January 22, 2008
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Turning Japanese
So Monday, during my lunch break of udon and tonkatsu goodness, I was hastily reading the LA Times when one article in the Sports section caught my eye. Former Bruin basketball player J.R Henderson became a naturalized Japanese citizen and his new last name is Sakuragi (translates to “cherry blossom tree”; he took on a Japanese surname to help expedite the process).
I remember watching him play as a freshman phenom on the 1994-1995 championship team. He impressed me immediately when he calmly sank two free throws in the closing seconds to beat a very good Kentucky squad at the beginning of the season. While he apparently didn’t have the skill set to play in the NBA too long, he seems to be doing quite well in the Japanese league that he makes a good living and even participates on the national team.
The interesting part of the article was his lengthy process of acquiring Japanese citizenship. The paperwork was the easy part. The harder part? He had to learn 1750 kanji characters and speak Japanese at a rudimentary level. While my years at Saturday Japanese school helped me conversation-wise, I don’t know if I remember learning that many kanji!
Hopefully, I will have a chance to see him play in Japan next year. I think it is about time I head back to the motherland, considering that the last time I was there, I was half my age! Plus, I think it would be good to reconnect with Dad’s side of the family, whom I haven’t communicated with in over a decade.
Comments (3)
hey that’s really cool! why is he in japan? can you cut and paste the entire article? ’cause i have to register.. but i don’t want to…
Wow….very cool. I didn’t know you could become a Japanese citizen. I thought that that kind of thing simply wasn’t done. Go JR!
Hey SKB. Sorry for the delay in replying. I’m too lazy to edit the copy and paste content, so I will link to another J.R article from the Japan Times. This one won’t need registration!