Anatolii Yonathan Ast studied East Asian Studies at University of Virginia and spent one summer at ICU’s Summer Courses in Japanese program. Anatolii now lives in NYC where he is focusing his studies on classical Japanese, translates Japanese to English for Japan Today and tutors Japanese language students via Skype. In this interview he tells us more about his passion for the Japanese language and what ICU means to him.

JICUF: Thank you for taking the time to do this interview. Shall I call you Anatolii or Yonathan?

Anatolii: Please call me Anatolii. I recently really embraced my birth name; it is a really important part of who I am and where I come from. I was born in the Soviet Union and orphaned and then later adopted.

JICUF: Wow, can you tell me a little more about how you ended up here?

Anatolii:  Well, I was born in Irkutsk in the then Soviet Union. The exact location is near the far east border of Mongolia and Siberia. In 1993, my father who is half French and my mother who is from Boston adopted me.

I grew up outside of DC in McLean, VA and I spent a lot of time going back and forth from the U.S. to France since my father’s family is there. I am considered the black sheep of the family because I never pursued French despite my family speaking it. I have a command as far as comprehension, but I never felt that connection like with Japanese.

JICUF: Please tell me more about your connection with Japanese language.

Anatolii: My interest in Japanese started in 6th grade. I would look at a tin and buy it because I thought the characters were beautiful and then I would practice writing them with a Japanese brush and ink.

I also had an interest in Japanese video games so it was a natural progression to wanting to understand the language. I started teaching myself the three Japanese alphabets, vocabulary and would try to speak though I didn’t have many people to practice with.

JICUF: Did your High School also have a Japanese language program?

Anatolii: Actually, no. I had to ask the high school to give me a satellite program because there were no Japanese people at all in my area and there was no interest in the language. The high school allowed me to use one block period of the day to go to the computer lab where I would have online lessons. The Japanese language professor taught us through a virtual classroom and my school facilitated the paper work.

JICUF: How did the Japanese language teacher conduct her lessons?

Anatolii: From her side of the computer, she could see all her students that were logged in. From our end, we saw just her, but we could raise our hand and be called on just like in a regular classroom. On Fridays we would have a phone interview and we would have real assignments and real text to read throughout the week. It’s like how I teach now – I do it all on Skype.

JICUF: Very impressive! Did you do anything else in high school to cultivate this interest in Japan?

Anatolii: I also took part in the summer LABO Program and its 4H sister program. It was like a summer camp and I taught a little Japanese culture and language. Mostly, I talked about origami and sushi! There were some foreign exchange students from Japan that joined the camp and they helped me.

Eventually, 4H approached me about the exchange program and suggested I join as a participant. I took part in an intensive homestay in Matsuyama on island of Shikoku – Ehime prefecture.

There was no English speaking in their home and I liked the challenge. The family I was staying with honored that I wanted to do things I wasn’t used to. Though it was just a short summer trip to Japan, I was hooked and I knew I would eventually go back.

JICUF: That sounds like an amazing experience. Can you tell me more about how Japanese language entered into your academic interests in college?

Anatolii: At the University of Virginia, I chose East Asian Studies as my major with a focus on Japanese and Literature with an even more narrow focus on Classical Japanese.

Despite my having some experience with Japanese before entering college, I was asked to take a University level beginners course. It was intense in some ways, but it was basically a review of what I had learned before so I took it as an opportunity to lead three extracurricular classes so that I could practice my Japanese more and it served as a great learning tool because of the unexpected questions the students would ask. At that moment I realized I had an affinity toward teaching.

JICUF: UVA sounds like a great place to study. How and why did you decide to go to ICU for the summer language program?

Anatolii: I learned about ICU by searching online for Japanese intensive summer programs that were also paired with ‘Homestay’ programs. Although UVA would not give me credit for the course, they did provide me with a scholarship for my academic performance via FLAS (Foreign Language and Area Studies program) which is what allowed me to go.

JICUF: How was the summer language program?

Anatolii: It was kind of a surreal experience being at ICU. You are in Tokyo and you are also in a massive garden. There are killer bees and there is enough nature on campus to support them! I happened to live with my host mother along the Ogawa river nearby campus, and I would bike to school up a very steep and long hill everyday. Riding through the campus with its thick canopy and dense trees always felt like a reprieve, as the temperature was always a good 10 or more degrees cooler on grounds.

At ICU though, no matter how good you thought you were, whoever you were assigned as your teacher would push you to learn more. Even if the class was behind you, they would still push you further and demand more. They never allowed anything to slip and would push you to perfect it even if you had to say something 10 times.

The amount of homework in the summer program was staggering. There was no real break throughout the day. I would get up super early to bike to class – I would bike uphill – and then you dive straight into Japanese in order to interact with the class. If you went to the library, you had to speak in Japanese. If you went to a store, you had to speak in Japanese. I really dug it!

