When Ari Druker '93 graduated from Colby, he didn't linger. "I drove cross-country after I graduated and then went back to New York and just hopped on a plane." His destination? Nagano, Japan (about five years before anyone had heard of it), to teach English in a rural school.

As the newest English teacher in the small town of Iida, Druker found himself in the spotlight. "I was in the newspapers," he said, "and on TV. [I'd] go out to dinner . . . and the next day I'd go into one of the schools and one of the kids would be like, 'my father's brother runs an Italian restaurant and said you were in there with a girl!'"

Beyond celebrity, Druker also ran into an unexpected language barrier: "A foreigner speaking Japanese . . . nobody really knew what to do with you. [People] would just look at me and say, 'I don't speak English!' Then I'd have to tell them, 'I am speaking Japanese to you.' They just looked at you and automatically tuned you out. It was quite weird."

With little prospect of blending into the rural landscape, after a year Druker opted for a change of scenery--Tokyo. The only foreigner among 2,000 natives at Hitachi Maxell Ltd., Druker spent the next two and a half years perfecting his Japanese in the company's international marketing and sales division. Then, with a couple of years at Pfizer Pharmaceuticals and a brief stint of e-commerce under his belt, Druker made his way to his current position in the credit risk management sector of Deutsche Bank's Tokyo branch.

In Tokyo, Druker found that people were much more accepting of foreigners. And, already unfazed by urban life, this Big Apple native saw it as "just another big city where people speak Japanese . . . kind of a big version of New York." In the past eight years, Druker has watched Tokyo become much more international, with foreign restaurants and magazines popping up everywhere. "You can basically conduct your everyday living without speaking Japanese. But, of course, half the fun is doing things differently," he insisted, "so I try not to do only the things that foreigners would do."

Despite his cultural immersion, however, this ex-pat still finds time to organize what he calls the "official unofficial [Colby alumni] club" in Tokyo. Born out of a casual dinner with Kurt Niebuhr '94, Nozomi Kishimoto '96 and Oak Professor of East Asian Language and Literature Tamae Prindle, the first event got off the ground about five years ago. "We figured if it's fun and easy for the three of us to get together," he said, "it would be equally as easy and fun to meet the other alumni in Tokyo."

"Some of the other clubs are quite official," Druker said. "I know for Dartmouth, people pay dues and there's like a secretary." But events in Tokyo seem to spring up more organically: "Whenever there was a reason to get together--we would. A music teacher at Colby was coming over with something like the Portland String Quartet or maybe a Waterville quartet. So we held an event then. Typically it's small, casual, but fun. It's always good to catch up."

Combining forces most recently with Michelle Kang (Williams '95), Druker now coordinates functions open to all NESCAC alumni. One recent event was a NESCAC bowling tournament at the Tokyo American Club. Bowling in Tokyo? Druker saw the irony: "I think it's kind of like bowling in the States--you know, more on the fringe. I mean, above eighteen or nineteen, who goes bowling anymore?" But as Druker pointed out: "It's fun."

Just married to Miho, who works for Japan Airlines, Druker said he feels quite settled in Tokyo. And whether it's students seeking internships or alums passing through, he's getting used to being Colby's go-to guy there. "It's so funny," Druker mused. "I've kind of become the unofficial [Tokyo] contact. I don't know if I'd be doing all of this if I were in the States . . . but I do what I can."

--Leila Porteous '02