My Trip to Japan

Introduction

2008-06-28T23:00:00.000-07:00

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

2008-06-28T22:00:00.000-07:00

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

2008-06-28T21:00:00.000-07:00

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)

2008-06-28T20:00:00.000-07:00

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

2008-06-28T19:00:00.000-07:00

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

2008-06-28T18:00:00.000-07:00

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

2008-06-28T17:00:00.000-07:00

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

2008-06-28T16:00:00.000-07:00

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

2008-06-28T15:00:00.000-07:00

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

2008-06-28T14:00:00.000-07:00

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

2008-06-28T13:00:00.000-07:00

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.

Day Twelve

2008-06-28T12:00:00.000-07:00

DAY TWELVE (06/19/08, 9:45pm)

Today we visited Daisan Elementary School. The children were absolutely adorable! I wish I could post photos of them here, but you will just have to image hundreds of curious and smiling faces or you can come visit me in person and see for yourself how cute they are.

Student artwork

Once again we had completely open access to the school. We could pick and choose which classes to visit and for how long we stayed before moving on to another class. In each class I visited, the students seemed very happy and engaged in their work (although occasionally distracted by us foreigners in the back). Many of the teachers were dynamic and clearly had a good rapport with their students.

Student Calligraphy

I joined the 1^st grade for one of their classes called exploration in which they set out on foot throughout the town to explore various locations of importance or interest. Today we went to a nearby playground. All decked out in matching, bright-red hats, we strolled through the streets to our destination.

Once there, the students neatly hung up their umbrellas on a park table before playing on the jungle gym.

Throughout the day, dozens of kids came up us, asking for autographs. Now I have a taste of what it's like to be a celebrity!

After lunch in a special room for guests, we took part in a tea ceremony, eating sweet, dumpling-like desserts before slurping the bitter tea down in the customary three gulps.

Near the end of the day, the children cleaned their own school, dancing through the hallways with broom in hand, crawling on all fours as they wiped the hardwood floors.

Students put their outdoor shoes on racks when they arrive at school and wear their own slippers throughout the day. There are also special bathroom slippers so that you don’t track bathroom dirt throughout the rest of the school. Overall, the school seemed like a very clean and orderly place.

After cleaning the school, students went to their club activities. I saw many walking on tall stilts and riding unicycles across the schoolyard playground.

We joined several teachers for a question and answer session and then observed a few club activities before heading back to the hotel.

I went for another long walk this evening and found many more beautiful neighborhoods and sacred spots tucked into little pockets of Tanabe.

Day Thirteen

2008-06-28T11:00:00.000-07:00

DAY THIRTEEN (06/20/08, 10:15pm)

We spent most of today at Kashima Senior High School. Once again, I was very impressed by the friendly and open welcome we received. Rather than spending the whole day at the school and wandering from class to class on our own, we were broken into smaller groups and given guided tours.

Following the tours, we had an early lunch in the cafeteria before the rush of students came and then we went to a formal tea ceremony where we were served by several students.

We also went to a special calligraphy class offered just for us. The teacher explained that there are five different styles or ways of writing the same character. Our teacher showed us the ways of writing “sky” because, as she explained, we all share the same sky whether we are in Japan or the U.S. Then we learned to mix the ink and practiced writing the character for sky in the four most popular styles.

We ended the day with another question and answer session with a few teachers and administrators, then saw a student demonstration of aikido, visited a couple other club activities,

and posed for a group shot before heading back to the hotel.

I’m quite exhausted and don’t have the energy to write much. Each day has been so incredibly full.

I had dinner with a few members in my group and took some beautiful night shots of Tanabe before turning in early for a quiet night to reflect and catch up on sleep.

Tomorrow we will all be leaving this hotel to stay with a host family for a day and a half. My host is a 26-year-old English teacher at Meiyo Junior High School named Kazumi. I met her very briefly on the day we visited Meiyo and I’m very excited to get to know her better this weekend.

