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Bill drove to Japan.
Well, he traveled a good part of the way to Japan overland - in a VW bug.
He and his wife Karen spent one year getting to Japan. After touring most of Western Europe, they drove border to border through [the former] Yugoslavia, Bulgaria, Turkey, Iran, and Afghanistan. They then traveled on public transportation through Pakistan, India, Nepal, and Thailand. And, oh yeah, they had their 5-year old daughter with them.
They arrived in Japan on June 1, 1975.
Bill has spent all of his years in Shizuoka prefecture. First he was a student for one year in Mishima. Later he and his family lived in a traditional (traditional as in they built a fire every night to heat the bath!) Japanese farmhouse in the mountains of Tenryu for seven years. After moving to Hamamastu (where he lived for the next 7 years), he built his home at the very top of a hill in Tenryu in 1990.
Bill first became interested in language teaching in Japan when he started learning Japanese. He found that the enthusiasm of his Japanese language teachers made learning fun. Back in the '70s learning English in Japan just wasn't quite as exciting. Too many language schools were fly-by-night, offering their clients nothing substantial, and taking advantage of their foreign teachers.
He felt he could do better. He believed that while learning languages is hard work, and being open to learning about other cultures requires a commitment, it still should be enjoyable. He founded Four Seasons with Takashi Kiyokawa to provide a place for enjoyable yet effective language learning, and to create an environment that fostered a positive orientation towards people from other cultures. They also wanted to offer foreign teachers a good working situation and give them full support settling in a new country, society and culture.
Although it hasn't always been easy (the school was inaugurated two days before his third child was born - phew! - was that a busy time!) he has always kept his enthusiasm and remained steadfast in his dreams for the school. He cringes when he sees schools that are the fast food of language education presenting themselves as institutions that support learning - but he has continued to believe that dedicated teachers working in supportive circumstances will always make Four Seasons an outstanding place to teach and learn.
A native of New York City, Bill's interest in Japan began many years ago there. It was in New York that he became interested in Zen, martial arts, and the films of Kurosawa. Later, while living in San Francisco and Boston, he practiced Zen meditation and studied traditional Japanese cooking. Bill practiced aikido for many years, and also shakuhachi - and instrument he gave up when he realized it would take him three years to
simply get a good sound out of it! These days, when he isn't working, he plays chess - a passion of his since he was a kid in New York's Greenwich Village. His other passions include Latin music and dancing, travel, wine collecting, and reading the work of the great philosophers.
Bill is fluent in Japanese - and says when he has more time, he will rededicate himself to mastering the writing of kanji and reading original literature in Japanese.
He and his wife Karen (they've been friends since they were 16 years old) are the parents of: Nanao, a textile designer; Mie, a translator and interpreter, trilingual in Japanese/English/Chinese; Mario, fluent in Spanish and currently studying in Ecuador; Lila, currently majoring in Peace and Conflict Studies. His eldest son, John, taught at Four Seasons several years ago.
