (JCACD), and I was startled and delighted to see over 50 people at the party. Of the attendees, perhaps only half were born in Japan and most of these people were a lot older. Other participants included Japanese-Americans, Americans who have livedin Japan, and Americans who are married to Japanese. Most of the Japanese women I met were married to Americans.

Having lived in this area for a few months, I can tell that it's not easy to maintain ties to Japanese culture here. This is very different from New Jersey where I grew up, where the Japanese community was so large that learning English was almost optional. Back there, I lived three minutes away from a large Japanese shopping center. Here, Japanese people drive three hours to get to that shopping center. Back there, I attended Japanese schools where all my classmates were Japanese. Here, not only are there no full-time Japanese schools, there aren't even any Japanese weekend schools. Instead, a few Japanese families get together for a study group every couple of weeks, and the parents take turns teaching the children.

Since the JCACD party, I've felt inspired to become more involved in the Japanese community. For example, a couple of colleagues and I have been learning bon odori from a trained Japanese dance teacher who has lived in Albany for 50 years. I was fascinated by this woman who, by day, is an American who teaches aerobics, but who has, within her, the disciplined movements of classical Japanese dance. We'll be dancing the bon odori at a cultural fair sponsored by our company.

I've also agreed to help new Japanese families adjust to living in this area, as well as help sell yakitori at an international festival held at a local museum. I've even managed to talk myself into being a guest instructor at the Japanese study group to teach math and science.

It takes a tremendous amount of effort to maintain this kind of community in a semi-rural area that doesn't have a large Japanese population. This effort is carried on the shoulders of a few committed people, and I admire their efforts. This is what keeps Japanese culture alive in the region. I think it would be much easier to just give up and forget Japanese altogether. That would be natural. Part of the reason I want to contribute to this effort is because I don't want to forget the culture, either.

Shukan ST: June 6, 2003

(C) All rights reserved