Day Fourteen

2008-06-28T10:00:00.000-07:00

DAY FOURTEEN (06/22/08, 5:00am)

I first met Kazumi just as we were leaving Meiyo Junior High School at the end of the day. Had I known that my host worked at the school, I would have made a point of visiting her class and talking to her. Everyone from my group who had seen her 9^th grade English classes said that she was a fabulous teacher. Within minutes, it was evident that she had real charisma and a great rapport with her students. I’m bummed that I didn’t get a chance to see her in action. When she found me in the hallway just as we were leaving and introduced herself to me, I was struck by how beautiful she is: long black hair, very slender body, a great smile, large lips and pronounced cheekbones. We talked for all of fifteen seconds and then I rushed out the door to catch the bus.

That was Wednesday. I saw her next at 10:00am this morning when she and all of the other hosts arrived at City Plaza Hotel to take each of us home with them for the weekend. Families with little children arrived, older couples who didn’t speak a word of English, and one by one, our cohort of sixteen teachers dwindled down to only a few. Kazumi came alone and we immediately recognized each other from the other day. Since she is an English teacher, talking to her was very easy.

We first went on a couple errands in the area: looking for stylish, colorful glasses for her mother who had recently had a birthday and buying a few items in the grocery store on the first floor of my hotel that we would use for lunch. We then went to her house which was a small but cozy place in a somewhat run-down area. She had a large garden that you could enter from the kitchen, a bedroom to the left as you enter the house, a small living room to the right, a stairway leading to her sister’s room, a small kitchen and dining area further down the main hallway to the left, and a bathroom and toilet room (the toilet is kept separate from the bath tub) at the very back of the house. I met her sister very briefly, but she soon left to go to her grandparents’ house where we would be headed later on. She seemed very shy but nice.

I sliced some cucumbers and took lessons as Kazumi prepared lunch (a cold noodle dish with shredded chicken, thin strips of egg, tomatoes, and cucumbers covered in a sesame dressing). Just before it was ready, her husband arrived home for a quick lunch break from work. I greeted him in the hallway as he was taking off his shoes and introduced myself. He then said in a questioning tone, “No pay?” and I was somewhat confused. He repeated himself and I finally realized that he was also introducing himself. His name, Nope, is pronounced “no pay”. He is a very thin, tan man in his late twenties but he could easily pass for nineteen. He has very chiseled features, short black hair, huge ears that stick out, and a big, honest smile. He understands English fairly well but it took some coaxing to get him to attempt to say anything in English.

Moments after he first arrived, he disappeared into a room (I’m not sure which) to perform his prayers/ablutions. He is from Indonesia and is a Muslim so he prays five times a day. When Kazumi got married, she converted to Islam and also prays five times a day. They even set their alarm clock for 4:00am each morning so that they can pray at sunrise and then go back to sleep. I asked her what it was like to convert to Islam and she said that for now she just practices the rituals and traditions but doesn’t necessarily believe all of it. Her in-laws are happy with that and hope that in the future with practice, her belief will develop.

In Japan, it seems common for people to practice multiple religions and, because it often isn’t a philosophical matter for them but more a matter of culture, ritual, and tradition, they see no conflict. Many people visit Shinto shrines throughout the year, pay their respects to the nature gods, and hang their wishes for the future on the designated branches or hooks marked for this tradition. They get married in Christian churches and have a funeral in a Buddhist temple. Given all of this, it was not too surprising that Kazumi was comfortable with converting to Islam.

When Nope finished his prayers, we all ate together in the living room, sitting on floor cushions around the table, watching a comedy show in Japanese. I fumbled with the chopsticks, slurping up the noodles, twisting the sticks in my hands and dropping chunks of tomato back into my bowl. It took me twice as long as them to eat my meal, but I finished it all with the chopsticks and enjoyed every bite.

Right after lunch, Nope had to return to work at the lumber yard where he cuts huge trees down to rectangular slabs of building material. After Nope left, Kazumi ducked into their bedroom to pray for a few minutes. I washed the dishes and wandered around the house looking at photos. When she returned, she gave me a stack of photos, mostly of her wedding, to look through while she packed for our overnight trip to her parents’ and grandparents’ homes high up in the mountains of the Kumano Kodo pilgrimage routes.

She and Nope got married in Indonesia and had a very traditional Indonesian wedding. Her hair was pinned up in a veil of flowers and then a very ornate widow’s peak with several sharp edges was painted along her forehead. Her face was caked in a thick white powder and her lips were painted a deep red. Even the little children and Nope had make-up on. She said that at first she thought that she looked scary and she did not like it, but she got used to it over the course of the ten-hour ceremony at which she and Nope greeted every guest one by one.

