Adjusting to a Strange, New World : County’s Japanese Retain Culture in ‘Material Paradise’

Hitomi Sano ruefully remembers her first day at an American school in Irvine three years ago. When lunchtime came around, the 6-year-old girl from Japan unpacked her favorite meal--a rice ball laced with black seaweed. Her classmates laughed.

“I couldn’t speak (English), so I was crying,” recalled Hitomi, who now speaks English so fluently that she accompanies her mother to parent-teacher meetings to serve as an interpreter. She writes English with such finesse that she beats American-born children in handwriting contests.

Although Hitomi has learned American ways at public school, when she enters her family’s home she leaves her shoes at the front door, as is the Japanese custom. And on Saturday she attends special private classes in Garden Grove, where she studies her native language, advanced math and other subjects she will need when she returns to her homeland.

Hitomi is one of 686 Japanese children in Orange County public schools. The fathers of most of these children are stationed temporarily--usually three to five years--as key managers and researchers at about 200 Japanese-owned companies that have settled in the county over the last 15 years. In most cases, the fathers have brought families along.

The families must adjust to a strange language and a confusing culture of freeways, tacos, crime and lack of polite formality.

The Japanese newcomers consider Orange County a “material paradise,” where houses are at least twice as spacious as at home; land, steaks, avocados and disposable diapers seem dirt cheap; streets are broad; driver licenses are easily obtained, and golf and tennis--rich people’s games in Japan--are available to everyone.

Sushi Bars, Temples

Japanese are impressed by the welcome they feel in Orange County, which in recent years has attracted a significant Asian population and is dotted with 200 Japanese restaurants and sushi bars as well as Japanese grocery markets, bookstores and Buddhist temples.

One Japanese woman recalled that when she moved to Tustin 18 years ago, the area was covered with orange groves and “there were no other Japanese people--just the gardener.”

But since then, the orange trees have been bulldozed to make way for business and industrial complexes that have attracted companies with names like Mazda, Toshiba and Shimano.

No longer do Japanese in Orange County have to drive to Little Tokyo in Los Angeles to buy Japanese items. At the Arbor Village shopping center in Irvine, for example, they can buy Japanese books, rent a Japanese video, eat at a Japanese restaurant, or stop at a Japanese market to buy tofu, salmon eggs and other delicacies imported from their homeland--although generally at twice the cost of what the same groceries would cost in Japan.

While Japanese husbands encounter Americans daily at work and thus are forced to learn English--even taking Americanized nicknames like Joe and Willy--their wives may never learn to converse with their Anglo neighbors. Stranded from the American mainstream, many join together to learn handicrafts and share information about where to find doctors who speak Japanese and stores featuring smaller sizes.

Japanese adults are grateful to American schools for classes specially designed to wean their children to the English language. But they worry about the futures of their children, who are learning creativity and individuality in America but someday must compete in a Japanese society that values conformity and tradition.

Walking a Tightrope

After three years in Orange County, Hitomi’s parents have learned to walk a tightrope between two cultures. Her father, Wataru (Willy) Sano, 35, tries to be the decisive leader his American staff expects at Mazda North America in Irvine. But after the American employees go home at 5:30 p.m., he practices the Japanese way of “decision by consensus” in dealing with bosses who are just beginning their workday at the parent company in Japan.

Sano’s wife, Mayumi, buys American steaks but slices and marinates them in the Japanese style. She counsels her daughters that, contrary to American practice, sitting cross-legged is not polite in Japan.

Typically, Japanese families come to Orange County at the command of their companies. They don’t have any real option, said Hiroshi Matsoka, executive director of the Japan Business Assn. of Southern California. True to their culture, he said, Japanese workers usually are willing to sacrifice their desires rather than change employers. “You have to stick with the company,” he said.

Matsoka said Japanese families frequently suffer financially on tours of duty at an American subsidiary. It is difficult for them to save while in the United States, he said, because of the costs of setting up a new household and buying or leasing cars. Often, Japanese families settle in more expensive neighborhoods, he said, in hopes of avoiding crime, which is more prevalent in the United States than in Japan.

Most of the men who come are middle-age and bring wives and young children. Frequently teen-agers are left behind with relatives because they are reaching the age when they must take stringent tests that determine their entrance into a Japanese college and ultimately their future employment and status in Japanese society.

Unlike the majority of Japanese parents, Maskako Hanada said she and her husband, a researcher at Canon USA in Costa Mesa, brought their older sons with them to the United States 5 1/2 years ago because they wanted their children to escape what she called the competitive “hell” of the Japanese school system. One son now is majoring in economics at the University of San Diego and the other is a high school senior in an occupational training program with hopes of becoming a designer.

Losing Their Culture

Hanada observed a little sadly that her children seem to be losing their Japanese culture. She said that her 18-year-old no longer holds his rice bowl in the correct manner and that when he speaks Japanese he uses English for difficult words, such as constitution and theory.

Hanada practices some Japanese customs to keep her children in touch with their heritage. On the hearth of her home last January she put out rice cake, along with artificial ferns and a lobster--the traditional symbols of renewal for the Japanese New Year. But she said the family also participates in American holidays like Thanksgiving and Christmas. Although they are Buddhists, she said, on Christmas they trim a tree, exchange presents and string lights on their house.

Hanada said that to assist her countrywomen she helped form Yukari-Kai, a women’s auxiliary of the Orange County branch of the Japan Business Assn. Founded in 1983, Yukari-Kai now has 250 members who get together to play tennis and take classes in chorus, jewelry making, Japanese tea ceremony, stitchery and French cooking. Yukari-Kai published a guidebook that acquaints members with such Americanisms as “car pooling and “BLT” and instructs them on such strange customs as waiting to be seated at restaurants.

