In a past blog post, I wrote about growing up in the town of Lemoore, California but how I got into Japanese culture and moving to Long Beach, California, which furthered my interest even more.
Back in the late ’90s, at California State University, Fresno there was a Japanese club known as Nihonjinkai and then there was a unofficial social club known as The Asunaro Club.
At the time, there were two types of Japanese students on campus, those who studied at Fresno State and those who attended English school at Fresno State.
At the time, Fresno State had a large international student population from Asia, especially from Japan.
But the college students of Japan rarely mixed with the English Institute of Japan.
I was a Japanese conversational partner helping Japanese learn English and for me, it was a bonus, so I could practice Japanese. But because they were not official Fresno State students but students learning English on Fresno State’s campus, for many of the English Institute students, especially the Japanese living in the area, it was somewhat of a lonely life out in California.
For one, they were students who lived with host families and because they were not able to communicate in English all that well, they had no friends to communicate or hang out with. And while there were many Japanese, many who were students, as mentioned, rarely did the college students want to mix with the English Institute Japanese students. And because they were not college students, they were no included in college club activities, which is understandable.
So, while I knew many Japanese college students, I actually befriended the English Institute students and figured, why not develop a social club where they could be part of.
As a person learning Japanese, one of my favorite Japanese dramas was “Asunaro Hakusho” and at the time, there were three ways of obtaining Japanese dramas, through a video rental store in Clovis, the other in Hanford (in conjunction with a video rental store that was at the Fish Market in Fresno) and the other is through trading VHS tapes with people from various Japanese entertainment mailing lists who had recorded it off their International channel on television (or they had local Japanese video rental stores in their city).
But for “Asunaro Hakusho”, the drama revolved around the “Asunaro Club”.
And that is where Asunaro Club, the name of our club, was derived from. It was a popular drama which many people from Japan knew about and we wanted to be the most welcoming club for those who love Japanese culture and also pop culture.
And so, the Asunaro Club began….and it was one of the most wonderful experiences in my life.
And for the next few days, I want to share my Asunaro Club memories.
