Steven Horowitz - Aichi (1992-1994)

Steven at his Shorinji Kempo goodbye party - "I had wanted to do a martial art while in Japan, and I noticed some guys in what looked like karate outfits doing fighting exercises in a very small temple behind my apartment. They spoke no English and my Japanese wasn't very good at that time, but they were happy to have me and so I started joining them three times a week and became part of their 'family,' which was a wonderful cultural experience."

Where were you in Japan as a JET and when? 

Aichi-ken, Kariya-shi, 1992-94 (17 minutes southeast from Nagoya by express train).

What sparked your interest in applying for the JET program? 

I knew I wanted to go work abroad after college. And I went to the Career Development office of my college campus and came across a VHS (yes, it was 1991) about the JET Program, so I decided to apply. I had no prior interest in Japan, and the only info I knew about Japan at the time was based on reading "You Gotta Have Wa" by Robert Whiting, which was all about baseball and Japan. One of my brothers, I think, had given me the book the previous year. 

What are some of the things your prefecture is known for? e.g. food, hotspots, etc. 

Aichi is very much known for auto manufacturing because of Toyota. And my town, Kariya, was home to two major Toyota subsidiaries and was right next to Toyota City. My apartment was literally across the street from Nippon Denso (now just Denso) which made car electronics and looked like its own city. I lived on the top floor and always joked I could have been a spy for Nissan.

In the local library, I also found a paper by a US PhD student all about Kariya and its history, and I was surprised and proud to learn that Toyota had actually started as a loomworks company in Kariya! I also realized after arriving that Kariya was home to a very large Japanese-Brazilian community, many of whom were working in the various factories in my town and the area. I think the Mikawa region where I lived is also where Tokugawa Ieyasu's family originally came from. It's also worth noting that Kariya's symbol is the iris flower.

Each year around Christmas time, the youchien (幼稚園 - kindergartens) would ask me to come and play Santa Claus for the holiday events at their schools. I loved telling my parents how their nice Jewish boy was now playing Santa in Japan.

Did you pick up any of the regional dialects? What are some of your favorite words or phrases? 

I never learned to speak a separate dialect. But I was always very interested in learning words from various dialects. In Nagoya, I learned that for emphasis people say "da ga ne!" instead of "da yo ne!" And I also realized that Kariya was considered part of Mikawa, a different region than Nagoya, and had its own dialect, which people often explained to me with the phrase "jan dara rin." Instead of "sou janai" ("isn't it?") they say "sou jan." And instead of "sou da yo" ("that's right!"), they say "sou dara." And for command forms, instead of using the "-nasai" ending, they use "-rin," e.g., "tabarin" instead of "tabenasai" ("eat").

The funniest phrase I learned was from an old taxi driver who yelled an insult at me when I didn't get out of the way fast enough. My Japanese friend pointed out that I had just been insulted using the phrase "nanda tawake," which is apparently very old school. And it was later explained to me that "tawake" is essentially the same meaning as "baka" (i.e., "stupid fool"). One of the explanations for a possible origin of the word is that "ta-" is a rice field (田) and "-wake" is from the verb "wakeru" (分ける), which means "to divide." In other words, a "rice field divider." And that means a "stupid fool" in the context of a person who passes on their rice field to multiple children and divides the land up amongst them. I think the idea is that, beyond a certain point, because of the irrigation process for rice fields, it's inefficient to divide up a rice field. Anyway, the long and short of it is that I didn't feel like a "stupid fool" because I actually learned a lot from that incident. 

If you were to return to live in Japan, would you choose to live in that same prefecture? 

If I get to return to Japan with my family to live, I would want to live somewhere in the inaka (田舎 - rural area; countryside), and it wouldn't matter to me which prefecture. I believe Aichi still has some inaka areas, but so do many other parts of Japan. Though if I were to live in a big city, I would probably choose Nagoya because it's actually a very spacious and liveable city and, at least at the time I was there, it wasn't full of tourists. 

The Takemotos - my accidental family: I met the Takemotos one day when I needed to find the owner of the parking lot by my apartment building so I could pay for a parking space. My Board of Education colleagues had given me directions, but the streets in Kariya had no names and all I really understood was what neighborhood to go to. So I decided to just start knocking on doors and asking people if they were a landlord, which did not go very well at first. But at the Takemotos' home, this older couple invited me in and helped me figure out who my landlord was. Subsequently, they began inviting me out for events and then to their home for weekly meals. They became my accidental Japanese family!

How has your connection in relation to Japan changed since living in Japan? 

I've stayed very active in the JET Alumni community, founding the JETwit website and the JETwit Jobs listserv to help provide job listings and career support to the JETs and JET alums who came after me. And I've served for a number of years on the JETAA USA Board of Advisors and on the JETAA New York board as well.

I went to law school after JET and was always looking for a way to connect my work to Japan, but could never find it until years later when I went back to ESL teaching and connected it to law, which has led me to become a Legal English teacher at St. John's Law School first and now at Georgetown Law. Through that work I'm constantly in connection with international students, including a number of Japanese students (though not as many as in the 1990s when I was a law student).

It's funny because so many of my friends and relatives called me a Japanophile after I got back to the US, but that never felt accurate. I wasn't into anime or tea ceremony or any particular cultural aspect of Japan. But I finally realized that I had spent several very formative years in Japan, and Japan would always be part of me and my identity. And Kariya would always be my furusato (故郷 - hometown; one's old home).

The part of JET I've taken with me is the belief in grassroots diplomacy, the idea that connections at the personal level can have a big impact on relations between countries. The Return On JET-vestment (so to speak) has been huge when you look at all the connections and collaborations that have sprung from the JET Program and evolved to the benefit of Japan, the US, and other countries. Over the past three years I've been organizing Legal English support for Ukrainian law schools and have realized the same grassroots diplomacy ideals have been guiding me as I continue to organize ways to get more people from Ukrainian, US, and other law schools to connect and collaborate in the context of law and English, but towards a greater goal of building connections that can bolster relations in the face of political winds.

It's no understatement to say that JET and Japan changed my life in extremely positive ways I could have never imagined. 

Thank you, Steven, for sharing your JET story!