Humans of Reno: From Japan to UNR

Saki Shimizu is one of 102 foreign exchange students at the University of Nevada, Reno. Shimizu is from Hakusan, a small town in central Japan. She came to Reno searching for independence. As Paolo Zialcita reports in the below audio story and photo series, Shimizu is finding joy in immersing herself in American culture, especially coffee.

Published in

The Reynolds Sandbox

2 min readMar 13, 2017

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Shimizu hails from Hakusan, Japan, a town in central Japan with a population of about 110,000.

Shimizu decided to study abroad in order to gain some independence. “In Japan I live with my family so I depended on my parents too much. I wanted to try new things I could not experience in Japan,” she said.

Shimizu loves talking to Reno people and compares their light heartedness to her native peoples’ rigidness. “American people always talk to me like, ‘Hi, how are you?’ and very friendly. I always feel happy,” she said.

The 21 year old exchange student is all smiles despite the cold. She finds that the weather and atmosphere of Reno reminds her of home. “Reno is actually similar to my hometown. I prefer small town to big cities, so I like it. I also like the weather, especially. My hometown has a lot of cloudy days,” she said.

Shimizu looks in wonder at the center of the Silver Legacy. She describes the feeling of being in casinos as overwhelming. “I like it, but I sometimes feel scared. I don’t know why. We Japanese kind of think as casinos as bad things,” she said.

Shimizu finds support in what’s called the conversation partner program at UNR. She is paired with two American students who are learning Japanese. “They are very kind to me. We usually meet up once a week usually at a cafe or their house,” she said, “It’s very hard for me to make American friends here. That’s why I applied to the conversation partner program.”

Exchange Student

Paolo Zialcita

Written by Paolo Zialcita

Writer for

The Reynolds Sandbox

Director of Programming for Wolf Pack What.

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