Ron McFarlandのPersonal Journey (17) : 宇都宮から東京に。

自衛隊機によるアフガニスタンからの退避、日本人一名のみ。
大使館員はとっくに脱出。それ以外の日本人と大使館に協力してきたアフガニスタン人は見捨てられました。
映画「シン・ゴジラ」で描かれたこの国の脆弱性が再現された思いです。
この大事件をテレビはほとんど報道していません。野党議員も騒がない。
この国は本当に大丈夫だろうか。
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Ron-san、以前悔しい思いをしたバンク・オブ・アメリカの採用条件を満たすべく国際ビジネスの大学院に進学するために東京に引っ越し。1977年のお話です。

私はIBMに入社して1年目、ハードディスクの開発に携わっていました。磁気記録はもちろんのこと、ファームウェア、論理回路設計など「意外と」大学での知識が役立ちました。論理回路設計では社内勉強会の講師もしました。

時間とお金をつぎ込んだのが英語。社内の勉強会に加え、横浜元町にあったベルリッツに週2回通いました。また、米国出張には車の免許が必須とのことでしたので、藤沢の自動車学校に通学。貯金はできませんでした。でも、自分に投資しないとね。

Graduate school in Tokyo

While in Utsunomiya, I learned of an international graduate business school in English in Tokyo and decided to apply. I think my entrance exam scores were one of the poorest on record, but because they needed students, I was accepted. It was a 3-year MA degree in International Business. So, I was back to school again. If I could get this degree, I will have achieved what was recommended to me in the Bank of America job interview many years earlier to learn a second language and earn a graduate degree to get into international business. I thought that would be my ticket into international business.

渋い赤羽に住み、銭湯通いの日々。近所のちょっとした有名人に。
I got an apartment in Akabane, which is just on the northern tip of Tokyo. That would give me good access to the school as well as enable me to get to Utsunomiya to teach on the weekends.

I got a 2-room apartment, which had no bath. So, I had to use the local Japanese public bath, the “Sento”. Although in recent years they have become rare, public baths were very common, as some houses had no baths. In the evening, a person would take a wash pot, towel, soap, shampoo, change of clothes and go to the public bath. In those days, it cost about 155 yen (about US$1.00 or so) to enter. There were two baths, one for women and one for men. Between the two baths was a wall about eight feet high and a door between the two with a curtain, so you could not see into the other bath. Whole families would go to the bath at once and grandma and grandpa would bath their grandchildren respectively. The younger kids (up to about 5-6) would run between the two baths. The bath really generated a community spirit, as you could talk to the person washing next to you about how your day went, etc. I became famous in Iwabuchi-machi, Akabane, Tokyo very quickly, being a guy from California who could communicate in Japanese. The locals had a lot of questions about me, and I about them. The bath was open from 3:00 PM in the afternoon until mid-night, and I could easily be spotted with my pot on the way to the bath.

Also, I often would telephone a take-out restaurant a block or so away, and did my laundry at the coin laundry right next to the bathhouse. So, I was very visible in the neighborhood. I was there for three years and built a nice community for myself. It is often said that Tokyo is not a large city. It is simply thousands of small villages all packed together. If fully understood what they were referring to. Everything evolved around the bathhouse, coin laundry and a few restaurants or bars. Also, the summer festivals and portable shine celebrations were wonderful and further added to the spirit of the community.



Festivals in Iwabuchi-machi

I decided to try to maintain the working visa by working for an English teaching company full-time and go to school part-time. Then, I could ease my way into the studies without much stress. The company that I worked for sent me to companies all over the Tokyo area to teach their employees English.

