By Torie Wright, Icon intern
Natural disasters can strike any place at any time; Mother Nature is indifferent to our feelings. Now try to imagine being on the other side of the world, helplessly watching the news and unable to know if your family is okay…

MORE PHOTOS AT BOTTOM OF STORY.

Meet Keita Mimura, a native of Japan who is studying Computer Science at ONU. He was stuck in that exact situation in 2011 when the magnitude 9 earthquake/tsunami hit his home country.

“I couldn’t call my family for two days.” Mimura said. We went on to discuss the importance of family in Japanese culture. Intriguingly, they do not express their love for each other in the same way we do.

“If I said ‘I love you’ to my mom, she’d look at me like ‘What are you doing?’” Mimura said. 
As for marriage, it’s an ordeal for, quite literally, everyone. The two prospective families will scope each other out in great detail (what are the aunts, uncles, cousins like?) because they will be combining into one large family. 

Because Japan is 13 hours ahead of us, Mimura finds it difficult to communicate with his family very often.

“You get used to it.” Mimura said. He left Japan to attend middle school in Switzerland, so international traveling is nothing new to him.

He wound up in Ada because ONU’s “Computer Science program is really good.”

Mimura likes it here in America (particularly because of the large food portions—a small here is the equivalent of a large in Japan and Mimura “can eat a lot”), and plans to stay once he receives his degree. He sees himself working for a large company either in Ohio or California.