Chiko Sensei

In February of probably 2005 or 2006, my Japanese teacher from both high school and college passed away due to cancer.

I remember the 1st year of taking Japanese in high school.  We had a non-Japanese teacher, Mrs. Nielsen (on? en?  I don't remember).  You couldn't even really call her our teacher because there might have been all of 1 or 2 days where she actually taught us.  The rest of the time we were taught by her assistants.  They knew all they needed to know in order to teach us, but they were still just high school students.  We learned a very simple self introduction and how to write hiragana and katakana that year.  That was it.

The 2nd year we had a Japanese teacher come down from MHCC (the community college I'd end up going to) to teach the Japanese classes because Mrs. Nielsen had a full schedule.  She found out we didn't know anything and started over teaching us how to do self introductions.  I barely remember the 2nd year because she was so nice that she would let me sleep during class (it was right after P.E. and I was always on the phone at night time during sophomore year).  The 3rd year I actually started studying and learning stuff.  Our 3rd year class was 8 students.  There was no 4th year.  During my senior year in high school, I found out she had cancer.  It was an especially humbling day.

I retook the beginner classes in college so I could get an easy A.  During the summer after the 1st year we went to Kyoto, Japan with our Japanese class and her.  Lots of stuff happened, and I'll never forget it.  The 2nd year of Japanese was good, but she quit her job midway through to deal with the cancer.

She was strong.  She never once even hinted at complaining about her cancer or the chemo treatments she received that made her lose all her hair.  She was always understanding, kind and personable.  She was my favorite teacher and has been since then.  I like to think she is a big part of why I'm in Japan today and I appreciate all she did and the influence she still has on me today.

いつも有難うございます、渡辺千鶴子先生。

影響【えいきょう】 (eikyou) influence