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

Weather, clothes

As to weather between November and March, it often rains. It's like the Japanese rainy season in June and July, but goes on for about five months. Some people who don't like Oregon are those who don't like rainy weather during winter. Chemeketa Community College doesn't have outside classes for tennis, baseball, athletics, soccer, etc. during winter term because of the rain. Those classes in the fall term finish at the beginning of November. It was usually not raining all day long, but I felt gloomy. Many people in Oregon didn't use umbrellas in the rain, nor did they care about getting wet. They used the hoods attached to their outerwear when rain was heavy. Many kinds of clothes with hoods were on the market, far and away more than in Japan. I was always using a folding umbrella which I brought from Japan. One rainy day, I walked into the classroom, and opened my umbrella to began drying it out. When my teacher entered the classroom and saw my umbrella, she warned me against my behavior. She said it was bad manners to open an umbrella and dry it out inside. In the first year it was a very cold winter and it snowed three or four times, but in the second year it was a warm winter and it snowed very little. We had few days below zero Celsius. If you ask me how cold winter is Salem is as compared with Tokyo, I would reply that it is about the same.

In spring in Japan, every year for about 20 years I have been suffering from hayfever caused by cedar pollen from late February when the first strong south winds of the year blow, to early in April when cherry blossoms bloom, but I didn't have such hayfever symptoms at all in Oregon. There were many cedars in Oregon, but since those cedars were different from Japanese cedars, I must not have gotten hayfever. But some Oregonians were suffering from hayfever, and medicine for it was being sold. Hayfever season in Oregon seemed to be from May to June.

I thought that cherry blossoms are not only Japan's symbol but also native to Japan, but I was surprised that there were a lot of cherry trees in Salem that bloomed with gorgeous flowers. They were smaller than those in Japan and began to have blossoms in the middle of March, and to lose them by the end of March.

It hardly ever rains in summer from June to August. Hot days are naturally over 30 degrees C, but the hottest time is around 4 PM. It's cool in the early morning to the extent that you need clothes with long sleeves. It's relatively easy to bear the summer heat unlike in Japan. It is still light outside until about 9 PM in July due to Daylight Savings Time. Many people seem to feel that summer is the best season in Oregon.

In Japan people wear different clothes according to the season, but I don't think people in Salem do so. I don't feel the sense of the seasons from their clothing. One woman wore a windbreaker on her short-sleeved shirt in the middle of winter and she was present in the classroom in her short-sleeved shirt taking her windbreaker off. Another woman wore a windbreaker in spite of summer approaching. Everybody is dressed in their own way, but I could hardly see women in general wearing skirts. They usually wore pants or short pants. The number of men wearing short pants was far more than in Japan, and some men spent winter in their short pants. Few people wore suits and ties, and even public servants were casually dressed. Nobody seems to pay much attention about what they wear. As it's said, America is a melting pot of races or a salad bowl, a variety of people wear various clothes, and there are people with various shaped bodies, including people who are obese. But they don't pay attention to others' appearances. As far as I'm concerned, at first I was interested in watching various people, and I used to watch people around me or those who came and went, sitting and sipping coffee on the terrace in the shopping mall alone unhurriedly, but as time passed, I lost interest in others' appearances, and stopped comparing Americans with Japanese.

My associates

1. Classmates and Japanese students studying abroad

In ESL classes at Chemeketa Community College I met people from various countries whom I made friends with using a common language - English, though both they and I couldn't speak it well. I was especially impressed by the friendly manner of Latin Americans, mostly Mexicans. they were always frank and easy to speak to, even with my poor English. Like Americans, they don't change their attitude because of the age of the person with whom they are talking. They treated me equally, which made me feel fresh and free from the tightly knit business community I had long belonged to. I had a lot of chances to talk with them during breaks and lunch hours. I also had chances to know more about them through group activities, such as together doing interviews of Americans, and other assignments.

There were 35 to 40 Japanese students in Chemeketa Community College, a majority of them women. Many of them had studied at language institutes in the US after graduating from high school in Japan. They were admitted to Chemeketa after they got at least 450 points on the TOEFL. Some had a couple of years of business experience, and others had graduated from either college or junior college in Japan. But, I found no one like me who went overseas to the US to study in college after retiring.

I had no difficulty getting to know these Japanese students. Chemeketa offers many events during the school year, such as a Culture Fair, an International Fashion Show, Thanksgiving Day, etc. It also offers "Social Hour" for international students every Wednesday from 2:30 to 3:30 PM. Many Japanese students often show up there, and I was able to get to know more about my Japanese friends over snacks and beverages. The Japanese students called me Mr. Chemeketa. I don't know if I really deserved it, but in my heart I enjoyed being called that.

I have many close Japanese student friends and experienced various episodes with them, but I'll spare you the details. Having a lot of experiences with those young Japanese friends, I came to think that I would not have had such opportunities to get to know so many youths in Japan had I not decided to spend some time after retirement studying in the US. I call them my friends, which may sound a little odd to Japanese, because it is not customary for a 60-year-old Japanese to call people much younger than him "friends." In a happy episode with these young Japanese, I came to have three "daughters." Correctly speaking, I asked three young ladies to allow me to call them my daughters, because I have only sons and had longed for daughters. I was so happy to be their "father" that I wrote about this in an essay for a writing class. I really enjoyed this experience, and am thankful for the chance to be able to study abroad.

2. Japanese wives who were studying abroad

Wives of Japanese company employees: There were Japanese wives whose husbands worked for Mitsubishi Silicon, or Yamasa Soy Sauce. Among them, Natsuko-san was on good terms with me. She was a licensed veterinarian with two kids who had brought her dogs and cats with her from Japan. She was an active woman who was bustling about by car, and she was also learning English in the ESL program.

Yasuko-san: She came to the US four years ago to marry a Japanese who graduated from Willamette University and who now works for the state of Oregon. He now has American citizenship. Yasuko-san was my good rival in the ESL class. She was better than me in the speaking and listening classes, but we were tied in the writing and reading classes. She is innocent enough to call herself a young bride though she is in her 40s, and sometimes flew into a passion, but she is kind, and is a good cook.

Tomiko-san: She came to the US about the same time I did to marry a nice-looking American. I thought of her as my oldest daughter. She was pregnant when I first met her but her son turned one by the time I returned to Japan. He had American features, and was absolutely cute. I thought of him as my grandchild.

Atsuko-san: When I took a tennis class right after entering Chemeketa, she also entered the same tennis class as a beginner in her middle 60s. I was impressed that she stayed young by having interests in many things. She has lived in the US for more than 30 years since she married an American serviceman who was once stationed in Japan. As she knows Salem very well, and lived relatively close to my apartment, I often asked her for help. She is a really reliable woman.

Kayoko-san: She is two years younger than me, and her husband is a scholarly American. She is a tennis lover and plays tennis almost every day. Since Chemeketa doesn't have a tennis class in winter term, I enjoyed playing doubles with her every Saturday morning during winter since she is a member of an indoor tennis club. We played against the Takashimas from Mitsubishi Silicon.

Toshiko-san: She has lived in the US for more than 40 years. Now she lives by herself since her husband passed away last year. She arranged her living room nicely in Japanese style, which reminded me of what I left in Japan. She learned bonsai on her own, and has a lot of them in her garden, most of which I think are worth being shown to the public. Though over 70, she stays young and positive.

3. Non-Japanese foreigners

Mexican
Esmeralda: An ESL student who had studied dentistry at a college in Mexico. She went back to her homeland to become a dentist after she studied at Chemeketa for one year. I can't forget the Mexican food, enchiladas, she cooked for us, her ESL friends, at her apartment. She had a collection of stamps from around the world, and was glad when I gave her some Japanese stamps.

Columbian
Rocio: A 35-year-old lovely single woman in ESL. Philanthropic, she was always cooperative in doing volunteer work. She is proud of her country, and now works in Portland.

Peruvian
Susan: She is studying English at Chemeketa Language Institute. After that, she plans to transfer to the community college, and then to a university. She wants to study further in a graduate school. The 21-year-old kind and gentle, yet brave girl is from a wealthy family, and living with a host family in Salem.

Koreans
Jung Hee: She dropped out of college in Korea, and lived with her aunt in Salem. I knew the aunt since she was temporarily a student in the ESL program. She runs an alteration shop in downtown Salem, where I was one of the customers. Jung Hee was a serious, bright student in ESL. She has gone back to college in Korea.

Jiyoung: She worked part time in the Student Life Office at Chemeketa. She liked playing tennis, though not a good player, and often gave me a call asking me to play tennis with her. I may have been a tennis coach for her. After graduating from Chemeketa, she transferred to Oregon State University in Corvallis, which is located about 30 minutes by car south of Salem. Her dream is to work for the United Nations.

Chinese
Xiao: At the age of 26, she was already married. She met her husband at a university in China. He got his master's degree from the law school at Willamette University, and now works for a law firm. Xiao was far better than me in speaking English and didn't know Japanese, so she was my English teacher when I was with her. When I left for Japan, I gave her my car as I stated earlier.

Jing: Classmates called her Sho-chan. Japanese students would think she was Japanese when they first met her, because she spoke Japanese fluently. After having graduated from a Chinese college, she learned Japanese for a year in a language school in Japan. She is a graduate of Tokyo International University in Kawagoe, and had passed the highest level of the official Japanese Proficiency Test. She entered Chemeketa because she wanted to master English as well. Because she knew Kawagoe very well, I felt comfortable with her and we soon became friends. This summer, she married a nice guy, a faculty member at OSU, and was going to move to Corvallis to be with him.

Taiwanese
Grace: I met her in the ESL program, but she moved to Astoria, Oregon, with her husband, who had found a new job there. He used to work for Kyodaru in Salem. When I was invited to their new home in Astoria, she cooked Taiwanese food, which was really delicious. Seeing their big house with a large yard, for only the two of them, I realized the space America can offer to people. Grace once told me that August 8th, my birthday, is Father's Day in Taiwan because 8/8 is pronounced "pa-pa."

Cristie: Like Grace, Cristie isn't her given name, but quite a few people in Taiwan use western names as well as their given names. Her friends in Taiwan call her Cristie. She graduated from high school in Canada, and came to Chemeketa. She loves songs by Glay, a Japanese pop group, and collects Hello Kitty goods. She likes Japan so much that she learned Japanese from a Japanese tutor when she lived in Canada. I came to know her because Chemeketa asked me to become a Japanese tutor for her. I began to teach her Japanese on a voluntary basis, because I could have chances to learn English from her in return. After Chemeketa, she hopes to study at Sophia University in Tokyo.