Chikako Tsuruta AIS class of 1972 ctsuruta@tufs.ac.jp

Update from Chikako, May 2011.

I attended a friend's wedding on April 23, 2011. She decided to have her ceremony at a French restaurant in Tokyo. I was her chief bride's maid.

This was a very formal occassion. I didn't quite know what to wear. I went up to my attic and found this dress that I bought more than thirty years ago for a friend's wedding.  I wore it when I was 23. Then, the last time I wore it was for another friend's wedding who also decided to have a restaurant wedding.  That was let's see...thirty years ago. So! I would like to share this worn for a happy couple, on a happy day In front of French Restaurant SUIGYOKU in Itabashi-ward, Tokyo Japan.

Hi, this Chikako Tsuruta, of class of 72. How time flies. It is so nice to be able to communicate on line. I have just talked with my sister Haruko Tsuruta Morimoto (two years younger than me, she also attended AIS) about how nice it is to be connected electronically, and just who would have imagined back then that this kind of communication is possible now, to have a homepage posted on the web, and to exchange e-mails, and to chat on line!

I just came back from vacation in Hawaii but was so excited when I received an e-mail from Suzy Bakey inquiring 'looking for Chikako Tsuruta' and asking 'if you are my friend Chikako Tsuruta or if you know her please respond' to my mail address at work. I am currently Professor of Tokyo University of Foreign Studies in charge of teaching interpretation/translation, and also am a professional broadcast interpreter/conference interpreter. I simultaneously interpret from English to Japanese news such as ABC World News Tonight, CNN, BBC. I was very busy, as you might imagine during the Iraq War and also during the Presidential campaign and election. Of course, you can guess how I responded to Suzy: Yes, I am the Chikako Tsuruta you are looking for!

Chikako age 20

To just give you very brief history of what happened after graduation, I went to Sophia University here in Tokyo, majored in French Language with minor in International Relations. I went to work for Economic Research Department of the Bank of Tokyo (the one my father was working for when we were in New Delhi- he was the New Delhi Office Manager at that time), met and married my husband Takatoshi (called Taka). Since then we decided to use my name as the family name so I kept my name. Taka was posted in New York so I was there as a newly wed, and graduated from Columbia University Graduate School of Business. After getting back to Japan, I was briefly with Citibank, then with Nomura Research Institute, then went with Taka and our son Akira (now 23 years old ) and our daughter Ayako (now 20 years old) to live in Milan, Italy for 6 years.

In Italy I was active as a Board member with an English speaking Ladies Club called Benvenuto Club (meaning welcome in Italian). There I picked up Italian as well. We came back to Japan in December of 1991, and since then I have started to work as a broadcast interpreter. I gradually enlarged the scope of my activities, adding more conference interpreting, then teaching at university first as part time, teaching courses like Public Speaking, Newspaper English that's related to my job as a broadcast interpreter, and became an Associate Professor at Mejiro University 6 years ago. Then just last April, when Tokyo University of Foreign Studies decided to start a new course on interpretation/translation I took up my current position.

I have a website in Japanese at http://kotoba-asobi.net/tsuruta. Here you can find out what I think in my daily work as an interpreter, together with what's happening with our pet golden retriever Andy (he is 8 years old now.) I have recently authored a book along with many other articles on interpretation/translation and you can find out about that book on my website as well.

I will keep in touch. It's great to be connected online.

Chikako Tsuruta
ctsuruta@tufs.ac.jp

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