Manuel Azuaje-Alamo, Associate Professor in the Faculty of Letters, Arts and Sciences
Having grown up bilingual in English and Spanish in Venezuela, Nicaragua, and the United States, Manuel Azuaje-Alamo graduated from the University of Alberta in Canada. He holds a Master’s degree from the University of Tokyo and another from Harvard University, where he is also a PhD candidate in Comparative Literature. After obtaining his first doctoral degree from the University of Tokyo he worked as an adjunct lecturer at Toyo University and Sophia University, amongst other institutions, and now holds a position as Associate Professor at Waseda University. He has studied abroad in Brazil, Korea, China, and Taiwan, and specializes in world literature, comparative literature, and translation theory.
As you can imagine from the fact that my specialty is world literature and comparative literature, I was what you would call a “bookworm” from early age. Ever since I can remember, I have loved printed text, particularly novels that depict landscapes from another world or foreign countries. That “love of travel” is still alive and well.
Most of the literary works that I teach at university and that I deal with in my research are fiction, but I also love reading non-fiction, especially history books. Since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, reading biographies of past US presidents has become somewhat of a hobby of mine. As the English saying goes, “The past is a foreign country: they do things differently there,” and it is really interesting and fun to read about the way in which American culture and people’s lifestyles have changed at a micro level since the times of the first president, Washington. The biographies of the presidents of the United States are all over 800 pages long, so I finally finished reading that of the tenth president this spring. There is still a long way to go to get to 19th-century Lincoln, let alone Kennedy in the 20th century, but I plan to enjoy this reading journey as a manner of time travel.
Biographies on the bookshelf. I usually leave the books that I read full of sticky notes.
I love how my helmet comes with a built-in tinted visor for those sunny days.
With the coming of the pandemic, when we all started spending more time alone and avoiding crowds, I made it a hobby of mine to ride my motorcycle around the city and suburbs wearing a helmet in lieu of a face mask.
Like Japanese cars, Japanese motorcycles are quite famous all over the world, and even before I came to Japan, I was familiar with motorcycles by Japanese manufacturers, such as Yamaha, Suzuki, Honda, and Kawasaki, and always considered them to be as cool as they looked; so I got my driving license in my early twenties when I came to Japan for graduate school and have been riding motorcycles ever since.
From left to right: Kawasaki Epsilon 250 and Suzuki SV650 ABS. The Epsilon was the first motorcycle I bought in Japan, and I have many memories of it, such as traveling all the way to Osaka.
I love the nature of Japan, so on weekends I often go on day trips or overnight tours to the areas near Tokyo (Izu Peninsula, Hakone, Karuizawa, Chichibu, etc.). When I don’t have a whole weekend available, I ride my motorcycle to Odaiba Marine Park or IKEA in the suburbs. I also go to the Tokyo Game Show at Makuhari Messe every year by motorcycle. The longest distance I’ve gone is from Tokyo to Osaka, but I would like to try touring in Hokkaido someday. Every time I go touring, I think that Japan is best seen by motorcycle after all (LOL).
A visit to Nikko in Tochigi Prefecture
*This article is a translation from the Japanese edition of Waseda Weekly published on November 17, 2022. The content is current at the time of Japanese publication.
