Alison and Clark Get Married!

Allison Alvarez and Clark Munson (Class of 2004) got married in September. They had their reception in the Pittsburgh Aquarium.

Japanese Language and Literature Alumni

We love hearing from our graduates, so please drop us a line. We'd like to post your message here to share with all our current and former students, so don't be bashful.

Click on an alumni face below to read what they're up to.

Strader Payton	Ben Robbins	Kohsuke Yamashiro

Kohsuke Yamashiro

From Kohsuke ジョージ・ワシントン大学日本語学科の生徒の皆さん、お元気ですか？ 私は2002年に国際関係と日本語の学位を獲得後、一年働き、その後に東アジアの政治と経済の修士課程の為にGWに戻って勉強していました。私は修士課程を取る間の二年間、JPN007とJPN008を教えていた先生ですが、実は日本語学科の卒業生でもあったのです。 現在はニューヨークにある日系の会社のマーケティング部門でマネージャーの仕事をしています。毎日の主な仕事は、営業部との話し合い、損益の計算、新商品開発、そして、商品売上計画の作成など、幅広い仕事を任されています。もちろん、日本の会社なので、上司には日本語での報告書提出が必要ですし、日本に書類を送るときは日本語で書く必要があります。皆さんもGW大学の日本語学科で頑張って日本語の勉強をしている事だと思います。今頑張って日本語を勉強すれば、日本の会社に就職する事も可能です。自分の可能性を広げるためにも勉強頑張ってくださいね。

Ben Robbins

From Ben I'm doing well at Oxford, about one third of the way through the Master's program. The atmosphere here is quite rigorous but very exciting; there are speakers and other events every night, and it is just a matter of finding enough time to go and see them. I've started studying Chinese, too, and I am about to begin a dissertation on Japan-China relations.

Strader Payton

From Strader あけましておめでとうございます！今年も宜しくお願いします！ Sorry for the delay! We have been pretty busy recently and, to be honest, I just plain forgot to send along my contact information for your alumni site. Here's some info on my post-GW life... After I graduated from GW, I moved to Isesaki, Gunma, Japan to teach English as an Assistant Language Teacher through my hometown's (Springfield, MO) Sister City Association. I was there from January 2002 to August 2003. It might be a small town, but owing to the large number of South American laborers in the city, it has the best Peruvian food on that side of the Andes. I performed the same job as the JETs in my city. I graduated last year from Missouri State University with a MIAA (Master of International Affairs and Administration) degree. Although some might see this as a step down from GW, I had lots of great opportunities there, including teaching one semester of Political Science 101 (a required course for all Mo State undergrads) - American Politics and Government. I worked as a graduate assistant for two years; spent three months in the summer of 2005 interning at Yokosuka City Hall, where I studied Japanese emergency management (internship arranged by CLAIR's New York office: http://www.jlgc.org/en/index.html); and spent the fall semester of '05 at National Sun Yat-sen University (http://www.oia.nsysu.edu.tw/english/ ), studying political science and Mandarin, where I helped Dr. Dennis Hickey research a book he was writing on Taiwan's foreign policy In June, I started work as a producer at TV Tokyo's Washington, DC Bureau. We cover American politics and international issues for TV Tokyo's news programming. We have a small office (me and 3 others), so my responsibilities run the gamut from basic office work, to reporting (I have not been on air yet, but I should be able to tick that box soon), covering developments on Capitol Hill, at the White House, at the Pentagon, at the State Department, etc, research, translation and interpretation, and developing and planning feature stories. I have only been here six months, but feature stories are by far and away the best part of my job. Being the only native English speaker in the office, I have substantial responsibilities for these stories, including: research, initializing and managing relationships with interviewees and other sources on location, conducting interviews, logistics, assisting with post-production, and developing story ideas. We also travel annually to both the G8 and APEC summits. Since I was still too "green", I didn't go on these trips this year, but I have been told I will be going to Germany this June for the G8 and Australia in September. We also go to the annual UN start of the General Assembly in New York in the fall. I did make it to this in September. Feel free to use all or part or none of this message in your site. Please send me a link when you have it finished. As far as contact information goes, this is my permanent e-mail address. My work e-mail is strader@tv-tokyo-america.com but gmail is probably the best way to contact me. I have a blog that I haven't updated much recently at http://straderpayton.blogspot.com/ and an online photo gallery with over 2,000 pictures from over the U.S., Japan, Taiwan, and Italy at http://flickr.com/photos/straderpayton/ that you can share to your heart's content.