Hamae Tanaka, OWP 1998
Studying in the U.S., and becoming a teacher were my dreams when I started studying English in a junior high school in Japan. Right after my graduation from a university, I made my dream, becoming a teacher, come true. However, for the other dream, it took me nearly 30 years.
Eight years ago, I finally visited the United States to study. When I was a teacher of English in a public junior high school, I got an opportunity to participate in a teaching institute for English teachers held at the University of Oregon. I chose the University because it was the only institute that offered home stay for the entire term. I wanted to stay with American family and to see how they brought up their children in a different culture. I was so excited by an opportunity to have my dream come true.
Before leaving my country, Japan, I knew that my host family was two single women who had no children. They were lawyers. The information made me a little disappointed. As I have five children, I was afraid if we had common topics. While I was packing, I wondered how I should communicate with my host family, and become familiar with them. Because it was hard for me to imagine what they were interested in, I packed lots of Japanese food, hoping my cooking would arouse their interest in me. I was confident about my idea that they would enjoy eating, and I would enjoy cooking. Just as I expected, my host family showed me much enthusiasm for my cooking. With this as a start, I was easily able to become friendly with them.
What I was most surprised at was that their friend's children called me by my first name. I didn't feel comfortable about it for quite a while, even though I understood it was because of our cultural differences. On the other hand, one of my host family and I found a kindred spirit in talking. I had an enormous amount of time to talk with her about our cultures and its characteristics. We talked until late at night almost every day. As I have never had such great times because of my busy life in Japan, I really appreciated that they had no children. She had great interests in my life. When she asked why I got interested in the U.S., I told to her about Japanese TV programs I watched in my childhood by which I was influenced a lot.
I watched many American programs in my childhood. Surprisingly, she also watched the same programs in the U.S. almost at the same time, even though we lived thousands of miles apart. Interestingly, the titles were different from the original ones. Most of those titles given to us were modified to be more fitting to the Japanese. For example, one of my favorite programs was titled in Japanese, "Our Mother is the Best in the World." There was a family. The husband was a doctor who had a beautiful wife and two children, a daughter and a son. I was very much interested in them, because I could learn a lot about American daily life, such as school life and family relationships. The American title was "Donna Reed Show." Other movies I watched were, for example, "Lassie," "Superman," "Wagon Train," "Father Knows Best (Japanese title; "Father Knows Everything" )," and so on.
In the movies, I found lots of differences between us. For example, Americans didn't take off their shoes in the house, though the Japanese took off their shoes off when they were inside a house. Americans had plenty of milk. They didn't use chopsticks, but forks and knives. They used cars wherever they went. On the contrary in Japan, I seldom had a chance to get a ride, but took a train as others did.
I tried to train my dog in order to make my dog as clever as Lassie. Western films regarding battles between whites and Native Americans gave me terrible misunderstanding. I entirely believed Native Americans, "so-called" Indians, were very bad people who made surprise attacks on whites and killed them with no reasons.
While I was staying with my host family, I found an interesting difference regarding consideration. I often cooked special Japanese dishes I seldom did in Japanese daily life. I was happy to share with them, and they loved it. One day, I made their favorite dish, but surprisingly, one of my host family started having something else without telling me the reason. If I were her, I would tell her the reason and get her consent first so that she could not feel badly about my behavior. I have never behaved as she did, because it is not polite to eat something else when someone prepared food for me. I learned the degree of consideration was different.
Finally, I built a good friendship with them, and visited them almost every year. My desire to study more in Eugene expanded year by year. I finally made the drastic decision, to resign from my teaching position for studying in the U.S. It was one of the most important part of my goals as a teacher. I am currently a graduate student in the department of education at the University of Oregon. Only one problem; there should not be a teaching position in Japanese public schools available for me, though I have 24 years of rich teaching experience in Japanese public schools. Under the current hiring system in Japan, I am too old to be hired as a regular teacher.