ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Thursday, December 26, 1996 TAG: 9612260002
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: C-4 EDITION: METRO
DATELINE: MANASSAS
SOURCE: Associated Press
AN INFLUX OF INDUSTRY into Northern Virginia has turned the historic community into a melting pot as it enters the ``last throes'' of small-town life.
Akio Kurihara encountered a new word when he read the menu at the Sandwich Factory Cafe. ``What's pastrami?'' he asked waitress Anette Snyder.
``Pastrami,'' Snyder repeated. ``How do I explain pastrami?''
Kurihara, who settled on ham salad instead, is one of many Japanese newcomers to this Northern Virginia community. A little more than a year ago, IBM and Toshiba Corp. announced plans to build a $1.2 billion computer chip plant in the historic city of 32,000, about 30 miles west of Washington.
Since then, about 50 Japanese have moved to the area to work in the nearly completed Dominion Semiconductor plant or for companies that arrived to support it.
Kurihara, a media consultant in Japan, is working as a City Hall intern, an effort by the city to accommodate and understand the newcomers who have quadrupled the number of Japanese or Japanese Americans already living here.
Manassas is doing its best to make them feel at home. One day as Yamamoto Hajime, vice president of Moses Lake Industries, walked down the street, local barber Jim Eskins waved him in his shop to introduce him to everyone.
Hajime smiled at the memory. Americans are ``very bright, smiling. It's good,'' he said.
Eskins said he just wanted to welcome the new arrivals. ``When people come like that, they're lonely,'' he said. ``They don't know anybody.''
The change is making Manassas more like a Washington suburb and less like a country crossroads, residents say.
``Manassas is in the last throes of being a small town,'' said Mac Tredway, an official of the Manassas campus of Northern Virginia Community College.
Tredway said the college is trying to help the community adjust, adding two Japanese language classes and a course called ``Getting to Know the Japanese'' to next semester's schedule.
The Japan Virginia Society, an 8-year-old organization founded to encourage Japanese business throughout the state and ease culture shock on both sides, plans to hold business and community forums, according to Executive Director Barbara Nesbitt.
Meanwhile, places such Carmello's Italian Restaurant are making their own adjustments. It's one of Hajime's favorites, and the waitress there knows to hand him a sheet listing the specials rather than try to make him understand her Italian-accented English.
``Always she shows me,'' he said.
But there are still occasional cultural clashes, such as a suggestion by the Carmello's waitress that Hajime order wine in the middle of the day. He was shocked.
``Afternoon, I must work,'' he said.
LENGTH: Medium: 59 linesby CNB