Monday, April 6, 2009

The Mormons in my life.

Contrary to what your first thoughts may have been due to the title of my post, this post is not going to be all about Gary (sorry Gary, maybe next time!), nor is it going to involve guinea pigs (I have decided to give them a break and they don't have much to do with the Mormons in my life).

Recently I have realized that being in the legal profession as a Japanese person, I cannot stay away from the Mormons. Here are a few examples.

Incident #1.
At the end of my first year of law school, I attended an open house put on by the law firm, Vorys, Sater, Seymour, and Pease. I knew that they did the legal work for Honda, so naturally, I wanted to meet their main contact. Unfortunately, the guy wasn't there that night, but a partner told me what his name was. Now, I know that Vorys currently has no East Asians (after Albert left and until Joseph begins), so I should have figured that some white dude was the man in charge for Honda. However, I didn't have this knowledge as a naive 1L. Recently, I found out that this wasn't so random at all, and that the guy was actually Mormon and had gone on his mission to Japan. But of course, this was only the beginning...

Incident #2
Professor Matt Wilson recently visited the law school to talk about a career in international law and a little about the Temple University study abroad program that they have in Japan. He is one of the professors who head the program in Japan, and once again, I found myself thinking that it's kind of weird that some random white dude is in charge, but this time I was a little suspicious.

Regardless, I listened intently while he spoke, and the first thing he says is, "Even though I might look like I'm in my 20s, I've been out of law school quite a while and have a wide range of professional experience."

So there was check #1: looks young for age
Then came check #2: married early
Check #3: has lots of kids
Check #4: speaks Japanese fluently
Check #5: "My first encounter with Japanese was when I was 19..."

...and then I just KNEW it! Even though there was no longer anticipation, he flat out said that he was Mormon. Thank you Professor Wilson, but I already knew before you stated the obvious.

Incident #3
I met this amazing attorney at the NAPABA Conference in Seattle in November, and we have been emailing back and forth. We discussed some cities that I would be interested in after graduation, and we decided to target Chicago, and he found me a new mentor. I emailed Mr. Chu who works at a big firm in Chicago, and he then referred me to another attorney who works with him who is fluent in Japanese. His name is Tom Burton. Pretty white-sounding right? Well, I decided to look up his bio, and saw his pic. He looks half Asian, so I figure, maybe that is why he knows Japanese, perhaps his mom is Japanese. I then look at his bio, and he went to the University of Utah, worked in Ogden, and volunteered at the Salt Lake City Olympics. Yeah. This one is yet to be confirmed, but I'm going to talk to him on the phone, and maybe he will surprise me. Or, maybe I'll be right.

So the point of my blog entry today, is not to say that every white person who speaks Japanese is Mormon. But at the same time, it's awesome and hilarious how strong the correlation has been between the two lately. I guess everyone just wants to be a little more like Garachiyo.

1 comment:

  1. You will never get away from us!!! ha ha ha ha ha lol olo lol.. :<") (i don't know what that even means)

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