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Joey (Tso) Yasumatsu, a native of Hong Kong, graduated in 1997 with a double major in Finance/MIS and Japanese. She has always loved Japan and things Japanese since she was very young. She started learning Japanese at the JBC Language Program at Mitsuwa (formerly called Yaohan) in New Jersey, and she also had a part-time job working for a Japanese chinaware store. It was then that she picked up much of her Japanese since she made a lot of Japanese friends and had to use Japanese to speak to customers.
When she found out about SUNY Albany's Japanese program and the Study Abroad program at Kansai Gaidai, she transferred from Baruch College to UAlbany. She writes, "I still think those days were the best in my life. I had a good time with my home-stay family and enjoyed going around to Osaka, Kyoto and Kobe. At Albany, Japanese was my favorite subject. I enjoyed studying Japanese with Fessler-sensei very much. I was also helping Funaba-sensei in her Colloquium on Teaching Japanese. I organized the JJ Club [through the Student Association] and we held some Japanese events."
Today, Joey has been working as a system engineer for Sanwa Bank (now called UFJ) in New York City for 1-1/2 years. Currently, she is working as a software developer for PricewaterhouseCoopers. She writes, "I am very glad that I studied Japanese, although I think there is still so much more that I should study. Having Japanese speaking ability has opened up a lot of opportunities to me. I can also watch Japanese dramas, news and read magazines, which I like very much. My goal now in life is to open my own business in Japan and hopefully I can live there in a few years." |
