Interview with Ryo Nishikubo

I met Ryo when he was working for the Middlebury Schools Abroad in Japan. He traveled with us from Narita Airport in Tokyo to Soni Village in Nara Prefecture for our program orientation before transitioning to a new job. Ryo is a recent graduate of Middlebury College and I wanted to know what his life has been like since moving to Japan.

 

Background

Ryo majored in Japanese Studies and English Literature at Middlebury. He started learning Japanese because he wanted to speak the language with his grandmother. Ryo also did the Middlebury study abroad program, though he stayed in Japan for the whole year in order to improve his language skills as much as possible. While studying abroad, he told me that he realized that language learning is a lot more difficult than he originally thought, and thus resolved to move to Japan after graduation to continue to learn Japanese.

 

Time with Middlebury Schools Abroad

After graduating from Middlebury, Ryo worked as the Middlebury Schools Abroad in Japan Study Abroad Student Life Coordinator for a year. He was initially hired as a part-time worker, but later went full time in order to be fully immersed in Japan. 

As the Study Abroad Student Life Coordinator, Ryo was tasked with a variety of roles. These roles included introducing students to their community engagement sites, administrative tasks, trip planning for orientation and mid-semester excursions, program event planning, and Japanese language tutoring.

 

Current job

Now, Ryo works at a facility (作業所）for people with intellectual disabilities in a sort of similar role to a social worker. The facility is operated by a nonprofit that also runs group homes where disabled people can live and be supported but still develop a sense of self. The specific facility is a sort of work space, where people can work while staff members are present to ensure that the workers are safe.

Ryo explained to me that he didn’t originally plan to work at this facility. He knew that he wanted to stay in Japan longer than his Middlebury contract and was simply not excited about other job prospects and companies. Ryo wanted to work somewhere where he could be useful to people and participate in tangible community building. Aligning with his goals of language learning, he was looking for jobs that would help him get a better sense of the Japanese language and weren’t oriented towards foreigners. The CEO of Ryo’s current company is actually an acquaintance of the director of the Middlebury School in Japan, who suggested the company to Ryo.

 

Moving to Japan

I’ve lived in the same place in California my whole life, only moving when I went to Wellesley. That alone was a huge change for me, so I decided to ask Ryo about his transition from living in the United States to living in Japan. He started out living in a foreigner-oriented sharehouse. Ryo actually possesses Japanese citizenship, which he said eased the housing process, one that is notoriously difficult for foreigners. As time went on, his Japanese improved and helped him adjust further to living in Japan. He told me that his time abroad during college helped him figure out how to live in Japan, as the program guided students through the necessary processes. In his words, it was like being handheld through living in a foreign country.

 

Reflection

I enjoyed talking to Ryo about his experience as a recent graduate from a liberal arts college. I found out that we have very similar values and goals in terms of what kinds of work we want to do and our goals for living abroad. I also want to work with people in a meaningful way and I think Ryo found very interesting ways to do so. Compared to my first two interviews, Ryo’s experience with Japan is much different from Hope’s and Sonja’s as someone who has only been in Japan for a few years. In terms of language acquisition, I also wanted to develop my Japanese skills in order to better communicate with my grandmother and came to Japan to be immersed in the language.

I found Ryo’s work at the facility greatly inspiring. His work is perhaps not the stereotypical image that people hold of working abroad in Japan, but it made me think of my summer internship with the Little Tokyo Service Center in Los Angeles, California. During my internship, I learned about the complexities of homelessness in Los Angeles, particularly for Asian and Japanese people. This reality contrasts starkly with the popularity of the Little Tokyo area as a tourist destination. I also felt that my work was contributing to the community and deeply enjoyed the way that I felt connected to the people around me, so hearing that Ryo was able to find a similar way to become involved with his community and help them out was very interesting to me.

I also developed a deeper appreciation for the Middlebury Schools Abroad program. As a former staff member, Ryo described the amount of work and care that our professors put into making the program the best it can be for the students. For example, our volunteering sites have all been selected through the professors’ personal connections and rely on maintaining friendships between the professors and the volunteering sites. The professors personally introduced all nine of us spring semester study abroad students to our sites, and I know that the supervisor of my volunteering site regularly chats with one of the professors.