In
2004 I met Marina Limantseva in Miyazaki, Japan. Marina is from Russia, and
she had just completed a one year exchange programme with Tokai University
studying Japanese. Marina studied Japanese at High School and University at the suggestion of her mother who thought that to communicate in Japanese would be an asset to her daughter in the future. Marina went on to study Japanese at the Institute of Asian and African Countries at Moscow State University as part of her Bachelor of Arts Degree in Regional Studies, which she obtained with Honours in 2000. As part of the degree she studied about the Economy of Asian and African Countries, Japanese Language and English Language, and then won selection to Tokai University in Kanagawa for the following year. During her time at Tokai, she faced the everyday challenge of not being able to understand what people were saying to her, despite being able to read and write fluently after 5 years of study.
At Tokai University she took courses in Japanese Language, made many Japanese friends and also met a number of foreigners who were also at the University on exchange. After completing the one-year exchange Marina felt that her Japanese still wasn’t good enough, so she registered as a Masters student at Kagoshima University in Kyushu. She lived in Miyazaki, and I met her at her part time job where she talked to many people in Japanese. She soon became proficient in the local dialect and even helped me out when I had no idea what people were saying.
In September 2004 as Marina’s visa was running out, and she was facing the sad reality of going back to Russia with an uncertain future, she secured a temporary job as a translator/interpreter for a Russian company in Japan for two further months.
She is now a Japanese Lecturer at the Oriental University in Moscow where she teaches beginner and intermediate students everything they need to know to be able to cope and live in Japanese society. She teaches her students by making Japanese come “alive” using Japanese fairy tales, listening to the NHK news, writing subtitles to Manga, and by providing students with opportunities to practice speaking and writing.
In Russia, teachers are not paid well and it was not a profession Marina aspired to. She has found that she loves it though. She loves passing on her knowledge and experience, and to make Japanese come “alive” so people are able to communicate verbally. Her aims for the future are to one day be able to write the subtitles for Japanese movies, and maybe even translate literature.
Profiled by Angela Clouston, 2005