Introduction

In June of 2008, I was honored with the great privilege of participating in the Japan Fulbright Memorial Fund Teacher Program. The JFMF Teacher Program is funded by the Government of Japan as part of the "People-to-People Exchange" initiatives. Established in 1996, the Japan Fulbright Memorial Fund commemorated the 50th anniversary of the Fulbright Program, which has provided scholarships for 6,800 Japanese nationals to study in the United States. The JFMF program is a symbol of the Japanese people's thanks to Americans and an expression of Japan's continued commitment to better understanding and friendship between our two nations.

As a participant in the JFMF program, I (along with 159 other teachers from all fifty states across the U.S.) gained a first-hand experience of Japan's culture and education. During my three-week immersion in Japan, I visited schools from elementary through university level and talked with Japanese educators, students, fellow participants in the JFMF program, and many others about the commonalities and differences between the education systems in Japan and United States. I also learned about Japan's rich culture. I attended presentations on Japan's government, economy, and education system, toured the National Diet of Japan, strolled through the east gardens of the Imperial Palace, saw a kyogen play, learned about kabuki theater and traditional Japanese music, took part in a tea ceremony, ate peppered rice crackers, tiny fish with eyes staring up at me, gelatinous bean paste desserts, and many other mysterious dishes, went for many long walks through Tokyo neighborhoods, stood packed like sardines while riding the subway at rush hour, walked inside the Great Buddha statue in Kamakura, bathed in an onsen (hot spring), slept on a thin futon and buckwheat pillow laid out on tatami mats, traveled to the sacred Kumano Kodo pilgrimage routes in Wakayama Prefecture, and visited dozens of ancient Shinto shrines and Buddhist temples. My time in Japan was so dense that it felt more like three months than three weeks.

Now that I am back in the United States, I'm eager to share my experiences with my students, colleagues, family, and friends. I hope to use this blog gives you a better understanding of my trip and becomes a starting point for conversations. Hopefully, after reading about my experiences in Japan, you will have been bitten by the bug of travel and will set out on a journey of your own!

Day One

DAY ONE (06/08/08)

My journey to Japan has finally begun! I’m on the plane, headed to San Francisco to meet 159 teachers from across the U.S. for a one-day orientation before heading off to Tokyo together! The reality of this trip is finally setting in!

Looked at another way though, you could say that my journey to Japan actually began about seven months ago when I first heard about the Japan Fulbright Memorial Fund Teacher Program and decided to apply. An alumna from the Master in Arts and Teaching Program I completed at Brown went to Japan this past October with the JFMF program and sent an email to the MAT alumni listserv describing her wonderful time there. I was immediately intrigued by the idea of traveling to the far east, being immersed in a culture so different from my own, having the chance to meet 159 other teachers from all over the US, and exploring the Japanese education system together as we also learned about the similarities and differences between our own teaching experiences across America’s vast landscape.

As part of my application into the program, I put a lot of thought into how I could enhance my own classes with the knowledge I’d garner in Japan and how I could best share my experience with my students, colleagues, friends, family, and wider community. I hope to set up some kind of internet collaboration between my classes and a Japanese middle school class. I also want to learn as much as I can about Japanese poetry, theater, and visual art forms such as the sumi-e form of ink painting, something that I have incorporated into a haiku scroll project with my seventh graders.

On the side, I have also been reading several books such as Confucius Lives Next Door, The Japanese Education Challenge, Shogun, and Dave Barry Does Japan. I’ve been watching Japanese movies or movies set in Japan such as Spirited Away, Seven Samurai, Lost in Translation, and Kill Bill. My increased curiosity about Japan has found me surfing the web for info on the places I will visit and buying Japanese dictionaries and CD sets so that I will know at least a dozen useful phrases such as konnichiwa (hello), domo arigato (thank you), sumimasen (I’m sorry), and sayonara (goodbye). Now I think I will try to doze off for a while.

Day Two

DAY TWO (06/09/08, 10:30am)

Scanning the crowd in the large conference room of the Sheraton Gateway Hotel yesterday afternoon, I noticed that many people looked familiar from the JFMF cohort website. I recalled their enthusiastic introductions on the listserv and remembered that for some people, being here means leaving their children and spouses behind for three weeks. For others it means traveling to another country for the first time. The participants in this program range in age from their early 20s to their late 60s, from kindergarten teachers to high school teachers offering specialized classes such as dental technology or interior design. A woman I met earlier comes from a tiny village in Alaska that can only be reached by plane. I’ve traveled more than some here and a lot less than many others. I couldn’t possibly afford a trip like this one though, and I am particularly excited by the chance to go into the schools, to stay with a host family for a night, and to go beyond a purely tourist experience of Japan and to gain a window into what daily life is like for the people living there.

I had the chance to meet many others last night at the reception dinner held for us at the consulate general’s house in San Francisco. While dining on delicious Japanese food, we chatted about where we are from, what we teach, how exhausted and excited we are.

Now, we are all waiting now in the lobby of the Sheraton Gateway hotel, waiting for our bus to the airport as models strut down runways on flat-screen TVs hanging on the lobby walls. I’m happy to finally be meeting some of my fellow JFMFers in person, especially my city group with whom I will be spending a week in Tanabe. Cheers to being that much closer to Japan! Kampai!

