Japan Storm - Columbia College - Columbia University

JAPAN AFTER THE STORM COLUMBIA COLLEGE TODAY
eral times, Hayes says, not reporting elevated radiation in certain
areas and in the food supply. “They released information late —
there was a lot of fumbling around,” she says. “There was an aura
of calm, but news stories popped up that upset people.” She cites
the example of the announcement that school lunches contained
potentially radioactive produce from Fukushima; an ensuing argument
that the country needed to support the people and farms
of that region; and a rebuttal that that couldn’t involve endangering
the health of the nation’s children.
Unusual for Japan, anti-nuclear energy protests were held
nearly every weekend in Tokyo. “Before, I didn’t even think
about how electricity was produced — I assumed Japan was very
environmentally conscious,” Hayes says. “Only afterward did
we find out how vulnerable the country was.”
Hayes’ interest in Japan stems from a two-week visit when
she was in high school and stayed with a host family in
Fukuoka, the sister city of her hometown of Atlanta. Entranced
by the country’s history and its pop culture exports, she
knew she wanted to learn Japanese and live there after college.
She was drawn to Columbia by its stellar East Asian studies
program and the legacy of scholars such as Ivan Morris and Edward
Seidensticker ’47 GSAS. She started taking Japanese language
classes her first year and became active in the Japan Club
(now the Columbia Japan Society), of which she became v.p. in
her senior year. “It was awesome to be in a city with Japanese
speakers and Japanese cultural events I could attend regularly,”
Hayes says. She adds that there also were plenty of Japan-related
events on campus, such as the annual spring Matsuri festival
on Low Plaza, with its noodle-eating contest, mock wrestling in
inflatable sumo suits and thunderous taiko drum performances.
For her junior year abroad, Hayes studied in a yearlong program
run by the Kyoto Consortium for Japanese Studies and
lived with a local host family.
Following graduation, she joined the Japanese Exchange and
Teaching (JET) program, which places recent college graduates
from around the world in schools or government offices. Hayes
was posted as coordinator of international relations at Nagano
City Hall.
In that job, she acted as an interpreter for local foreign residents
who didn’t speak Japanese, helped plan cross-cultural
events and arranged visits for Americans from Nagano’s sister
city of Clearwater, Fla. She wrote an essay on the importance of
international exchange that won her a local contest to run with
the Olympic torch when it passed through Nagano in 2008 on its
way to the summer games in Beijing. (Many people asked her,
“Are you training?” “You walk briskly and wave,” she says. “It
wasn’t a marathon or anything.”)
“She’s about as smart as they come. When we met, I was pretty
blown away by her Japanese ability,” says Grant Peterson, a
fellow American working in Nagano. “Then after seeing her belt
out a beautiful song at a mutual friend’s wedding, and seeing her
perform a dance routine at an international event, I was amazed
to keep finding all of these hidden talents Ashley possessed.”
Hayes was a karaoke singer, “then when I went to Japan, all of a
sudden people started asking me to sing for real!” she says. “I’ve
actually sung at three weddings now courtesy of my karaoke
performances — and I’ve also danced in public when asked to.
I guess I don’t like to let people down. If someone asks me to do
something, I try to rise to the occasion.”
In Nagano, Hayes lived in a traditional apartment with tatami
rooms and sliding doors — and no central heating, which the
Southerner never did get used to. Although she initially questioned
whether Nagano, a city of 381,000 in a largely agrarian
region, was exciting enough for someone who grew up in East
Atlanta and went to college in New York, Hayes came to love
apple-picking, riding her bicycle around town and appreciating
locally grown food. “Almost everyone had a rice paddy or a vegetable
garden,” she says. “It wasn’t just Old MacDonald on the
farm, it was your coworkers.” The Japanese reverence for nature,
she says, gave her a new perspective on rural living.
Entranced by the country’s history and its
pop culture exports, Hayes knew she wanted to learn
Japanese and live there after college.
WINTER 2011–12
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After four years working in Nagano in the JET program
(which allows renewals up to five years), Hayes decided
to move to Tokyo, which she’d always wanted to
experience. She started work at the translation agency
in summer 2010. While she had thought she craved urban living
again, she says the 9–5 grind left her feeling more like a beleaguered
worker bee: “You get on a very cramped train and work
all day and take the train home. People on the train during rush
hour disregard all concepts of personal space. People think of the
Japanese as very polite and noble, but they also push you and jab
you and step on you.”
Following the chaos and uncertainty of the earthquake and
its aftermath, Hayes eventually decided to return to the United
States. She arrived in Atlanta in August, and is moving to San
Antonio, Texas, to teach high school ESL as part of Teach for
America. To further her own language abilities, she is studying
Chinese and Spanish.
“I loved living in Japan and still love Japan and would consider
living there again,” she says. She reads Japanese newspapers
and blogs every day, and plans to get a rice cooker to try to
make rice the same as it is in Japan. Her boyfriend, who won’t
finish undergraduate studies until 2014, might come to graduate
school here. Hayes adds: “I’d like to be one of these Americans
like Donald Keene [’42, ’49 GSAS; see feature in this issue] who’s
a bridge between Japan and America.”
Shira Boss ’93, ’97J, ’98 SIPA is a contributing writer to CCT. Her
most recent feature was a profile of environmental lawyer Michael
Gerrard ’72, in the May/June 2011 issue.