Return to Table of Contents, "Two Years in Salem (Studying Abroad from the Age of 60)"

Things I was aware of in the US

First of all, I'll take up smiling. Strangers gave me a smile when we passed each other on the road or campus. I was bewildered when I was first given a smile by a stranger who was a young and beautiful girl. In a moment I turned around, but nobody was behind me, so it was obvious that her smile was for me. After I experienced it a second and third time, I told one of my ESL teachers about it. She said that smiling to strangers was an American habit. If you, a man, were given a smile by a strange woman in Japan, you would consider her to be a prostitute or mentally deficient. That habit of Americans encouraged those like me who were not accustomed to a strange land.

I thought it was one of the characteristics in the US that there were many obese people. The extent of obesity was not rare. You could see obese people here and there like Konishiki from Hawaii who is a retired sumo wrestler.

I saw the physically handicapped far more often than in Japan. Since I don't think there are any more physically handicapped persons than in Japan, I think the reason is that they are actively moving about. In the parking lots of schools, supermarkets, or places where people gather, the parking spaces with a wheelchair mark were provided in the best location for the disabled. All public facilities are barrier-free. Though Chemeketa Community College buildings are two stories, they have elevators for people with wheelchairs. The college provides faculty who use sign language so that the hard of hearing can take general classes along with normal students. I also admired that all city buses in Salem have devices that raise and lower people with wheelchairs to get on and off the bus.

It is the captioning of TV broadcasts that I was most impressed with as a measure for helping the disabled. In spite of the fact that the number of hard of hearing is very few compared to the population of the United States, the government obliged TV broadcasting companies to provide captions. I feel overwhelmed how great the United States is. Other countries can never follow through with things like captions. Captions are very helpful to those who are studying English, too. Almost all students studying abroad at Chemeketa Community College were using the captions. Before I went abroad to study, I bought an English movie video with English subtitles which was sold as a teaching material in Japan. It was a movie titled "Kramer vs Kramer" and cost 10,000 yen. As the day when I had to return to Japan was approaching, I decided to record movies with captions on videotapes in order to use them as English teaching materials after returning to Japan. Though I recorded 24 movies, one Japanese student said to me that Japanese TV sets can't project the captions. I was disappointed but brought them all to Japan, because the day when I would understand those English movies without captions may come in the far future.

You see many men who are loafing around in the daytime after reaching retirement age. In Japan, if you are in a supermarket in the daytime on weekdays, you'll see women or elderly men shoppers while you hardly see any men shoppers there who are in the prime of life. Though I don't know the exact reason why, the number of couples in the US in which the role of husband and wife is reversed so that the wife goes to work and the husband does the housework may be increasing.

A lot of worn-out old cars are on the roads, such as cars with dents here and there, cars faded after a long time, and even cars that have lost their hoods. I think the main reason for that is because the States don't have a required automobile inspection system. There are many used car dealers. Though I once went around to about 20 used car dealers in Salem with my friend when she was going to buy a used car, we left many other dealers unvisited. A person to person car deal is not rare. People who want to sell their cars attach an ad to them or put an ad in the newspaper. Students use the school's bulletin boards. You can buy a car for a minimum of $1,000 at a used car dealer, but such a car might have 200,000 miles on it, something unbelievable in Japan. I observed the dealings between acquaintances twice where a car was sold for only about $600. I also know a Japanese student who bought a used car for $250 from his friend. He gave me a ride once in that car. It was such a shabby car that looked as if it had been bought from a scrap yard so I was worried if the engine would stop. Students from abroad seemed to be buying cars on average costing $2,000, with 150,000 to 200,000 miles on them, and produced 14 to 15 years earlier.

Residential mailboxes are set on only one side of the street. Several mailboxes are clustered together by the roadside. It might be out of consideration for the mailmen so they don't have to go to the boxes on one side of the road, and then go to the boxes on the other side. Mailmen collect and deliver mail from mailboxes without getting out of their mail vans.