Shortly after lunch we were back in the car, traveling along sinuous, narrow roads headed high into the lush green mountains and blue flowing rivers of the Kii Mountain Range.

On the way to Kazumi’s grandparents’ house, we talked very openly about teaching, differences and similarities between our schools, and our lifestyle in general in two very different countries. Kazumi is much more international than most Japanese people. She lived with a host family in Nappa Valley for ten months, had a boyfriend from Seattle for four years, studied Spanish for a while in college, and married an Indonesian man.

Having heard that “the nail that sticks up gets hammered down,” and knowing that the Japanese take great pride in their culture, I wondered if she experienced much prejudice because of her international leanings. She said that in college when she studied Spanish with a girlfriend, other peers made fun of them for wanting to be international and “cool” and they couldn’t understand why they would bother to learn Spanish. Her friend dropped the course because of all the teasing, but Kazumi stuck with it and didn’t care. When she married Nope and converted to Islam, she said she didn’t experience much direct prejudice, but people were certainly very curious. Interestingly though, she said that she would never want to raise her children in Japan because she feels that they would have a very hard time as Muslim and she also thinks that Japanese schools put so much pressure on children starting at such a young age that they don’t get the chance to play or be kids long enough. When she has children and her oldest child reaches four years old, she and Nope plan to move to Indonesia. There, she said, children can be children. They also feel free to express their love for their parents openly, whereas in Japan, you would almost never hear a child say, “I love you” to a parent.

When we arrived at her grandparents’ home, everyone was there to great us: her sister (Sakiko), parents (Kenji and Shizuka), and grandparents (Ikuzo and Sumie). Her sister left within minutes, however, to the disappointment of both me and her grandfather who wanted to spend more time with her. I was introduced as Mika chan (Mee-kah, chonn), because it is much easier for them to pronounce than Michaela. “Chan” means “friend” and “Mika” is a common female name in Japan.

Her mother poured us some iced green tea and we sat on the porch for a few minutes, enjoying the view and the cool refreshment. Soon after, Kazumi got me set up in the largest upstairs room, a beautiful traditional Japanese room with tatami mats on the floor and a very bare but warm aesthetic with an expansive view of mountains and little villages nestled in valleys.

Once my luggage was stored away, we were off into the woods with her father to pick various edible plants for a vegetable tempura we would make later on. He used to be an ecology teacher but recently retired. He seemed in his element when traipsing through the woods, gathering a basket full of leaves to eat. After gathering several leaves, we went for a short drive with Kazumi’s mom as well to an area where wild raspberries grown. The pickings were slim so we ate all of our berries as we collected them. Soon it began to rain and we headed back home.

On the way, we stopped off at a shitaki mushroom factory owned by Kazumi’s mother’s cousin.

They graciously let us wander through and pick prime specimens from the many isles of stacked logs covered with dozens of mushrooms. We gathered a decent batch which Kazumi’s mother collected in her apron.

Once home, Kenji-san, prepared sliced sweet potatoes, onions, mushrooms, and the many leaves we had gathered for the tempura batter. He taught me how to coat each item and gingerly dip it into the pot of oil. Wait just a few seconds and then snatch it up with the chopsticks. As I did this, he and Kazumi kept saying, “Oh!” which made me worried that I was doing something wrong or something bad was about to happen as in, “Oh no!” but they assured me that it was a sound of approval and being impressed by my skill at using the chopsticks.

For dinner, we had the vegetable tempura, beef stew with rice, some vegetarian sushi that the grandmother made just for me, green tea, and various little side dishes like pickled things which I avoided. Nope arrived partway through dinner and joined us at the table.

After dinner I showed them all some photos of my classes, panoramic shots inside my apartment, and my neighborhood in spring. After looking at the panoramics, they thought I must be rich. I explained to them that my apartment was nothing fancy and that I am far from rich. Certainly there is a lot more space in America and if you aren’t in a major city like New York or Boston, the rent is not too bad. I think the panoramic style of the rooms may have made them appear enormous. I bent the photos into a tube and explained that it was a 360 degree view which I think they all understood but the rooms still seemed huge to them.