While Japanese wives devise ways to cope with American living, their Japanese husbands put in long work days. Japanese businessmen wryly observe that although 90% of the workers at Japanese companies in Orange County are Americans, frequently after 5:30 only the Japanese staff remains.

“American people take more time to enjoy their wives and families,” said Kiyoshi Iwamoto, manager of the president’s office at Ricoh Electronics in Santa Ana. Iwamoto said that in Japan he headed a very busy department and worked from 8 a.m. to 11 p.m., including Saturdays. Also, like most Tokyo workers, he commuted an hour by train between his home and job.

By contrast, Iwamoto said, his work schedule at Ricoh’s Santa Ana plant is a breeze. He drives 15 minutes from his home to office, works from 8 a.m. to 8:30 p.m. five days a week and plays golf on Saturdays. He spends his vacations and all his spare money sightseeing.

He considers his assignment “a very good opportunity to learn America and see America and touch America.”

Keeping in Sync

Toshio Matsushima, sales manager and marketing coordinator at Mazda Distributors, said Japanese work longer hours than their American counterparts to keep in sync with the Japan home office, to prove their spirit of self-sacrifice for the corporation and to practice the Japanese style of decision making by consensus, which requires a lot of memo writing.

While executives in American companies give orders that are passed down the ranks, the Japanese custom is for top corporate officers to state what problems need to be solved and wait for the lower staff members to offer possible solutions, Matsushima said. Then everyone strives to reach agreement on a course of action.

Roy Uchida, executive vice president of Mazda North America, said that although some Japanese executives try to be more authoritarian in working with their American staff, they frequently find themselves “trying to convince their secretaries why typing certain letters would be good for the company and good for their careers.”

Some American employees say they appreciate the process of consensus building in Japanese firms because, although it slows down decision making, it gives them a sense of participation and belonging. Pat Stroich, spokeswoman for Noevir Inc., a Costa Mesa-based subsidiary of a Japanese cosmetic firm, said that every Monday morning all of Noevir’s 40 employees, from warehouse workers to top executives, meet to set goals and discuss ways to make the company more efficient.

Japanese businessmen who spend their days struggling with language and cultural barriers generally spend their off-hours playing golf and socializing with other Japanese men.

Mie Katayama, owner of the Cherry Blossom restaurant and bar in Santa Ana, said that after 9 p.m. on weekdays Japanese businessmen gather at her establishment to enjoy a popular Japanese pastime called Karaoke (empty orchestra). They take turns singing popular Japanese songs into a microphone to the accompaniment of taped background music, while scenes appear on a screen to illustrate the lyrics.

Katayama said that Japanese men recently have been spending less at her bar, which she attributes to anxiety over declining business profits prompted by the lower value of the dollar relative to the yen. Also, she said, Japanese companies lately have been sending younger technicians to Orange County who are more likely to check out the American topless bars. “After a while they get homesick and come back,” she said.

Effect on Education

The greatest concern of Japanese families sent to Orange County is the effect of this uprooting on their children’s education.

Japanese parents praise American public schools for providing classes to teach their children English. The Orange County Department of Education reports that there are 486 Japanese children with limited English proficiency getting special help, while another 200 have learned English well enough to take the regular curriculum.

The lion’s share of the county’s Japanese children with limited English ability is in the Irvine Unified School District, which has 166.

Craig Ritter, principal of University Park Elementary in Irvine, said the Japanese children usually can learn enough English to join American classmates within one academic year. Ritter said the Japanese children work hard, are well behaved and enjoy the freedom of American schools.

Japanese parents have mixed emotions about an American education for their children. Hiroko Shizuno, whose three children are in gifted programs in Westminster schools, applauded American schools for gearing studies to the individual abilities of students. In Japan, she said, everyone must study at the same pace, so fast-learners like her children grow bored.

Nonetheless, Shizuno and her husband pay $49.50 a month for each of their children to attend an Asahi Gakuen school in Garden Grove that is sponsored by the Japanese Business Assn. and partly subsidized by the Japanese national government.

Homework in Japanese

Shizuno, who chairs the Parent Teacher Assn. of the Garden Grove Japanese school, said it is important for her children, the eldest of whom was 5 years old when the family moved to Orange County five years ago, to keep abreast of what their peers are learning in Japan. So they must do daily homework they receive in Japanese, mathematics and social studies at the Asahi Gakuen school in addition to the homework assigned by their American school.

Each Saturday 600 Japanese elementary and junior high children attend the Asahi Gakuen classes in Japanese at Garden Grove’s Bolsa Grande High School from 8:45 a.m. to 3:30 p.m.

Kumiko Takashima, a sixth-grade teacher at the Asahi Gakuen school, said her students sometimes appear “bleary-eyed” on Saturday morning because they have studied until 2 a.m. to try to catch up with their assignments.

No matter how hard the Japanese children work in their American and Japanese schools, experts say, they will almost surely have difficulty readjusting to school in Japan. A survey taken of students who had studied in Orange County and returned to Japan found that their problems ranged from weak comprehension of Chinese symbols to being ostracized by their Japanese classmates.

However, the survey also found that the Japanese children who had been exposed to American education tended to be more creative, broad-minded and kind. Toshihiko Tomizawa, a Japanese government education official, said he considers it “a plus” that Japanese children in America “learn to think for themselves.”

He said that because of Japanese business expansion abroad, an increasing number of youngsters with international experience will be flowing into the Japanese society. He called their influence “a seedling” that he predicted will take root, grow and flower into “a new awakening for Japan.”