Laura-Mae Noma: Crossing Cultures, Building Bridges
Growing up in Bull Bay, on the southeast coast of Jamaica, Laura-Mae Noma never imagined that someday she’d be living on the other side of he world, teaching English to Japanese high-schoolers. And not just a few students: 600 students over the course of 12 years.
Yet that’s exactly where Noma now finds herself. She’s currently living — and teaching — in the city of Itoshima-shi in the Fukuoka prefecture on the western coast of Japan.
Noma became intrigued by Japan while still in high school in Bull Bay, an area renowned for its black sand and small surfing community.
“ A senior at my all-girls high school studied Japanese in high school and then studied abroad at Nagoya University,” she said recently. “That blew my mind. I had visited countries like South Africa, but having the gumption to go to Asia? I decided to check Japan off my checklist.”
After finishing high school in 1998, Noma moved to the United States, to attend Wesleyan University in Middletown, Connecticut. There, she majored in economics but took an especially keen interest in Japan.
“I studied a great deal about the post-war economic revival in Japan, and I was interested in the development of an island country with limited natural resources,” she said. “I had also studied Japanese film and literature.”
After graduating from Wesleyan, Noma decided the time was ripe to finally check out Japan. And soon after moving there, she realized her new home on the western coast wasn’t at all unlike her first home in Jamaica. Like Bull Bay, that part of the country had striking blue seas and sparkling skies, and was also known for its beaches, sunsets and fresh seafood restaurants.
Still, there was culture shock. For one, Noma’s race attracted attention in a country that traditionally had not had much ethnic or racial diversity.
“Twelve years ago people would stare a lot,” she said. “I had kids try to rub the color off my skin, or ask if I’d eaten too much chocolate.”
Noma says she doesn’t encounter many incidents like these now. Meanwhile, she’s clearly carved out a home for herself. Besides playing with her black Labrador, Marley, she goes to the beach, goes out for karaoke, and like to throw house parties, even though house parties are something of a foreign concept in Japan where most homes are tiny, ovens are rare, and kitchen stoves are typically very small.
Still, teaching English to Japanese high-schoolers is clearly different from majoring in economics. Noma discovered that the ability to speak Japanese made a huge difference in terms of negotiating contracts. As for finding a job in Japan, she found the expatriate community to be helpful, and that in Japan there are also typically low barriers to teaching English in schools. According to Noma, Japanese language requirements are usually low, and a bachelor’s degree is generally sufficient.
Today, Noma feels liberated knowing that she is both fluent in Japanese and, as a teacher, giving to others. Meanwhile, she’s become a believer in Japanese attitudes toward teaching.
“Teachers are respected (in Japan),” she said. “You are held to a high standard and expected to be above reproach in your professional and personal life.”