After sharing the photos, I did a little juggling performance for them which the grandfather seemed to heartily enjoy. Kazumi’s mother also became very excited and showed me a Japanese form of juggling two balls with a song to accompany it. She sang with a loud, clear voice as she tossed the balls round and round in a pattern circling towards herself. I wish I could remember the song!

After dinner we piled up into two cars and headed out for a local hot spring. When we arrived, Kenji and Nope went into the bathing room on the right and Kazumi, her mother, and I went to the ladies room on the left. We were the only people there that night so we had the room all to ourselves. After showering thoroughly, we slid into the silky water that was pumped into the bathing room from the hot springs below. The water was warm but not too hot and it felt smooth and sleek in texture. When we emerged from the water fifteen minutes or so later, toweled off, and got dressed, the air was humid and sticky. It was just beginning to drizzle outside. We hung out for a while in the little store where you enter the hot spring. The men drank beer and smoked cigarettes with a few other guys hanging out there. Kazumi and I had some grape juice and enjoyed the rotating fan.

When we returned to the house, the grandmother cut up some yellow watermelon for dessert and sprinkled it with salt. I brought down the presents I had set aside for them all, a new set of juggling balls and a beautiful photo book of Rhode Island. They all gathered around to look through the book and take turns practicing with the balls. They seemed especially interested in the little bit of contact juggling I showed them.

By this point it was somewhat late and we were all tired from a full day. Kazumi made up a bed for me on the floor with thin futon pads on the tatami mats and a buckwheat pillow which was very dense and full of what felt like little rubbery beads. I had a hard time falling asleep. The pillow seemed too dense and didn’t allow my head to go back as far as I would have liked. The futon pad was very thin and I could feel my ribs and hip bones digging into the floor when I curled up on my side. I was also excited by the day’s events, by the chance to go beyond a typical tourist experience of Japan and to be welcomed so generously into the home of friendly people.

Day Fifteen

2008-06-28T09:00:00.000-07:00

DAY FIFTEEN (06/22/08, 8:20pm)

When I woke in the morning and looked out the window, I noticed a thick layer of fog covering the valley.

After snapping a few shots, I came downstairs and was greeted by several people just sitting down to breakfast. Nope and Kazumi were eating large bowls of beef stew. I think her grandfather was eating some cold fish. Her mother had baked some homemade bread so I gladly accepted a slice of that which she served with homemade strawberry jam.

After breakfast, Kazumi and her mother brought me to her parents’ house which was just a couple houses over. It was a much older Japanese style house with dark wooden beams across the ceiling, windows with rice paper shades, and a sunken table with a depressed area beneath it for your legs. Her mother asked me many questions about schools in the US and Kazumi translated everything. Then Kazumi played a DVD she had made of her 9^th graders’ most recent field trip to Tokyo. In one scene, the children lined up for a uniform check and a teacher made sure that their coats were buttoned to the top, their cuffs were an appropriate length, they were not wearing any bright T-shirts beneath their uniforms, and they had no hair gel on. The teacher even ran his hands through one kid’s hair to make sure he didn’t have hair gel.

Later that morning, Shizuka took me to her school, about a 30-minute drive away. She teaches in a very small elementary school, fifty students total. The school is nestled up against the mountainside in a very small town. Rice paddies, some of them planted by the children, cover the hillside behind the school.

In some of the pictures, you will see us posing beside classroom paintings of people brushing their teeth. Dental hygiene seems to be a big theme in all of the schools. You would be shocked by the number of people I have seen with swollen gums, black teeth, huge overbites, and very crooked teeth. This focus on dental hygiene must be a very recent one given the state of most Japanese people’s teeth.

By the time we returned to Kazumi’s grandparents’ house, we were ready for a short nap. I curled up on the couch in my room (the bedding had already been put away), and read a few pages of Learning to Bow before my eyes drifted closed. When I woke up and went downstairs, Kazumi’s brother had just recently arrived. I only had the chance to talk to him for a few minutes before I had to pack up and leave in order to make it back to the drop of location by 4:00. Everyone stood on the porch and waved goodbye to me and Kazumi as we drove away.

On the car ride back, I savored the beautiful views and took many blurry, ill-composed pictures shot out of the window. I’ve already deleted most of them. Strangely, Kazumi’s window kept rolling down by itself. She said that Nope had left it open in the rain and it was screwed up inside. Sometimes she would have to struggle for several minutes with the switch in order to get it to close and then a minute later it would roll down again. The car felt almost haunted. On the way we exchanged contact info and talked about setting up a pen pal program between our classes. I think my students will love to write to and receive letters from Japanese kids.

We arrived at the Tanabe Community Center (our drop-off location), about forty minutes early. Kazumi sat with me and browsed through the photos I had taken while at her house. When Allan arrived, another person from my program, and we were sure that I was in the correct location, I told her she didn’t have to wait with me any longer. I knew that she had a lot of lesson planning and grading to do for the week ahead. We hugged goodbye and that was that, a fabulous weekend come to a close.

I am sitting in the lounge of a traditional Japanese Inn just outside of Tanabe, listening to a group of old men sing sappy Japanese love songs on karaoke next door in the hotel bar. I’m in my yukata (a Japanese robe), men’s sandals that the hotel provided (the women’s sandals are way too small for us Americans!), and my hair is damp with healing mineral water from the hot springs which are pumped into the public bathing rooms here. I just finished taking baths in three of the different rooms surrounded by old Japanese women. I was the only white person there, the only English speaker. With my minimal Japanese, all I could say was “good evening” as I entered a bath and “goodbye” as a left. The water felt smooth and warm, but not too hot.

Earlier this evening we had a feast fit for a king.

There must have been ten different courses to the meal, perhaps hundreds of very tiny dishes throughout the night. I don’t even want to know how much it all cost. I had the no-seafood-meal option. Among the many dishes were vegetable tempura, a salad with pork strips, a peanut-flavored, tofu-like cube, some pickled vegetables, steak with potato wedges and broccoli, a broth with beef, tofu, and mixed vegetables, miso soup, rice, cake, plum sake, and much more that I have difficulty describing. Just when we thought we were finished, another course would arrive.

I will be sleeping on another futon tonight, in a gorgeous Japanese room overlooking the ocean.

This program is absolutely amazing!

Day Sixteen

2008-06-28T08:00:00.000-07:00

DAY SIXTEEN (06/23/08 7:00pm)

I woke early this morning and went for a swim in the ocean. At 7:00am, I had the entire beach to myself. The water felt cool and refreshing. Two little orange and black striped fish circled around me and followed me wherever I swam. Even my attempts to swat them away when they started to get too close for comfort did not deter them in the least. After swimming several laps and rocking in the waves, pursued all the while by the twin fish, I made my way to the shore. They even joined me within a foot of the water’s edge before turning back and swimming into deeper waters. I wasn’t sure to be flattered by their company or freaked out but at least they didn’t bite!

Sadly, we had to leave the ryokan this morning to head back to Tokyo. We arrived at the Grand Prince Hotel Akasaka by around 1pm and had the afternoon and evening off. I settled back into my old room, happy to find my large suitcase waiting for me (it had been shipped ahead of us before our home stays).

I spent the evening dining out with friends and touring parts of Tokyo I hadn’t yet explored. The Oriental Bazaar in Harajuku became my new favorite shopping place! Despite wanting to stay at the ryokan longer, it feels good to come full circle and return to familiar ground.

Day Seventeen

2008-06-28T07:00:00.000-07:00

DAY SEVENTEEN (06/24/08, 9:20pm)

I spent much of today attending presentations and working on our group presentation for tomorrow. This morning I went to a two-hour presentation on arts education in Japan by Chihiro Tada, the director of a Toy Museum in Tokyo that specializes in mechanical toys that don’t require batteries. He stressed the importance of children spending less time with TV and video games and instead using toys that are tactile and require imagination and coordination to use. He taught us how to make a magic booklet with two sheets of paper, some scissors, and a glue stick. If you tuck something in one side, such as a coin, and then reopen the booklet in just the right way, the coin disappears. He also showed us how to make a hexagonal paper cutout that can be opened and refolded in different ways to reveal an egg, then a chick, and then a full-grown rooster. Very clever and also magical in its own way.

After a buffet lunch at the hotel we all attended a two-hour question and answer session about Japanese education and society with Yukitsugu Kato, a professor emeritus from Sophia University. He was a charming man and answered our many questions with candor. Dr. Satterwhite, the Executive Director of the JFMF program, piggy-backed off of Dr. Kato’s answers at times, giving us a different perspective or helpful details.

Directly following the question and answer session, I tested out my laptop to make sure that I could hook it up to the projector with no problem for tomorrow’s group presentations. Then I worked for several hours on the presentation before going out. Karen and I became fast friends while working to make the text match up with the selected photos. I hadn’t talked to her extensively until tonight, and after finishing the presentation, we went for a three-hour walk together through many Tokyo neighborhoods. At one point we saw a beautiful view of the Tokyo Tower at night.

Just like our walk with its quick pace and large distance covered, our conversation was lively and open-ended, wandering in many directions and refreshingly frank. When we finally returned to the hotel, I felt extremely happy and rejuvenated from our brisk walk and developing friendship.

Day Eighteen

2008-06-28T06:00:00.000-07:00

DAY EIGHTEEN (06/25/08, 9:30pm)

Today, each of the ten city groups gave a fifteen-minute presentation about their experiences in their various cities. Some were funny, imitating kyogen characters or singing humorous songs. Others were poignant, sharing favorite memories and conveying how bonded they had become as a group. Some presentations incorporated video, photography, and music in flashy, professional-looking programs. One group even performed dynamic pantomimes or moving sculptures that portrayed significant moments of their trip. I loved learning about each group’s unique week, all of which overlapped in many respects but were also very different. I feel especially lucky to have been placed in a more rural setting with mountains, beaches, hot springs, and dozens of sacred shrines and temples.

When the presentations were all over and we had filled out all necessary forms, Karen and I went on another long walk together.

Conversation flowed naturally as we made our way through Akasaka, Roppongi, Shibuya, Shinjuku, and Harajuku. Just as we reached a huge park in Harajuku, we realized that we needed to head back in order to be on time for the Sayonara Buffet.

We hopped on a subway and returned with just enough time to freshen up, change into more formal clothing, and join our fellow JFMFers for one last meal together.

The Sayonara Buffet included speeches, a toast, a delicious dinner, a video clip including highlights from each city group, an aikido demonstration, and a final song together: Auld Lang Syne.

Day Nineteen

2008-06-28T05:00:00.000-07:00

DAY NINETEEN (06/26/08, 1:30pm)

Ahh, my last day in Japan

After an early breakfast (one last taste of seaweed salad and miso soup), Karen and I walked to the Imperial Palace.

Unlike the first time I went their alone around 7:00am and the bridges across the mote were gated off, this time we found a friendly guard who explained that, while we could not go inside the Imperial Palace because the imperial family was currently residing there, the east gardens were open to the public. We walked along the towering walls and finally made our way to the entrance to the east gardens.

Bamboo forests, purple hydrangeas, a whole garden of irises, and many dappled groves of green surrounded us.

Beyond the iris garden we found a museum showing a free exhibit on Mount Fuji paintings, both ancient and modern, realistic and symbolic.

On our way back to the hotel, Karen treated me to a delicious lunch (I was down to less than $1 worth of yen) at a little restaurant which, about halfway through our meal, we discovered was Chinese.

Now, as I sit in the hotel lobby, all that remains is to wait and soon wave sayonara to this country that has been so generous and open. I will be heading out on a bus at 2:30pm, taking an eleven-hour flight to Chicago, going through customs at O’Hare International Airport, and then finally arriving in Providence around 9:30pm. Soon I’ll be home, ready to rest and reflect, to begin processing this dense, wonderful introduction to Japan.

I’m a bit in awe of how much I have experienced. This trip engaged my every sense. I’ve tasted mysterious foods, some surprisingly good and others unforgettably gross. I’ve soaked in silky smooth mineral water from natural hot springs and been squeezed into a subway car at the peak of rush hour. I’ve wafted myself in burning incense at a Buddhist temple and smelled fresh mountain air. I’ve entered the clamor of a pachinko parlor and the out-of-tune cheer of a karaoke bar. I’ve seen dozens of smiling children, the neon nightlife of Tokyo, and the feathery leaves of bamboo forests rustling in the wind. And through dozens of conversations, I’ve seen into the daily life of a wide cross section of Japan’s people, viewed on my own country and culture through a new lens, and, all the while, been treated like royalty. Thank you, Japan! You will be forever in my heart.