Lawson Lancaster (Japanese, 2010)
Lawson studied Japanese at Hertford College before pursuing a career in insurance. Now based in Tokyo, he uses the knowledge he acquired at university on a daily basis and anticipates that his career will be firmly rooted in the Japanese speaking world for some time.
Coming from a single-parent family in a somewhat rural part of London, I never expected I would end up going to university, let alone Oxford. In fact, for most of secondary school I dreamed of being a pro tennis player, that was until I somehow had the luck to be offered the opportunity to study Japanese, a path which would eventually lead me to five years studying Japanology at Hertford.
During my time at Hertford I grew a lot as a person – not only thanks to the friends I made but also my professors and other people throughout the college. I came to Hertford sounding like a teenager who was trying to imitate the accent of ‘rude boy’ and left being able to pronounce the ‘th’ sound properly whilst also being fluent in two dialects of Japanese.
It’ll be two years this summer since I’ve graduated and since then I’ve entered the largest insurance company in Japan to work in the sales department. Though I presumed that a decent amount of my work would use English (though Japanese would be main), it turns out that all my accounts/clients are Japanese firms so my day-to-day work is done completely in Japanese (this is in fact the first time in ages that I’ve written English, not counting Facebook messages of course). It seems that I’ll be working here in Tokyo for a couple more years before I get transferred to the US or somewhere in Europe as the Japanese representative for my company – though me being non-Japanese will probably confuse many of my future colleagues, so I’m looking forward to the banter that will ensue when that time comes.
Regarding my proudest achievements, I’d have to say one is when I got 97% in the Japanese Life Insurance Qualification exam. I came 12th out of 217 colleagues who took the exam that year, confusing many people as non-native people assumed I would get a near pass or fail (#proudtoprovethemwrong). Another is my ability to somehow always get a business card when I do door-to-door sales (not to individuals but to large companies), despite my boss and other colleagues getting consistently turned away – I believe it’s all down to my charm though others suspect my non-Japanese surname draws clients’ attention. I’ll leave it up for you to decide which is more plausible, either way it gets the sale done.
Going back to my time at Hertford, it is strange to think that it was two years since I left and seven since I first matriculated! One of the things that I always thought was great about Hertford was its size. I made so many good friends there and I regularly get messages of Hertfordians telling me they are in Japan and that they want to meet up – and we do! One piece of advice I would pass on would is to make sure that you keep the future in mind whilst going through your time in Oxford. I was there for five years but it all went so quickly and all of a sudden you are an adult working a job have and much more responsibility. Find some friends, find some hobbies and have a vision for future – these three are essential to building a great future for yourself.