Tariffs, trains and PB&J: Associate Professor of Economics Jason Query’s Fulbright year in Japan

One of the questions on the Fulbright application asks how prepared you are to live and work in your host country; for Western Washington University Associate Professor of Economics Jason Query, culture shock was the whole point.  

“I’m a pretty adaptable person,” said Query. “Part of the point is that I’m not in America for this year, I’m experiencing something new.”  

The Fulbright Scholar Program is an international education and cultural exchange program sponsored by the U.S. government. Unlike the Fulbright Student Program, the scholar program is designed for faculty and researchers.

“I knew I wanted to spend my professional leave abroad, but I didn’t know how to go about it. I reached out to Mark Greenberg over at the Office of Global Engagement to inquire about a possible teaching exchange,” said Query. “Fulbright wasn’t even on my mind until Mark brought it up.”

The timing was right to apply, so Query jumped on it.

“There’s a pretty big, involved application,” he said. “I had to write an essay saying what I wanted to do, why I wanted to do it, why I wanted Japan,” he said. “I had to say whether I wanted to do research, teaching, or a combination of both.”

Query chose teaching because he wanted to bring an international experience back to his classroom at Western.

“At Western, most of us were educated in the U.S. and have lived in the U.S. long enough that we can’t necessarily bring the full outside perspective,” said Query. “I think getting exposed to those perspectives is important for everyone. The world is so connected now that you really can’t do business in a monoculture.”

Query teaches microeconomics, international economics, international trade, and sports economics in the College of Business and Economics. He spent his Fulbright year teaching at Kwansei Gakuin University and Kobe Women’s University in the Kansai Region of Honshu, Japan’s largest island.

On weekends and breaks, Query hopped on Japan’s extensive and efficient train system to explore the country, food, and culture he’s been interested in since high school.

As an international trade economist, much of his research focuses on the infrastructure of trade — the transportation network that includes ports, bridges, roads, and trains — so a lot of this travel doubled as research.  

On one of these trips, Query traveled north to Hokkaido Island in February to attend the Sapporo Snow Festival and stand at the northernmost point of Japan.

“When I went to Hokkaido, I specifically took the bullet train rather than flying,” he said. 

It’s a seven-hour train ride, compared to an hour or two in the air. He chose the train partly because he prefers train travel, and partly because he wanted to experience the Shinkansen bullet train passing through the undersea tunnel connecting Honshu and Hokkaido. Completed in 1988 for cargo and regular passenger trains, the tunnel is now also used by bullet trains, which began offering faster passenger travel in 2016.    

“The cargo trains can’t run next to the bullet trains because the bullet trains are moving so fast and displacing so much air that it’s not safe for cargo trains,” said Query. “There’s not a lot of those types of issues in America.”    

He met the designer of the Akashi Kaikyo Bridge, the second-longest suspension bridge in the world, at a Fulbright alumni event and later got a behind-the-scenes tour that included riding a maintenance elevator to the highest point of the bridge tower, the height equivalent of the 98th floor.

Query’s economist brain likes to think about how trains, bridges, and other infrastructure choices impact trade.

“I sometimes describe economics as a way of thinking about things,” said Query. “It’s about how people allocate their limited resources to achieve unlimited wants. People have conflicting interests; how does that play out?”  

In late 2024 and early 2025, everyone wanted to talk to him about tariffs.  

“Being an American trade economist in a foreign country during a time when the U.S. took a very sharp turn away from the historical norm towards a more isolationist trade policy? People wanted to talk to me about it,” he said. “I had a lot of students in class who were anxious about tariff policy.”  

Economics concepts aren’t always the easiest to learn, but living in a time when tariffs are in the news does make it easier. It’s important to Query to teach economics in a way that’s relevant and relatable.

"I took econ in high school and hated it. In college, I had to take it again as part of my accounting degree. I was dreading it, but I ended up loving it,” said Query. “That’s sort of why I wanted to go into academia, because that experience made me realize how the right teacher — or the wrong one — can affect how a student engages.”  

In addition to making professional and personal connections during his Fulbright year, teaching Japanese students generated ideas that he’s bringing back to WWU. As he learned about cultural nuances, Query found new ways to get and keep students interested and involved. He also began examining how his own cultural background shapes his teaching.  

“There’s an economic concept called complementary goods — goods that you buy together. The classic example is peanut butter and jelly,” said Query. “When I used that in my classes in Japan, the students were like, ‘What are you talking about?’”    

The example didn’t click with them the way it would with American students, and this made him rethink some of the examples he uses.  

For fun, during the last week of classes, they made peanut butter and jelly sandwiches.

“I was there to share American culture, so we had discussions about the great crunchy versus smooth debate. I was like, we take this pretty seriously,” he laughed. “They always wanted to talk about American food.”

And he wanted to talk about Japanese food. A true cultural exchange.

Learn more about the Department of Economics in the College of Business and Economics and explore how WWU’s Office of Global Engagement supports Fulbright and other global learning, teaching, and research opportunities.

Jennifer Nerad covers Western's College of Business and Economics and College of the Environment for the Office of University Communications. Have a great story idea? Reach out to her at neradj@wwu.edu.