A chance encounter with Japan

Doug Etzel was born and raised in Keizer, Oregon, a town around 50 miles south of Portland. By the time he entered Oregon State University to study electrical engineering, he says, “I had no experience with Japan, and no experience traveling outside the U.S.”

However, an invitation by a close friend to spend the summer in Osaka teaching English led him, on a whim, to Japan for the first time in 1986. He describes the experience: “It was a huge shock. I was raised in the countryside, and now I was living in the middle of Osaka, a big city. Everything about it was very new to me, but it was exciting.”

Etzel enjoyed Osaka so much that he decided to extend his stay, from three to six months. “I couldn’t take it all in fast enough,” he explains. “I was blessed with a very kind, friendly, and fun host family, who lived in a bustling, working-class neighborhood. I’d return from my job teaching English in Kobe, help out in the host family’s okonomiyaki restaurant, and chat with customers from the neighborhood. Although I didn’t speak much Japanese yet and most of the neighbors didn’t speak much English, we had a great time!”

While Etzel eventually had to return to the U.S. to finish his degree, the spark for Japanese learning and a desire to return to Japan to work had been ignited within him – something he never would have imagined just a year earlier.

Returning to Japan

After graduating from OSU, Etzel found a job at the Portland branch of the Japanese company Seiko Epson Corporation, a manufacturer of printers and information- and imaging-related equipment, and was sent to Nagano, Japan for a year of training, during which he continued to study and improve his Japanese abilities.

Once back in the U.S., he continued his Japanese studies part-time at Portland State University, and it was around this time that he decided that he wanted to work in Japan. His connections at PSU also provided him with an opportunity to study abroad at Waseda University in 1989.

“I was interested in living and working in Japan,” he recalls, “so that was the goal I was working towards. I decided—and this was a tough decision because I had a decent job here in Portland—to quit my job and go back to Japan, and that’s when I went to Waseda.”

At Waseda, he stayed with the family of a retired Waseda professor of robotics, who had a long history of hosting students from Oregon. He was very committed to improving his Japanese and passed the exam to be placed in the highest-level Japanese course.

Etzel with his mother, who was visiting Japan, and his host family at Waseda

While at Waseda, Etzel was active in the basketball club in addition to keeping up with his studies and forging connections with his fellow study abroad students in the Kokusaibu (Waseda’s former program for foreign students on exchange from overseas partner universities, which was abolished in 2004 with the establishment of the School of International Liberal Studies), with many of whom he maintains ties to this day.

Etzel looks back on his time at Waseda as invaluable not only for the strides he made in mastering the Japanese language itself, but also for providing him the time and experience to become comfortable with all other facets of Japanese life – everything from getting a haircut to going to the doctor. “All those little things,” he reflects. “Each one is a little triumph as you figure out how to do it and how to say the things in Japanese to accomplish what you’re trying to accomplish.”

Etzel (third from the right) and other Waseda study abroad students featured in a photo that appeared in the Japan Times in June 1991

Building a life and career in Japan and the U.S.

The extra time and effort Etzel put into improving his Japanese paid off, as in 1990, after completing his one year of study at Waseda, he was able to procure a job in the Japanese branch of the U.S. tech company NCR, located in Kanagawa Prefecture. 

This was the start of a long career working at several foreign software companies, splitting time between the U.S. and Japan. “I would live in Japan for four or five years,” he explains, “and if there was an opportunity in the U.S., I would go back to the U.S. for a few years. I got married at one point, so my wife and I moved back to the U.S., where I went to graduate school at Berkeley, and then we went back to Japan for several more years.”

Etzel wrapped up his professional career at software company Veeva Systems, where he served as President of the firm’s Asia operations for nearly ten years.

Launching dual scholarships for the next generation

Once he retired, in addition to continuing to serve as an advisor for Veeva Systems, Etzel felt that he wanted to help a variety of charities and causes. He also had an idea to support study abroad students specifically, considering the major role studying abroad had played in determining the course of his life and career.

“I started initially here in Portland,” he explains, “I joined an advisory board at Portland State University where they have an excellent center for Japanese Studies. I got more involved with the program, and my wife and I decided to help students go from Oregon to Japan.” Thus, he established the Etzel Japanese Language Study Abroad Scholarship at Portland State University, which sends one to two students to study at Waseda University or a comparable Japanese institution each year.

“After we did that scholarship,” he continues, “I wondered if we could also establish a scholarship from Waseda to Oregon, because I think Oregon is a good destination for exchange students from Japan.”

Portland State University Campus

Working together closely with Waseda USA, Waseda University’s outpost for international outreach and alumni support in the U.S., Etzel established the Oregon Study Abroad Scholarship at Waseda University in 2024. The grant provides financial support to one Waseda student a year to study abroad in Oregon.

Mie Kichiya, the first recipient of the Oregon Study Abroad Scholarship, successfully completed a year abroad at Portland State University in the 2024-25 school year, and the next recipient of the scholarship has already been selected for an autumn semester start at Oregon State University.

Supporting a cause close to the heart

Regarding his motivations for giving back to Waseda and the educational communities of Japan and Oregon, Etzel says, “I’m at the point in my life where I’m able to give back to help some charities and causes. Studying abroad changed my life, so I think it can potentially change the lives of other young people.”

To other Waseda alumni and former study abroad students who have similarly reached a point of their lives where they are in a position to give back in some way, he stresses the significance of selecting a cause with which one has a special connection or personal history.

“Waseda is very close to my life and my experience,” he says. “I think anybody that’s an exchange student – you always have special memories about that time. So, being able to create this scholarship at Waseda, where I spent time, is very rewarding and very satisfying.”

And ultimately, it is about the students who will benefit from this and other scholarships. Whether to Oregon or other locations, Etzel strongly believes that experiencing life abroad – and all the joys and challenges that that encompasses – is a valuable experience.

“I think that for Japanese young people, going overseas is just a great experience if they can have that opportunity. What we’re trying to do with the scholarship is to help them out.”