Day Three (and morning of Day Four)

DAY THREE (06/11/08, 4:30am)

Dawn is rising as I sit on the couch of my 30^th floor suite looking out over a panoramic view of Tokyo’s towering buildings fading into the distant fog. I woke up at 2:30am (1:30pm by Rhode Island time) feeling wide awake. I tossed and turned for a while, trying to force myself to rest more for the busy day ahead, but after half an hour I resigned myself to the fact that I was far too excited to sleep. By 3:00 I was standing on my bed, adjusting my zoom lens to capture this spectacular, sweeping view. The sky was still dark and lights glimmered in thousands of windows throughout the city. Flashing red lights marked the tops of all the tallest buildings, warning pilots not to stray too close, I suppose.

After photographing the view, my king-sized bed (I can stretch out sideways and still not reach either end of the bed with my head or feet!), and the toilet seat with its array of buttons for warming (the seat) and spraying (one’s derriere) and creating privacy noises (can’t have anyone hear you plop or tinkle!), I decided to take a shower. The many little bottles of body wash, shampoo, conditioner, and lotion all say “Refrest”, perhaps easier for the Japanese to say than “refreshed”. Well, I must say I am feeling quite “refrest” at the moment, stretched out on the couch in a Japanese robe, watching the sky turn lighter shades of grayish blue.

Yesterday we left the Sheraton Hotel in San Francisco at 9:45am and caught a 1:00pm direct flight to Tokyo. The flight was a little over ten hours (my cracking knees insisted that it felt more like twenty, however). When not watching movies, eating, or sleeping, I read a good portion of Confucius Lives Next Door, a fabulous book by Tom Reid, a journalist for the Washington Post, who spent several years living with his wife and two daughters all throughout East Asia. Throughout the book he emphasizes what he calls the “cultural miracle” of the East—its strikingly low crime rate, strong family units, and world-renowned education statistics—and then explores why this might be and what he feels the West could learn from the East. His book is also full of funny anecdotes and history.

Once we arrived in the Narita airport I was stunned by how quickly and easily we all passed through customs. I don’t think a single suitcase was opened. There were dozens of smiling Japanese workers with white gloves and starched uniforms, bowing and gesturing the way to go. Most of our luggage had already been taken off the conveyer belts by the time we arrived, neatly stacked and waiting for us. Within minutes we were on a bus, headed on a two-hour ride to our hotel, the Grand Prince Hotel Akasaka, in Tokyo.

On the way we passed Disneyland (a very colorful and ornate building modeled after the Disneyland in Anaheim, CA). Other than Disneyland, however, almost all of the buildings were a very modern style in varying shades of gray and brown. Tokyo seems to be a city of concrete and glass. And people, so many people! There are about 12 million people living in Tokyo. Many of them ride bikes or scooters or walk.

Almost all of the people I saw walking (except for foreigners) were professionally dressed, men in dark suits and ties and women in blouses, skirts, and high heels. I saw one woman riding by on a bike with a face mask on, much like a doctor wears when performing surgery, and it reminded me of an anecdote from Reid’s book about how in Japan people wear face masks not to avoid getting germs but to prevent spreading germs and getting others sick when they have a cold. It’s hard to even imagine such a degree of consideration existing in the US (at least on a large community scale, not an isolated incident).

Last night a few university students from Tokyo met a bunch of us JFMFers (Japan Fulbright Memorial Fund participants) at the hotel and took us out for dinner. The program gave us some money to pay for our own meals while we are here. My group, two young women from Tokyo and six exhausted Americans, went to a little restaurant that serves various kinds of raw meat which you then cook in the center of your table over a kind of indoor barbeque. We took off our shoes at a section beside our table and then stepped up onto a platform that had a table just a few inches above the floor but a sunken area for our legs beneath the table. I ended up trying a few pieces of the meat but for my main meal I ordered a sesame noodle soup which was delicious.

Our dinner hosts had prepared a packet for us with maps and recommended shops throughout Tokyo. One of the girls said that she would like to move to Spain eventually and the other spent a year and a half in Boston learning English and she plans to be an English teacher either in Japan or the US. We all conversed as best we could in our bleary-eyed, jet-lagged state, but it was clear that the foremost thought on everyone’s mind was sleep. By 10:45pm we arrived back at our hotel and I immediately crawled into bed and slept like a rock until 4:30 this morning.

Today we will be doing some sight-seeing in Tokyo, shopping, and going to a kyogen theater performance later this afternoon. I’ll keep you posted!

Day Four

DAY FOUR (06/12/08, 6:30am)

Finally a long night’s sleep! I went to bed around 10:30 and woke up at 6:15. Now I am back on the same couch, looking through rain-splattered windows at a rather deserted Tokyo. Not many cars and even fewer people on foot seem to be moving about at this hour.

Yesterday morning I had breakfast on the 40^th floor of the hotel (the top). Some traditional American food was served—French toast, eggs, bacon and sausage, fruit, Danishes of various sorts—but there was also a range of Japanese dishes such as cooked cabbage, seaweed salad, miso soup, fish, and cured apricot that tasted like a mouthful of salty vinegar. I didn’t try everything but I will make a point of trying it all at least once in the next few days.

View from Breakfast Room

After breakfast we went to a one-hour orientation speech covering important background information we should know about the program, expectations, and logistics for the next three weeks. Then we boarded buses for a tour of Tokyo. Our first stop was the Diet, a government building where the house of representatives meets. With 160 teachers filling the long corridors, one tour guide from the Diet up front, and one of our own group tour guides translating for everyone, it was often difficult to hear what was being said. Many times I only got smidgeons of the conversation such as something about a mysterious stain on the carpet that could not be explained since no one had ever stepped there before or a gold clock worth 100,000,000 yen (one million dollars) that could be seen on the mantel place in the emperor’s waiting room or something about there being fossils in the marble walls (someone did point out a fish and two shells that I could barely make out on one wall).

Following the tour of the Diet we went into the Asakusa neighborhood of Tokyo for lunch and some shopping. We ate in a tempura restaurant. We sat on tatami mats and cushions much like in the restaurant I went to on my first night here. I sat at the vegetarian table where each place was neatly set with a variety of fried vegetables, a bowl of sticky white rice, a salad with a delicious sesame dressing, a bowl of miso soup, and a tangerine. Everything was quite delicious. It was funny to watch us Americans struggle with the chopsticks, stabbing chunks of tempura or ripping it into smaller pieces with our hands and then awkwardly pinching it with the chopsticks only to drop it in the dipping sauce and splash ourselves.

After eating, we had about one hour to wander the surrounding area before meeting to take the bus back to the hotel. Right outside the restaurant was the gate to a Buddhist temple followed by a long stretch of densely packed shops selling trinkets, snacks, and souvenirs. There were kimonos, little plastic cats with bobbing heads, decorative paper umbrellas, traditional wooden sandals (some of the wedding sandals were on platforms about 2 feet high!), packaged cookies and rice crackers, and dozens of other little doodads. The experience was one of true sensory overload.

Across from some of the shops I saw a bunch of mothers on bicycles arriving at what appeared to be a kindergarten to pick up their children. Little kids in navy and white sailor uniforms with bright yellow shoes and straw hats came running and jumping into the play area where mothers loaded them up in the back seat of their bicycles and road off with them into the busy streets. I was fascinated by this scene and wanted to take pictures but a sign posted right in front read “No’t take photographs” so, trying to be a good ambassador from my country, I abided by the rules and put away my camera.

The long row of shops eventually led down to the main entrance to the shrine where people were fanning themselves with incense and buying paper fortunes. I place a 100 yen coin in the appropriate slot and then shook a metal canister full of sticks, each one with a different symbol on it. I then turned the can upside down and plucked out the stick that emerged. Finding the matching symbol on a wooden box, I opened the box and pulled out the first sheet of paper. The tradition goes that if you get a bad fortune you are supposed to tie it to some branches (there is a designated place to do this beside the shrine). If it is a good fortune, you keep it. My fortune was both. It was called The Final Small Fortune and it read:

“Happiness and trouble comes one after another fortune and damage visit you one by one. Your hair changed gray, in spite of your age young, it is because of your hard work and too much care and its pains. The spiritual trouble will come to you repeatedly, hundred and thousand times. But your superior senior will stop them, to keep your way open to the future. Your request is hard to be granted. The patient get well but late. The lost article will be found. Building a new house and removal are both well, but fortune is a half. The person you wait for comes late. If someone escort you, you can start a trip. Both marriage and employment are fortune but half.”

It was clearly a mixed bag, so I decided to keep it.

After reading my fortune I rushed to catch the bus back to the hotel where we went to a grand banquet hall to watch a kyogen performance, a type of classical Japanese theater. It was one of the most bizarre performances I have ever seen. The two performers, one a slave and the other a master, performed the story of a slave who wanted to get out of working so hard and traveling long distances on errands so he made up an ailment, a cramp in his leg. When the master did some kind of ritual healing to get rid of the cramp, the slave said that the cramp could not be done away with because it was an inherited cramp. He explained that all of his siblings before him had inherited the land, the family business, the family heirlooms, so that all that was left for him was a cramp. Realizing that the slave was faking it, the master led the slave to believe that there was going to be a great feast at the household where the slave was supposed to go for his errand, and everyone was going but the master had excused him from the trip on account of his cramp. Not wanting to miss a feast, the slave explained how his inherited cramp, being that it was from his family, was a gentle cramp and it could be reasoned with. He explained to his cramp that a very important event was about to occur and he would be forever grateful if his cramp would retreat just this once, and of course it could return any other time if it would let him be pain-free today. The cramp, being an understanding cramp, let up and the slave was miraculously able to walk. The master then explained that he was happy to know that the cramp could be reasoned with and could disappear if the slave wanted it to. He then explained that the feast was a lie and he sent his slave packing to do his duties and go on the long errand.

All kyogen plays are typically comedic plays with happy endings (no one dies and relationships are restored to their proper order). The plays usually are about simple, down-to-earth, everyday conflicts. There is rarely any deep evil and even criminals are not so bad because they will invariably fail at their crime.

What struck me the most about the play was the way in which the actors delivered their lines. They said everything very slowly and deliberately in a lyrical way with their voices starting on a low pitch, quickly jumping to a very high pitch, and then gradually working their way back down to the low pitch in a staccato. It was very strange to hear.

A couple hours after the play we had a reception with several more speeches followed by a toast and a buffet-style Japanese dinner. Running on so little sleep, I was straining to keep my eyes open. I wanted to get to know my fellow teachers and the Fulbright Scholars (Japanese people who studied in the US and came to this reception to meet us) but I just didn’t have the energy. Clearly others were having the same thought because the crowd grew smaller and smaller well before the event reached its scheduled end at 8:30.

Well, I need to get going to breakfast now and then to a full day of presentations from 9:30-4:00.

Days Five and Six

DAYS FIVE AND SIX (06/14/08, 4:50am)

Yesterday I attended a series of presentations on the Japanese economy, education system, and government. The presentation on the Japan’s economy was loaded with facts and figures. I learned that the population, which was 127 million in 2006, is on the decrease. They expect 100 million people to be living in Japan by 2050. The unemployment rate has been between 4-5% in recent years which is not as good as it has been in the past. Crime is also increasing although it is still stunningly low compared to the U.S. About 53% of students go on to college in both the U.S. and Japan. In Japan, however, more men attend college than women, whereas it is the opposite in the U.S. You can buy a hamburger in Japan for 90 cents but you could spend $350 dollars for one round of golf! The average commute in Tokyo is one and a quarter hours (wow!), but most of those people are riding the subway or train and they are busy sleeping, reading, or emailing on their cell phones.

For the presentation about the Japanese government, Hiroya Ichikawa, a professor from Akita International University, moderated a discussion between Yuji Tsushima (a Diet member of the House of Representatives and affiliated with of the Liberal Democratic Party which is currently in power) and Wakako Hironaka (a Diet member of the House of Councillors and affiliated with The Democratic Party of Japan, the opposition party at the moment). I was frustrated that Mr. Tsushima for often complementing Mrs. Hironaka’s looks and her husband’s intelligence (her husband is a well-known mathematician), comments that seemed irrelevant to the topic at hand. Hearing them banter back and forth about corruption in the government, improper spending, etc., reminded me very much of politics in the U.S.

I found Tsutomu Kimura’s presentation on the Japanese Education system to be by far the most interesting of the three. For those who don’t know, in Japan, only the first nine years of school are compulsory (through ninth grade), yet 99% of students continue on through high school which is three years and more than 50% go on to a university. The education system is highly centralized with the course of study prescribed by the Ministry. Give or take a few days, the same thing is being taught at the same time in schools all throughout Japan, from the northernmost island of Hokkaido, down through Honshu, and to the southern islands of Shikoku and Kyushu. The schools are starting to become less centralized, however. One of the major goals of education reform in Japan is to instill in children a lifelong love of learning and a creative intelligence so that they can identify problems and find creative solutions. Nevertheless, there is a lot of interest in maintaining their high scores, especially in math and science, and the amount of time spent on memorization and repetition required to do well on tests can seem, at least to me, to conflict with the goals of developing creative intelligence and a love of learning. Balancing the time spent for preparing students for standardized tests and the time needed to teach more hands-on, dynamic, and conceptual lessons for students is also a problem we face in the U.S.

The rainy weather let up just as we emerged from the presentation room at 4:00. Several teachers were heading out for a baseball game but I decided to go exploring Tokyo on foot by myself. I wandered the busy streets where salary men crowded pachinko shops. These shops seem to be a cross between video games, pinball, and gambling. The sheer noise of all the sound effects on the dozens of machines was enough to make a foghorn seem but a whisper. I watched as men in suits and ties fed trays full of tiny metal balls into slot machines and frantically punched buttons as the balls whizzed through convoluted paths.

I browsed through dozens of shops: a stationary store where I bought postcards and a few packets of stickers with geishas, carp, and kimonos, a 100 yen store where I bought some indoor slippers, four decorative sets of chopsticks, and several handkerchiefs, a clothing shop where I bought two pairs of socks made for the traditional, flip-flop-style wooden sandals worn with kimonos, a convenience store where I bought a few snack items like rice crackers, mango jelly-like candies, and caramel rice puffs. In most stores, the cashier could easily detect my limited Japanese and would display the amount I owed on a calculator. In one shop, however, the woman selling me a bar of chocolate said the price in Japanese and after staring at her blankly and fumbling around with my coins, I finally offered her an open handful of coins and let her take the appropriate amount. She giggled and obliged.

Last night I finished Confucius Lives Next Door and this morning, when I woke up at 3:00am, I pulled out Learning to Bow by Bruce Feiler, an American from Georgia who taught English in a small, mountainous city outside of Tokyo. It is a very well-written account of his experience, often funny, sometimes poetic, full of memorable anecdotes, the perfect bedside book while staying in Tokyo.

After reading for an hour and a half and then writing a few postcards, I decided to go for a walk. I ended up walking for over two hours, past the Akasaka Palace where a group of elderly people were doing Thai Chi in a nearby park, and then down some busy financial streets.

Most stores were still closed so I bought a mango drink from a vending machine and noticed that cigarettes are also for sale all over Tokyo in vending machines.

My dad, who has been smoking since he was 12 years old back when doctors actually recommended cigarettes to relax, would be angry to learn that they are only $3.00 a pack here (in the U.S., a pack of cigarettes costs close to $6.00)! I took a few detours through narrow, hilly streets lined with squat houses and apartments. Laundry hung on 2^nd story lines, cars were parked in narrow driveways with only one or two inches on either side of concrete walls. I couldn’t help but marvel at the skillful parking job and then wonder how the driver ever got out of the vehicle with so little room to spare! People were walking dogs and little family shop owners were just setting up their store fronts. I continued weaving my way through little neighborhoods, heading towards the Imperial Palace on the other side of my hotel. When I finally got there, however, and walked along the mote surrounding the foreboding walls and gates, I realized that the palace was closed to the public.

By the time I returned to the hotel I had worked up quite an appetite so I took the elevator to the 40^th floor, my ears popping all the way, and, I’m ashamed to say, I headed straight for the American side of the buffet. I wasn’t in the mood for a seaweed salad or slices of raw fish. Instead, I enjoyed a large serving of diced watermelon, pineapple, kiwi, and guava, as well as a chocolate croissant.

Our hotel at night

After breakfast, I went to a deeply moving presentation about peace by three people who have either directly or indirectly survived the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. The first presenter was a woman named Tomoko Yanagi whose father survived the bombing in Hiroshima and she described the shame and discrimination that her father felt for surviving. He rarely spoke of it because there was a strong fear of radioactivity and so many survivors, or “hibakushas”, were considered contagious and they had trouble finding housing, jobs, or spouses after the war. He did not want to disadvantage his daughter so he rarely talked about the trauma of that day.

We then watched a video of an interview with Susumu Ishitani, a man who survived the bombing of Nagasaki but recently passed away. He described laughing when he saw his sister’s face covered in ash, thick white powder caked in her eyebrows. He then talked about the pancake-sized blisters on his skin, and the later radiation symptoms people experienced such as hair loss, bleeding gums, fever, and strange spots on their skin. Doctors did not know how to treat radiation and many people had no idea what to expect.

The second speaker was Keijiro Matsushima, a man who survived the bombing of Hiroshima. He described in vivid detail his memory of that infamous day. He was in school and right after the bombing he remembers a blinding light and a deathly silence in the classroom. He described walking out of the classroom onto a street crowded with people covered in blood, with unrecognizable faces like baked pumpkins, with flesh hanging off of their chins and arms in strips so that he could see the raw muscles exposed. His mother saw the mushroom cloud from the rice paddies where she was working and because of the many rumors of death, she thought that he was dead. Ten days after the bombing, Hiroshima was covered in ash, but within three years construction had already begun, flowers were blooming out of the ash, and the resiliency of humankind could be seen in myriad ways throughout the city.

Each of these personal accounts was delivered with candor and heartfelt emotion. I couldn’t help but be deeply moved by their descriptions of what was probably the most tragic day in each of their lives. Unfortunately, the average age of a hibakusha is seventy-five, and as they die, so too do many of their stories. Hopefully enough people will pass on the horrific results of using atomic weapons so that such mass-scale pain and death will never be repeated.

After a buffet lunch we went to another presentation, this one about traditional Japanese theater and music. The itinerary listed kabuki and many of us thought that we might be going to a theater to see a kabuki play so it was somewhat disappointing to return to a windowless room in the hotel for a PowerPoint presentation. I felt like I was back in college at a lecture for a survey class. But our presenter spoke excellent English and was very funny and informative so he kept my attention for the full two hours. At the end of his presentation he and two other musicians played while a female dancer came onto the stage and demonstrated a kabuki dance. I glanced back and forth between the fluid, expressive dancing and the English translation of the lyrics being projected on the screen. The lyrics told the story of a bar scene, drinking games, a man falling in love with a woman who toys with his emotions. The styles may change but the basic themes of life seem to remain the same across cultures and time.

Following this presentation we broke up into our city groups and met for an hour to go over the logistics for our upcoming trip. My group contains 11 women and 5 men, teachers from kindergarten through 12^th grade, and 16 different states: Providence, RI; Ledyard, CT; New York, NY; Bethlehem, PA; Ellicott City, MD; Florence, MS; Midway, GA; Mulberry, FL; Dallas, TX; Stevensville, MI; Madison, WI; Oregon, OH; Layton, UT; Denver, CO; Angels Camp, CA; and Kealakekua, HI. Some of us are in our twenties with no children and others are grandparents.

By the time our meeting ended I was eager to get some fresh air and move around. It is amazing how exhausting just sitting can be when you do it for long enough! I wandered the streets for an hour or so, tried a few Japanese snacks such as a fluffy, stick-shaped thing made from peas and covered in salt and pepper and a jelly-like mango-flavored dessert. Then I spent a good portion of the evening in my hotel, writing postcards, reading Learning to Bow, bathing, and flipping through the channels of Japanese game shows, infomercials, and movies. With all the lights on and my book on my stomach, I drifted off to sleep.

Day Seven

DAY SEVEN (06/14/08, 9:30pm)

Today was my one free day of this entire trip. I decided to travel to Kamakura with a group of three people from my Tanabe group: Brent, a history teacher from Washington DC, Jennifer, a history teacher from California, and Bob, a dental technologies instructor from Ohio. Brent led the way, navigating us through the subway system, showing me how to work the ticket machines, and asking directions when necessary. Kamakura is a city on the ocean about one hour south of Tokyo. It is famous for its Shinto shrines, Buddhist temples, and a huge statue of the Buddha.

We began by visiting a famous Buddhist temple that, if I remember correctly, was originally located in Kyoto but was moved to Tokyo when the capital was relocated. From the temple we walked through crowded streets lined with shops, and eventually toward the great Buddha statue.

The statue stands almost 44 feet tall and at one point was located inside a temple, but when a tsunami swept the temple away, the exposed Buddha was left to sit beneath the sun. For 20 yen (about 20 cents) you can walk inside the statue. Brent, who is 6 feet, 5 inches tall and round in physique, was a source of much amusement as he tried to work his way up the narrow staircase (about 2 feet wide for people and their bags traveling both up and down the stairs).

On our way back to Tokyo we got off on Ginza Street, one of the most famous streets in Tokyo, know for its upscale shops. Skinny Japanese women in elegant dresses and four-inch heels strolled the streets, laden with shopping bags and designer purses. Looking at our band of frumpy, overweight American tourists in our T-shirts and white tennis shoes, I felt quite out of place. To make ourselves stand out even more obviously as gaijin (foreigners), we all ordered cheese pizza for dinner. We at least tried some sake (rice wine) which wasn’t bad.

When we returned to Akaska, a parade was just beginning near our hotel. Groups of people in kimonos, wooden platform sandals, and other traditional garments carried large, decorative palanquins covered in gold designs.

They chanted loudly and bounced the palanquins up and down as they made their way down the street. I shot dozens of photos and practiced my meager Japanese skills on passing children: Konnichiwa! (Hello). Sayonara! (Goodbye). They giggled and yelled hi, which could have also been “hai” meaning “yes”.

Day Eight

DAY EIGHT (06/15/08, 10:14pm)

Today was mainly a travel day. After a quick breakfast, I brought my luggage down to the lobby, checked out of my room, received some free hotel mints for filling out the evaluation form, boarded a bus to the airport, sat through a VERY turbulent flight to Osaka, took another bus to Wakayama City, and checked into our new hotel, Tokyu Inn. To give you a sense of the size of these cities, Tokyo has about 12 million people, the greater Osaka city has 8.7 million but Osaka city alone has 2.5 million, Wakayama city has 1.1 million, and Tanabe has a population of about 83,000. Long ago, the size of a city used to be measured by the bushels of rice produced there because farmers paid taxes with rice.

Our tour guide, Harumi, mentioned that rice can be harvested five times a year! As we drove from Osaka to Wakayama City, I noticed dozens of rice paddies nestled amongst relatively dense neighborhoods. Lush mountains surround the city.

On the bus ride over, Harumi sneezed and then explained a Japanese superstition about sneezing: if you sneeze once, someone is talking about you. If you sneeze twice, someone is talking ill of you. If you sneeze three times, someone loves you. If you sneeze four times, you are catching a cold. And if you sneeze five times, you better rush to a hospital. She later explained that she made up the parts about sneezing four or five times but the rest is true.

Our hotel is but a five minute walk from the Wakayama castle, a beautiful castle originally built in 1585 during the Tokugawa era but destroyed in 1945 by Allied bombing and rebuilt in 1958.

After quickly dropping off our bags in our rooms, we all met in the lobby and walked to the Wakayama castle. The inside of the castle is a museum with examples of samurai armor, weapons, and various other ancient artifacts. It started raining just as we left the castle so we did not stay for very long and we decided to skip the surrounding gardens. Instead, we headed back to our hotel for a short break before meeting with Harumi in the lobby to go to dinner at 6:00.

My room here feels like a matchbox compared to the suite I had at the Grand Prince Hotel in Akasaka. Brent jokingly said that if you had to share the room (which does have two twin beds), you would have to take turns standing up. In the shower, standing up is not even an option, at least not for anyone over six feet tall. I am just happy to have my own room, to be able to wake up at 3:00 in the morning, turn on a light, and read for an hour, to shuffle around in my yukata (a Japanese robe), and hog the Ethernet cable all for myself. One nifty amenity I discovered in this hotel is that a section of the bathroom mirror, about the size of legal paper, is heated so that it doesn’t fog up when you shower. My room also comes with a green tea-scented air freshener (very useful for masking the smell of smoke which is an inevitable smell in even the finest Japanese hotels since almost everyone smokes here).

For dinner we went to the Royal Host which is in no way royal except perhaps the fact that it is near a castle. It could best be described as the Japanese equivalent of a Denny’s. The menu offers pancakes and grilled chicken sandwiches, chocolate cake and pizza. But there were also a selection of Japanese dishes and many of the American options were not quite what you’d expect. For example, the pizza was served with a fried egg in the middle. The burger was served with fried rice patties instead of buns and there was a large slice of radish in the middle. The soda fountains served a bright green version of Fanta, perhaps melon flavored? I had a Japanese salad and a bowl of French onion soup which was quite delicious.

Well, my eyelids are becoming heavier by the minute.

Oyasuminasai! (Goodnight)

Day Nine

DAY NINE (06/16/08, 8:45pm)

At breakfast I tried the nastiest thing I have eaten to date, EVER! I picked up a small packet along the buffet line which had a kind of bean curd in it with a little packet of oil on top. I watched a Japanese man at another table stir the oil into the bean curd, dump it on his rice, and shovel it into his mouth. When I stirred the oil into the dish of bean curd, however, a thick, snot-like substance formed that would not break even when I stretched the chopsticks well above my head. The taste was absolutely foul. Of course I offered it to my friend Karen. With a long, gooey string stretching from my table to Karen’s, she touched a bit of it to her tongue and immediately pulled it away. The Japanese man one table over watched us and seemed to be silently laughing inside.

With about half an hour to spare before our bus ride to Wakayama University, John and I rushed out of the breakfast room to visit a small Buddhist cemetery a few blocks away. Just as many Japanese people are cramped and crowded in life, so too are they allotted very limited personal space in death. The headrests, which I later learned marked the spot of cremated bodies, were placed tightly together.

I’ve heard that most Japanese people have a Buddhist funeral in which their body is cremated and their ashes are place in an urn and stay with their family for 35 days before being buried in a cemetery. John and I stood in silence, admiring the peacefulness of this little haven in the midst of a busy city. Then, with a few minutes left to catch a bus, we rushed back to the hotel.

At Wakayama University, we had a question and answer session with students in a teacher training program, current teachers, professors, and administrators. It was eye-opening to learn that despite all of the differences between the U.S. and Japan, the teachers here face many of the same issues that we do back home. They complained about the difficulties of dealing with “monster parents”, the increasing loss of respect teachers get in these modern times, the low pay and long hours, and the pressure to always prepare students for standardized tests which results in schools cutting back on the arts and teachers cutting back on hands-on activities which take longer and won’t necessarily be directly tested. Yet despite all of these challenges, many teachers expressed a feeling that their work is an important social mission, that they love the daily interact with people and the connections they form with students that can significantly influence the course of many children’s lives. As a parting gift, we were each given a beautiful wooden serving plate with delicate pink flowers painted on the front and the name of the university in calligraphy on the back.

After our meeting at Wakayama University, we had a quick buffet lunch at a Japanese restaurant and then drove to Tanabe where we met with the mayor. We arrived a bit early and had time to walked to beach before our appointed meeting.

In our meeting room at Tanabe City Hall, we were served ume juice and salted, cured ume fruit (a specialty from this region since ume is harvested in Tanabe). Ume is often translated as plum but it is actually much more like a sour apricot. The juice was highly sweetened and quite delicious but the pickled ume was far too bitter for my tastes. I was surprised to learn that for lunch, children’s bento boxes used to contain a pile of rice with one pickled ume in the middle which looks much like the Japanese flag (the square of white rice with a reddish-orange circle in the middle).

It was embarrassing to watch as many of us butchered the phrase “my name is ______”. Instead of “Watashi wa _________ des(u)”—the “u” at the end is silent—people said “wateachi wa, watumi ma”, and on and on. Our laughable attempt at Japanese was later followed by a very eloquent presentation by a Japanese girl (in English) about the highlights of Tanabe, in particular, the Kumano Kodo pilgrimage route, a world heritage site with famous shrines and soothing hot springs.

By 4:30pm, we were checked into our hotel for the next five days, City Plaza Inn. Our new rooms were even smaller than the ones in Wakayama City. In fact, everything about it was smaller. The TV screen, which I never bothered to turn on, was the size of my laptop monitor. The bath towels barely covered my behind. It was all very humorous.

But the hotel was in a prime location, right in the middle of Tanabe and located on the 5^th floor of a large building with a shopping center and grocery store below.

After dropping off my luggage, I took a couple photos of the view from my window and then headed out to explore the neighborhood.

I passed schools, residential neighborhoods, Pachinko casinos, 110 yen stores, restaurants, hotels, rice paddies, old warehouses rusting away, the harbor, and, finally, the grocery store down below. It feels great to be out of Tokyo and in a much smaller city with a lot of character and beautiful mountains and beaches all around!

Day Ten

DAY TEN (06/17/08, 8:40pm)

Today was absolutely fabulous. After morning meetings with the superintendent of the Tanabe City Board of Education and with some parents on a local Parent Teacher Association, we spent the afternoon hours driving through lush, winding mountain roads, visiting several of the most famous Shinto shrines along the Kumano Kodo pilgrimage route. The weather was ideal, sunny but not too warm or humid, with cool breezes all day. I marveled at the skill of our bus driver who made turns along the sharp cutbacks of the narrow mountain roads. There were no guard rails to give us the appearance of safety, and deep gullies ran along the edges of the roads so as to catch heavy rainfall, or your car tires if you aren’t careful! We actually gave our bus driver a standing ovation as we departed, unscathed.

We visited many smaller shrines along the way and learned the rituals regarding when to wash your hands and mouth, then ring the bell to let the gods know you are here, bow, clap twice, make a wish, bow again. I was fascinated.

By far the grandest shrine we visited was the Hongu-Taisha shrine. We ascended perhaps 100 steps with white flags fluttering along the full length of the stairway.

I washed my hands at a beautiful fountain guarded by a dragon.

Pilgrims joined us, announcing their arrival with large conch shells

and then entering the main shrine to pray.

At a later stop, we walked through a gargantuan torii

into a large park where a woman sat playing her flute, surrounded by whispering trees.

On the bus ride back to the hotel, we even saw a wild monkey on the hillside which Timi, an art teacher, drew a sketch of.

It was truly a magical day.

Day Eleven

DAY ELEVEN (06/18/08, 8:45pm)

I just returned from a three-hour walk throughout Tanabe and I am feeling both exhausted and energized. My feet are swollen and throbbing, my back aches, my camera is laden with over 1,000 photos, but my mind is racing with the hundreds of images from my walk this evening and my time at Meiyo Middle School earlier today.

I woke around 5:00 and spent an hour uploading photos to the JFMF cohort website. After a quick breakfast, we all boarded the bus to visit our first school in Tanabe, Meiyo Junior High. In Japan, elementary school goes from 1^st grade through 6^th grade, junior high school is 7^th grade through 9^th grade, and senior high school is 10^th grade through 12^th grade.

(Unfortunately, I am not allowed to post photos of students online in which you can identify them so you will see lots of photos of backs and empty classrooms.)

