Week Beginning Monday, June 20,2006 - general impressions of School Life and Education in Japan

Week Beginning Monday, June 20, 2006
General Impressions of School Life and Education


This was the real beginning to our week of visiting the prefecture in our official capacities as American educators, and it began officially enough with our visit to Kanazawa University, particularly with members of the School of Education staff and faculty. