12/1/11
There is an urban legend about an American hiker on Mt. Fuji in Japan, who met a Japanese kid on the way down as he was on the way up.How much further? the man asked in dictionary Japanese. The kid answered in English..."not too much further!"
How did you learn English? the hiker asked.
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"I live in Fort Lee, NJ!" the boy answered.
This ACTUALLY happened....not on Mt. Fuji.......on a street corner in Tokyo:
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Akira Kato, his brother Makoto, their mother Ikuko, were in Tokyo on a furlough from their home in Fort Lee two decades ago.
Ikuko laughed - with a mixture of pride - and envy - of her son's perfect American English:
they were walking in a busy shopping area in Tokyo and a foreigner asked how to get to Shinjuku Station.
Ikuko hesitated....but Akira without skipping a beat, told the man in perfect English how to get there.
"How did you learn English?????" the man said - grateful to be rescued from the transportation maze of Tokyo.
"I live in Fort Lee, NJ" answered Akira.
That happened years before the Mt Fuji urban legend started going around.
Ikuko told me, while Akira beamed, when they got back to their home at The Presidential Apts. in Fort Lee.
"Tokyo on the Hudson" was the nickname of Fort Lee when the number of Japanese in the Borough exceeded 5,000 almost overnight at the Japanese economy internationalized.
Indeed there are many Japanese now in Japan, who like Akira Kato, list Fort Lee, NJ, as their hometown on Facebook, although they have not lived in the Borough for decades!
This blog will post more such stories...and welcomes yours...whether you are reading in Fort Lee....or posting in Tokyo!
Hello! Konnichiwa!
Celebrate Fort Lee's THREE-DECADE exchange with Japan!
Pat Kinney - this blogger - grew up in Fort Lee (as Pat Tyler)
Japanese people moving to Fort Lee changed my life....and indeed dozens of others.....as Fort Lee proved a bridge between two distant worlds.
One day in the 1960s dozens of Japanese people arrived at No. 1 School on Hoym Street, across from my house.
My mother - president of the PTA - was assisting with school registration...and came home, disconcerted but undismayed, after that morning session....when- almost out of the blue - dozens of Japanese parents and children awaited registration for an American public school for the first time.
"Only one man could speak English!" I still remember Mom's incredulence. Nothing wrong...nothing bad...no disorder.......just one English speaker - capable in English. - but at a loss for the American public school system!
Years later, the Kato family moved from Tokyo to Fort Lee. Akira Kato was 8 and his brother, Makoto, 5. At number 4 school Akira was learning English....and the two Kato brothers and my son Sandy, then 7, were in the same swimming class at the Hackensack YMCA.
Their mother, Ikuko, and I got to talking...she hesitant in English...but very friendly. She was sewing something to pass the time while waiting for the boys to finish their class.
"Next week bring one yard red and white check. I teach you 'smocking.'"
And I did. We were making an apron...........but what we really made was a friendship that spans more than just two continents.
At that time chuzai-in - as Japanese corporate transfer families are known - were a new type of Japanese family. Shigeru Kato worked at a Japanese bank in NYC...and would be transferred back to Japan in two or three years.
Ikuko Kato had nothing but apprehension for the future of these "foreign" Japanese, like her son. Learning English, while losing fluency in Japanese was something to fear.
No need to have been worried about the Kato boys! Both returned to Japan....but with their English fluency they excelled in the international business world.
TO BE CONTINUED ...