The principal greeted us at the entrance and ushered us over t0 the auditorium where all of the children (several hundred) were seated on the floor in perfect rows. We sat across from them on a row of chairs and looked out into the crowd of curious faces. The principal gave a welcome speech, and then we each took the microphone and introduced ourselves. Again, there were many varieties of “watashi wa (state) no (name) desu”. The children giggled as we whispered corrections at each other and stumbled our way through the most elementary of phrases in Japanese. Then, a representative from our group gave a short speech which our translator conveyed to the audience. Finally, the band played a remarkably skillful, upbeat medley of American songs, many of which were Disney tunes. We tapped our feet, drummed on our thighs, and jerked our heads back and forth to the familiar childhood songs.

After the welcome assembly, we spent the rest of the day visiting classes and talking with the teachers. I must have seen dozens of classes in English, Japanese, math, computers, home economics, art, music, science, social studies, and, at the end of the day, sports such as volleyball, gymnastics, softball, soccer, basketball, and kendo.

The best part of the day was talking with the students. I brought photos of my school, my students, my circus and knitting classes, my house, neighborhood, and family. They all crowded around and asked many questions. One boy repeatedly said, “America, let’s go!” to his classmates.

Another favorite moment was watching them prepare for lunch. Unlike in the U.S. where students go to the cafeteria in shifts, in Japan, students have lunch in their homeroom classes and they serve each other. Today, a group went to the kitchen and returned with large wheeled trays with pots of rice, a pot of potato/carrot/beef stew, a bowl of sprouts, and crates with bottled milk. The students who serve the meal each day put on aprons, hair caps, and a face mask. Then, in a very orderly and speedy fashion, an assembly line of students begin filling bowls while a few others distribute the dishes to all of their classmates. The teacher helps with the serving, dishing out equal portions of rice. The children watched me closely to see if I could manage with the chopsticks. I think I did alright, although my tips did cross a few times which I think is the equivalent of holding your fork in a fist, a big table etiquette faux pas. After eating their lunch together, each student brought their tray of bowls to the front, scraped away any remaining food, stacked the dishes, and rinsed their milk bottles.

Towards the end of the day I sat in on a social studies class in which the teacher discussed the nearby Kumano Kodo pilgrimage, a world heritage site. He then asked the students to ask me and one of my colleagues questions about the world heritage sites throughout the U.S. I drew a map on the board and labeled Yosemite, Yellowstone, the Grand Canyon, the Everglades, the Statue of Liberty, Independence Hall, and some waterfalls in Hawaii. Luckily, the two of us had our translator’s assistance describing these sites to the class. They asked us about the best places to visit in our state, what we liked most about Japan, and what we thought of nature in Japan.

After our last class with the students, we met with four teachers for a question and answer session. Overall, Meiyo seems to be a very peaceful school with few discipline issues and with teachers who work well together and enjoy their jobs. One thing that shocked me though was how much they are expected to work. On a typical day, one teacher described how he arrives by 7:30am, has morning meeting at 8:15, teaches until classes end at 3:30 (included two periods for planning time), then teaches clubs period from 4:00-5:30 (which is required of all teachers), and often stays at school either grading work or preparing lessons until 7:30pm. Teachers are also expected to show up on occasional weekends and throughout their summer vacation for club activities. Japanese schools also meet 270 days a year (compared to 180 in the U.S.).

Most students have an equally rigorous schedule. Although they aren’t assigned much homework in middle school, 80% of the students attend juku, or cram schools, after school. The two main subjects covered in these cram schools are English and math.

These tutoring sessions which are geared towards improving their scores on entrance exams, can last several hours, some even going until midnight for students determined to get accepted to the most prestigious schools in Japan. And I thought my students had a lot of pressure!!

On our way back to the hotel, we made a fifteen-minute stop at a gym, half of which was full of kids playing ping pong and the other half of which was designated for judo (a modern Japanese martial art). I watched one girl repeatedly flip a much larger and older boy onto his back and pin him down. I have dozens of photos of blurry limbs flying through the air and kids sprawled out on mats. Oh, to be young! I wish I had such energy and fearlessness (not to mention joints that can take such abuse).

As soon as we returned to the hotel, I put on my walking shoes, grabbed a map and camera, and set out exploring. Unlike my purely experimental walk a couple nights ago, this time I had a purpose—I wanted to visit several Shinto shrines and Buddhist temples throughout the city and stroll through the busiest shopping area down by the train station.

My walk ended up being everything I hoped for and more. After finding every spot circled on my map, by chance I found my way to Buddhist temple I hadn’t even known about and it turned out to be the house of a tour guide we had yesterday on our trip to Kumano Kodo. I was first greeted by her small poodle, which I later learned is named Cello (because she plays the cello). She led me into the temple where her father is a priest, and explained that she lived next door where she also teaches English classes. I showed her photos from my walk and she recommended nearby restaurants.

After chatting for a while longer, we parted and I began the long trek back to the hotel. As I crossed a bridge on the way back to City Plaza Hotel, two boys in school uniforms sharing a bicycle crossed on the opposite side of the bridge. The one in back made peace signs with his hands and flashed me a huge grin which I quickly captured on film. All day, children have been posing for my camera, waving hello, and smiling. When I say “konichiwa” or “ohayo gozaimasu”, their smiles widen. What a great way to spend a day, making children smile.

Well, we have a 7:00am departure for the local elementary school so I had better get some sleep.