Ron McFarlandのPersonal Journey (16) : 宇都宮で仲良くなったのは・・・・・

外国人と普段着で付き合える人というのはどいう人でしょうか。

・例えば、高校や大学に外国人の先生や生徒がいる（いた）。現在なら結構ありうる。
・留学経験や海外赴任の経験があり、異文化コミュニケーション力をすでに身につけている。
・家族に外国人と結婚した人がおり、接し方が分かっている。
・語学力が非常に高く、実践の場を求めている（ちょっと言いすぎかな）。
・海外の何か、例えば、料理に大いに興味があり、本物に会いたがっている。

などなどが考えられます。

さて、Ron-sanが仲良くなったのは・・・・・

During that first year in Utsunomiya, I had a chance to live with a Japanese family and lived exactly the way they did. That was one of three or four times over the years in Japan that I felt great exhaustion with speaking the language continually all the time. It was so mentally difficult that I had trouble sleeping and walked around in a daze on occasions. Quite frankly, with the language problems back then, with the cold weather, with the living conditions, the income, and the working environment, if all my years in Japan were like that first year in Utsunomiya, I would have left the country eventually.



Early days in Utsunomiya

One thing wonderful about my stay in Utsunomiya was that I found a family that I became very close to, the Iwamoto’s. I taught the wife English, as her daughter was studying music in Denmark and was to marry a Danish man. The wife was a medical doctor, and the husband ran a preschool kindergarten. When I met them, the wife was in her late 60’s, and her husband was in his late 70’s.



The Iwamoto family

The wife enjoyed our English lessons so much that when I moved to Tokyo, I deliberately got a place to stay in the northern part of the city, so I could continue to go to Utsunomiya every week for her lessons. Also, to make it worth my while, she set up several lessons for me in Utsunomiya, so it would be more worth the travel. In those days, it took over an hour and a half to get there.

I would go up late on Friday nights and give several lessons that evening. I would spend the night, and give a few more lessons on Saturday morning. In those days, trains leaving Tokyo in the evening on Friday nights were quite often filled with drunks that want to speak to a foreigner. I made it a habit to simply act like I can’t understand a word they are saying, and they would eventually leave me alone.

An interesting thing I learned after I left Utsunomiya and that English school that I work at was the school’s outcome. The owner of the school was a kamikaze pilot during World War II. He went through all the training required including how to fly and had a first rate pilot’s license. He was lined up to fly on his fateful mission when the war ended. He would always sing his war fight songs at parties we had together. We would all clap and applaud him, but we all thought he was a bit crazy. That included many of the Japanese teachers and general people we met in the city. But, I would guess in a conservative, industrial city like Utsunomiya, there were people who respected him and trusted him.



The Kamikaze employer singing war songs

We all knew the company was not financially healthy, and we were paid in very strange ways. For example, sometimes we were paid two weeks earlier to show costs to creditors, or a week late because of lack of funds. Anyway, after I left the school, it was discovered the owner was borrowing money from banks, which were secured by deeds of property that were forged. I don’t know the finally outcome, only the rumors.

Ron McFarlandのPersonal Journey (15) : Ron-san、日本の地に立つ！！そして向かったところは！！！

1972年にカリフォルニア州のサンノゼ州立大学を卒業して5年目の1977年、ロンさんは羽田に到着。

この年、私は大学を卒業し、IBMへ入社。私とロンさんは、不思議と節目になる年が一緒。
私は1979年の12月、前年、開港したばかりの成田空港から初めてカリフォルニア州サンノゼにあるIBMの研究所に赴任。
ロンさんが卒業したサンノゼ州立大学には、専門書を買いに行き、駐車違反で捕まった？

さて、ロンさんが羽田から向ったのは宇都宮。そこでRonさんとルームメイトを悩ませたことは？
（第5章は4回に分けて掲載します）

Chapter #5: ARRIVING AND ADJUSTING TO JAPAN

I arrived in Japan at Haneda Airport late in the night on Air Siam before it went out of business. The teachers from the school I was to work at were wait for me and two other people that were hired on a 1-year contract.

As soon as we got our belongings, we set out by car to Utsunomiya, in Tochigi Prefecture, which is about 60 miles north of Tokyo.

Utsunomiya was one of those cities, which was completely destroyed during World War II and totally rebuilt after the war. It had major industries and a strong agricultural base. Also, in those days, it was a bit far from Tokyo, so I could not really be an outskirt suburb of Tokyo. Several years after I left, the bullet trains started to go through Utsunomiya and more and more people who worked in the northern part of Tokyo would commute from there. Simply put, Utsunomiya was a conservative factory town.

