Russell Burbage

Aya’s CIR 1987 – 2000

Hello, this is Russell Burbage giving you a short introduction.

I'm the one who has started this homepage. Thanks to Mr. Ben Brown who was the CIR in Kunitomi Town from 1994-97 for all his help!

I grew up in the city right next to St. Louis in Missouri. It's called University City and is home to one of the best medical universities in the US, Washington University.

I came to Japan for the first time in the summer of 1983 in-between high school and college. I spent that vacation on a YFU (Youth For Understanding) exchange in a tiny tiny town in Hiroshima called Kuchiwa. I didn't speak a word of Japanese at that time and was so embarassed by the assumption that Americans don't/can't learn Japanese that I vowed to study until I was fluent.

That fall I entered Macalester College in St.Paul, Minnesota and began studying for an East Asian Studies major. I spent my junior year abroad at Miyagi Educational University in Sendai, Miyagi, several hundred kilometers north of Tokyo. When I returned to graduate my history professor knew of a job in a small, country town on Kyushu if I was interested. The only other East Asian Studies majors graduating that year already had jobs lined up so I got the job by default. And here I still am!

I have worked in the Social Education Department for exactly 10 years as I arrived in late August 1987. My job was initially only English education but as my Japanese improved my work responsibilities increased. I am now the Co-Ordinator for International Relations (CIR) in charge of most of the events written about on these international pages.

I met my wife, Yuko, at the Aya City Hall. She was an accountant who I dealt with when I paid the English class fees. She joined my English class, we started going out, and we married in 1990. We have one daughter, Anna, who was born in 1991.