Return to Table of Contents, "Two Years in Salem (Studying Abroad from the Age of 60)"
Foreword
by Barry Duell, Chair
Kawagoe-Salem Friendship Society
Masao Mizukami showed much courage and resolve in deciding to study overseas from September 1998 to August 2000 after retiring from his company job at 60. What an honor it is for me to write a few words prefacing this detailed account of his experiences since he chose to study in my hometown, Salem, Oregon, USA. This, significantly, also happens to be the sister city of Kawagoe, Saitama, Japan, where Masao lives.
As Masao explains in his manuscript, he had previously visited Salem briefly in August 1995. The occasion was the annual homestay tour from Kawagoe to Salem organized by the grassroots organization, Kawagoe-Salem Friendship Society, and led by myself and my wife, Masako. It was after experiencing Salem for a few days, staying with a Salem family and joining the tour's visits to various area sites, that Masao resolved to return to Salem for a longer stay following his retirement.
The biggest surprise I had from reading Masao's account of his two-year Salem stay was that as small as Salem is (136,924 people in 2000), he experienced a somewhat different life in Salem from what I have ever experienced. For example, the center of his life was studying English as a second language at Chemeketa Community College, a public, two year college. A second center to his Salem life was the Asian friends he surrounded himself with, particularly Japanese or Japanese Americans, and the non-Asians associated with them as spouses or friends.
Masao documents very well the many different experiences he had in Salem, some sad, some amusing, but all very interestingly described. Most memorable to me is his description of his first Halloween in Salem when he struggled with how to respond to the groups of children coming to his door since he had no idea he was supposed to prepare something for them in advance.
As the population ages in the USA, and particularly in Japan, Masao's story gives us inspiration for how we might continue to find new challenges and meaning in our lives as we get older. He wisely concludes his text with, "It is never too late to learn!" The Kawagoe Salem Friendship Society is proud to be able to introduce this excellent manuscript to interested people in Kawagoe, Salem, and elsewhere.
I was a first-grade pupil at the end of WW II, when the Allied forces occupied Japan. Since I was living in a remote country place in Yamanashi Prefecture where there weren't even any movie theaters. I was out of touch with the world. I moved to Kanagawa Prefecture at the age of ten. Then, I saw foreigners for the first time and came to know through the movies how well off the US was. Large refrigerators in the homes were full of food. Americans lived in large houses with garages and drove their cars around. People in Japan were still desperately trying to get enough to eat each day. I can't forget my first English textbook titled "Jack and Betty" in middle school, in which I could learn about American life. From those days a longing for America might have grown in my mind. After graduating from high school I didn't have any chance to speak English at work till my retirement. But I associated America since my youth with frontier spirit, individual freedom, equal opportunity, competition, and the American dream.
In August 1995, I participated in a homestay tour which the Kawagoe-Salem Friendship Society planned. It was a ten-day tour, and I was 57 years old. I had never been off work as many as ten days, and it was my first trip abroad. We traveled to Seattle, Victoria, and Vancouver and got to Salem via Portland. Salem was quiet, composed, and had much greenery even though it was the capital of Oregon. I was surprised at first that almost all the area of downtown had one-way traffic. In Japan, one-way roads were adopted where two cars could't pass each other, but that isn't so in Salem. Even three-lane roads are one-way.
I homestayed at Mr. and Mrs. Brown's house in South Salem for five nights in a quiet residential area where roads were wide, but few cars were running. Every home was a one-storied house with a lawn and a garden which opened to the road. Many houses had trees and well-trimmed flowers. I saw several squirrels running around in the Brown's backyard and on the roof. I noticed that a pole with a basketball hoop was planted in the garden of many homes, by which I could catch a glimpse of the popularity of basketball in the US.
When I took a walk around there in the early morning on a Saturday and a Sunday, I found that there was a park with tennis and basketball courts only four or five minutes walk from the Brown's house. In spite of it being a weekend, nobody was using the courts. I like playing tennis, playing it every week in Japan. If we want to use a public tennis court in Japan, we have to apply one month in advance. On top of that, it's difficult to secure a court, and there is a charge for using it. I came to completely fall in love with the surroundings in Salem.
