Around the pond Live From New York j Seiko Michaels and her Japanese language students on a field trip to Manhattan Yugi Tsuchikawa ’10
Manhattan—After a chorus of welcomes, greetings and introductions, Megumi Sato, the woman who unifies Japan and New York via a cultural bridge of music, recent trends, and political events, and our host for the day, cheerily informs us of her little surprise. “Make yourselves comfortable. The show starts soon and I would like you all to speak live on the broadcast…” We, students of Japanese at Taft, spent three hours with Ms. Sato in her
New Faculty
Standing, from left, Chris Dietrich, Linda Chandler, Patti Taylor, Jason Honsel, James Duval, Michael Harrington, Leon Hayward, Giovanni “Nikki” Willis, Susan Henebry, Tom Adams, Meredith Lyons, Terry Giffen, and, seated, Ben Chartoff, Michelle Murolo, Chamby Zepeda, Carly Borken, and Jennifer Reilly. Peter Frew ’75 (For more on the new faculty, see the summer 2008 issue.)
10 Taft Bulletin Fall 2008
studio in New York for a live interview. Live? An exhibition of my inability to speak such a challenging language broadcast from a prerecorded and edited tape already held my nerves in a vise during the trip from Connecticut into the city; but to now hold a live conversation for all of Japan to critique? We entered the booth with one final piece of encouragement from Ms. Sato herself: “Don’t worry, it’s three in the morning in Japan.”
It’s truly amazing how talkative we all became after that profoundly relieving statement. Japanese has been classified as one of the most difficult languages to learn, not only because of its unusual grammatical structure, three writing systems and remarkable untranslatability into English, but also due to the intensely cultural aspects, which have the unfortunate side effect of a constant fear of disgracing one’s family honor by saying “good morning” improperly. My opportunity to speak on a Japanese radio show shattered those inhibitions and granted me the ability to practice my conversational skills with an authentic Japanese speaker and indulge in the culture that I have adopted as my second heritage. The field trip didn’t end after the interview. From Japanese coffee shops to book stores, grocery stores to restaurants, our clan of like-minded Japanophiles circumnavigated the city, satiating our desires for and increasing our knowledge of Japanese culture. Our sensei, Seiko Michaels, turned a classroom exercise of honorific expressions into a real-world, phenomenally engaging exposition of culture. —John Lombard ’09