JICUF: That sounds intense! Were there any moments in particular that stuck out to you?

Anatolii: The Japanese students taking English classes. I would have sworn that they were native English speakers. They knew idioms and slang and when I asked if they had been abroad they would say ‘no’ and that they had learned since ICU High School. As a nerd for language I thought it was awesome. ICU really takes language so seriously.

Another neat experience was when my class interacted with a group of middle-aged, Japanese businessmen. Some had meshi (business cards) that said they were the COO of some huge company, but then we would have these basic conversations in English and it was kind of cute to watch them fumble. We would try to tell jokes in English, but that didn’t always translate well.

JICUF: What did you think of ICU as a whole?

Anatolii: ICU encourages an unusual degree of open mindedness worldliness – an accepting of all cultures. During my class, I was asked to interview 50-100 people and ask their views on WWII and how it’s taught and talked about in schools and how that teaching has affected opinions of the US.

It was such an interesting opportunity to learn that there were some people that heard that there was a shooting in Los Angeles and then assumed from that one anecdote that everyone in the U.S. carries guns and that it is a violent place. We do that kind of thing here too, but there is also a lot of diversity in the U.S. I heard many times people didn’t really want to visit the U.S. because of their perception of what it was like. At the same time, I think that many people in Japan question what they read in textbooks or hear, especially after meeting foreigners.

Overall, my own experience has been predominantly positive.

JICUF: What have you been doing since you graduated from UVA?

Anatolii: I continue to work in classical Japanese. It’s fun because it’s like decoding. Classical Japanese is a very complex system and many parts of speech are very speculative as to the true meaning so you can experience the tales in a way that’s unique to you. It is also a very engaging reading process that’s steeped in an oral tradition.

Other than that, I am back down to tutoring two students at the moment. I can get up to 10 students, but two is actually pretty optimal since one is doing classical and one is a modern Japanese language beginner. I have to do entirely different lesson preparations for both of them and only get paid for the hour I’m teaching.

The bulk of the work I do is with the company Japan Today. I am focused on the translation of articles from Japanese to English. The articles are about politics, reform bills, international relations, and even crime in Japan! We take news from every news agency from ground to everywhere and keep pushing out tons of articles with Japanese to English translation.

It’s challenging because English is not my first language so I still have trouble translating from Japanese to English at times. Plus, translating is a thing in and of itself. You can’t do it word for word; you have to take the entire thing, conceptualize the main point and re-write it.

JICUF: What do you hope to do in the future?

Anatolii: I want to study how the Japanese language came into being and how it has involved. I am also really interested in what is called the “reception of the classics,” which is a study of how people viewed a particular text through various epochs of time, and how it became canonized and why. The study also continues to look at whether certain texts are relevant today, and how some people are working on ways to present the classic texts in new and exciting ways to keep them fresh and appealing to modern individuals, without losing the heart of the original.

JICUF: That’s fantastic! Do you have any advice for prospective students interested in ICU’s summer Japanese Language Program?

Anatolii: Do as many cultural activities as you can muster! It’s a real treat.

I would also advice they steer on the side of homestays and not live in Global House or Ginko house. If you are looking for total Japanese immersion, it’s not there because there are so many international students in those dorms that speak English. It’s more like a typical Western college dorm in a lot of ways.

If you are from another University and you know the credits aren’t going to transfer, go easy on yourself and go out to the izakaya with your friends every now and then. Don’t be too hard on yourself.

I would also advise everyone to go out at different times of the day. Things look different during the morning compared to the evening. Pick a direction and just go.
Remember, it might be a once in a lifetime experience. It’s a special time so enjoy it.

This is also very important and possibly the best thing I brought back from Japan – a daily journal. Write about your experience during the day, what it’s like to live in a Japanese person’s house, life in Japan, whatever comes to mind. There’s so much to be taken away from it all. It will mean way more to you than any souvenir you could buy.

Excursions: If you decide to travel with a friend, remember that not everyone will travel like you. Find people who travel your style. Some people want to just go take a pic and leave. Some people don’t need to speak and want to wander.

I also encourage listening to classical music while on the trains. Chopin is my specific recommendation. It will change the way you see the city!

Last, but not least, homestays can be really stressful! I would have liked someone to spoke to me about things to do or not do. If anyone wants to reach out to me before they go, please let them know that I would be happy to share my advice and have helped a lot of people create a small itinerary. I also have good suggestions for places around the city to see and places to eat.

JICUF: Thank you, Anatolii! Is there anything you would like to ask for yourself?

Anatolii: I would love an opportunity to go back to ICU in some capacity. I would love to go for another program or even be one of the people to organize a group going back. If there is ever an opportunity to be part of anything with ICU, please let me know.

JICUF: We certainly will. Thank you for doing this interview and sharing so much.