The professor, who is 88, told his students that he planned to move permanently to Japan this summer where he will seek citizenship. He noted that this might seem unusual, given last month’s devastating earthquake and tsunami.
“This is a time when many foreigners are leaving Japan,” he said, adding that people have asked him “why I should be choosing this moment to spend the rest of my life in Japan.”
He said later that he decided to move there — “to voluntarily and gladly join the people in time of disaster” — because, “I have more friends there than I have here, and most of my awards have come there.”
He said he wanted to show his appreciation to the Japanese people, and that, “I could think of no other way than to say I’d be with them” despite the disastrous events.
http://cityroom.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/04/26/columbia-professors-retirement-is-big-news-in-japan/?partner=rss&emc=rss-------------------------------------
I feel exactly the same and I am doing it at half his age (and 1/100th) of his achievements. But the gratitude is precisely the same.