Coming from California the city was freezing for me. I had an old bicycle, which I used to ride to the school every day, and I think I had two red lines from my nostrils to my upper lip for six months until spring came. Simply, I had an endless cold and runny nose.

Part of the one year there I share a house with another teacher. The house was extremely cold, and we had an old gas stove in the middle of our room. It seemed the heat went straight up and out of the ceiling.

In those days, I learned all kinds of different lifestyles, like taking a Japanese bath, washing, spinning and hanging out the laundry. Yes, those are all very separate functions, which are done individually, and calling the “Benjo”, (Japanese toilet) truck when the toilet got full and smelled up the entire house was another task. We didn’t even have a flush toilet. The benjo truck is a truck with a suction vacuum system on the back of it which sucks out the waste in the septic tanks in houses. You can smell the banjo truck coming down the road for about a block and a half. It’s very distinct if you are right behind it on the road on a bicycle. On top of that, the toilet was not the western type, so we had to practice doing deep knee bends when we went number two. That gave terrible hemorrhoids to my roommate. For me, I was able to get through the whole exercise all right. I, of course, slept on the floor with a Japanese futon.

As I had a good idea how to approach the Japanese language from my studies in California, I literally brought all my books with me. I found one of the Japanese English teachers to drill me the way I wanted on the Japanese language exercises. Here again, I think I set up a pretty good training program for myself.

＜ケビン・コスナー？＞

Ron McFarlandのPersonal Journey (14) : Ron-san初めてのレイオフ。しかし、それがRon-sanの背中を押すことに。

以下は、ロンさんが1977年に訪日する少し前の話です。

1977年は、私にとっても大きな転換期でした。オイルショックの余波で就職が難しい時期ではありましたが、英会話学校に通うなど英語の勉強をしていたお陰で、外資系のUNIVACとIBMに内定。最終的にはIBMに行くことになりました。藤沢工場に配属になり、最初の3か月は現場実習。その後、磁気ディスク装置の開発に従事することになりました。年末には、その年のヒット曲、石川さゆりの「津軽海峡冬景色」を忘年会でいやいや歌ったのを覚えています。今は大好きな曲の一つです。

ロンさん、人生初めてのレイオフ、しかし、それが日本への気持ちを加速させる！すべての歯車が、日本に向けて回り始める！！

As I was only getting income from that part-time work and the Army Reserves, my bank account was steadily going down, and I needed more income, so I took a factory job over in San Francisco working in a putty and caulking compound manufacturer, called Goss & Goss. There were only four employees, an 80-year-old lady who owned the company and did the accounting, a general manager and two factory workers, of which I was one.



Working at Goss & Goss



Going to Japanese movies（サンフランシスコのジャパンタウン）


The other factory worker, Olin Cossairt, was in his early 60’s and about to retire. We were together during the work day, and he was a father figure to me. I’d been in contact with him ever since that time, and he even attended my wedding in Sacramento many years later.

I enjoyed working in that factory, as my mind was free to study right on the job while I produced the products in the factory.

Life at that time was going to my factory work, studying Japanese in the evenings at least twice a week, going to Japanese movies in Japan Town and going to my reserve meetings.

Then, one day the boss came to me and said I was laid off! I know the company was not that healthy, and the competition was far superior in just about every way possible. It was simply living on old customers the original founder, Mr. Goss had built up over the years before he died. At the time, being laid off was painful, but it turned out to be extremely good for me. I was out of a job and living on unemployment insurance and a little Army Reserve money.

On one occasion going to Sacramento to attend my Army Reserve meetings, my mother introduced me to a man who just came back from Japan. He was on a 1-year English teaching assignment and was looking for a replacement, but the job would not be available for six months. That was perfect, as my 6-year term in Army Reserve was to end about at that time. So, there was my chance to get to Japan. I took the assignment and decided to devote all of my time to study Japanese while on unemployment insurance.