At our meeting for reviewing the homestay tour after we returned to Japan, I expressed that I wanted to live in Salem for at least a half a year after my retirement three years later. I would have worked for over forty years from the age of eighteen to my retirement age. During these years, I never had any serious illnesses and continued to single-mindedly work hard. Staying abroad might cost a lot, but I thought I should follow my desire. I may be alive twenty more years after my retirement due to the statistics of Japanese life expectancy. I thought I would like to live abroad as the next step in my life as a big change so I could look at myself again, look at Japan from the outside, absorb many things abroad, and then I could go on to live twenty more years with the new energy yielded by that experience.
Though I thought at first I would stay for a half a year in Salem, I began to think about experiencing the four seasons there. I studied the ways of staying in the US and found out that in my case I had no choice but to use a student visa. An ESL (English as a Second Language) course for studying English was offered at Chemeketa Community College located in northeast Salem. But, if I tried to take an ESL course, I needed to enter Chemeketa Community College, which is a two-year college. I found out that I had to get over 450 points on an English proficiency test called TOEFL. I needed an admission permit called an I-20 in order to get a student visa. I was a little flustered. I wondered if I could pass the TOEFL by preparing for the examination from that point on. I studied hard every weekend and barely cleared TOEFL. But I felt keenly how poor my English conversation ability was. I wanted to be able to speak daily conversation fluently, so thinking that one year's staying in the US would not be enough to do so, I decided to stay for two years.
This school is a public college for getting a two year degree, and due to the cheap school expenses (but it costs double for American students from states other than Oregon, and three times more for students from abroad), many students transfer into the third year of a four-year university. Chemeketa Community College accepts about 200 students from overseas. It operates on a four-term system, beginning from fall term, then winter, spring, and summer, but students can skip summer term. Students from abroad have to receive over 12 credits with at least a C average per term. A one-hour lesson a week is equivalent to one credit. School expenses amount to over $1,800 for one term, so one credit costs $150.
Chemeketa Language Institue, which didn't exist yet in September 1998 when I entered, was established in April of the next year, and provides ESL courses. Actual classes at the Institute are partly for joint use by Community College students, but Institute students don't require any minimum TOEFL score to enter, so the Institute issues I-20 forms even to students with no English ability. However, students from abroad are obliged to take over 18 hours of classes a week which cost $1,500 per term.
The ESL curriculum has five levels with the lowest (1) for those who know little English, to the highest (5). Classes of level 4 and 5, which I mainly studied in, have credits given by the Community College. Each level has Speaking and Listening, Reading, and Writing classes. In addition to these, level 5 also has Grammar I, Grammar II, Pronunciation, and Business classes. The Community College classes I took with American students (besides the Institute's ESL classes) were Writing for two terms, Computer Keyboarding, Cultural Anthropology, Vocabulary Skill Development for two terms, Tennis (P.E.) for six terms, Racket Ball (P.E.), and Sports Conditioning (P.E.).
The majority of the teachers was female and among all the classes I took over two years (except for P.E. classes), only one class was taught by a male teacher. They were very dedicated to teaching and grasped each student's abilities well. They were also frank, so they were like students' friends. Teachers were called by their first names, such as "Lois" for Lois Rosen or "Jannie" for Jannie Crossler. Of course, teachers also called students by their first names the same way students did. I was always called Masao, and since even Japanese students called each other by their first name, most Japanese students didn't know my family name, Mizukami. Some teachers brought confectionery to class to give to students. We all studied while eating these together. Another teacher held a small birthday party once a month in the classroom and congratulated the students who were born that month. Some teachers invited all their students to their homes at the end of a term for a potluck party, which I experienced five times.
Speaking of classmates, each class of ESL consisted of at least 10 to about 30 students, but the number of students decreased gradually to two thirds by the end of each term. American students were of course not in any ESL classes. The majority was Mexican students who accounted for about half of the class. Others were Latin American (Brazilian, Columbian, Ecuadorian, Peruvian, etc.), Vietnamese, Russian, Middle and Near Eastern, African, Korean, Chinese, Taiwanese, and so on. Some students were refugees and there were even illegal immigrants. Some Japanese wives studied English in ESL courses. Their husbands had been transferred to subsidiary Japanese companies in Salem such as Mitsubishi Silicon, Yamasa Soy Sauce, and Kyodaru.
About three hours a day were enough for taking lessons, but we often could not take those lessons consecutively, so we needed ways to spend our time usefully between lessons. We had a lot of homework to do outside class, such as doing workbook exercises, answering printed question sheets, writing journals and essays, reading a textbook to prepare for Reading class, and preparing presentations. We had to study a lot in order to get good grades. I noticed that the number of students in each class decreased gradually till the end of the term. There were even some Japanese students who dropped out.