Being laid off was one of the best things that could have happened to me. I got full unemployment insurance and studied full time. As I was learning for personal growth only, I decided to go to the nearest University with a Japanese class and simply sit in the class.

Who says education is expensive! If you want the knowledge, and not the degree, it can be very close to free. In those days, the popular language was Chinese, as President Nixon just opened diplomatic relations with China (around 1976). The Chinese classes were packed while the Japanese classes couldn’t gather even 10 students. Even though I was not even enrolled in the school, the teachers allowed me to sit in the class, do the drills in class and use the language lab anytime I liked! It was all free, was a very productive time in my life and gave me what was to be one of the most powerful skills I have used throughout my career. When I hit Japan, I was off and running with skills to learn the Japanese language.

Those years were early in my development for my life’s purpose. They were small steps toward interacting within the international community.

次章、いよいよRonさんは日本に行きます。日本文化にどう適応していったのか？

Ron McFarlandのPersonal Journey (13) : Ron-sanの模索。

自分はどんな仕事に向いているのか、意外と分からないものです。
私は大学で「たまたま」磁気記録関係の研究を行った関係で、採用されたIBMで磁気記憶装置の設計部門に配属されました。
そもそも磁気記録や技術者の道が自分に合っていたのか。
自分の将来を真剣に考え始めたのは、米国に赴任して、向上心豊かな人々との交流があってからでした。
そういう意味で、米国での生活は、私にとって大変、意味のあるものでした。

さて、サンノゼ州立大学を卒業したロンさん、仕事や他の活動から学び、自分を見つめ、将来を模索していきます。日本語とも格闘しています。

After boot camp, I returned to my reserve unit as a company clerk, which angered the commander. So, I was assigned to drill sergeant school for two years. Believe it or not, by going through drill sergeant school and acting as a drill sergeant for about two and a half years, I learned how to teach. I didn’t like it, and I was not a very good drill sergeant, but I did learn some things, particularly how to stand up in front of a group and teach.

In those days, my life was managing the store at Woolworth’s and going to Army Reserve meetings. I noticed at that time I still had a great desire to get into international business in any way I could. I always found myself in the stock room reading the origins of the merchandise Woolworth’s was bringing in from Asia, particularly Japan, Korea and Hong Kong in those days. I was continuing to read business magazines and what the United States was importing and exporting worldwide. With the huge figures of products being imported from Japan, I decided to start studying Japanese. I was around 26 years old at that time.

I signed up for an adult education Japanese class right in San Jose. That was an interesting experience, because here I was in a class mostly of third and fourth generation American Japanese who wanted to (or was pressured to by their direct parents) learn the language to be able to talk to relatives back in Japan. They all kind of wondered why I was putting myself through some much pain to learn that extremely difficult language. In those days, I too found the language extremely difficult. As I was not doing it for anyone except myself, I decided to flunk myself two times in the entry level Japanese classes. I finally got an understanding of the material after the third time around.

As Japanese is not an easy language, people really appreciated my effort, particularly the Japanese people who were poor English speakers. They regularly gave me encouragement while my own American friends and my own family thought I was crazy.

In order to visit my mother in Sacramento more regularly, I changed Army Reserve units to one in Sacramento. Then, I would go to Sacramento once a month to attend the weekend meetings.

With working at Woolworth’s 48 hours a week, going to the Army Reserves and taking Japanese classes, I found it all a bit much. As I paid off all the college debts I had built up when I was a student and was still single at the time, I decided to quit working for Woolworth’s and moved up to Oakland, California.

Sam Fisk, whom I lived with in the Roger Williams house in San Jose, was living in Oakland and going to school in San Francisco. His house there had a spare room I could rent. So, off I went to Oakland.

In Oakland, I set up Japanese language classes over in San Francisco and worked part-time for another person who lived in the house and had his own business selling computer data input services. Basically, it was asking companies if they needed help getting various data into their computers. He hired ladies to punch in the data and charged for the services he could sell. I did that direct selling for him too for a short time. I learned I enjoyed outside selling even though over a four-month period, I only brought in one account, Macy Department Store in San Francisco.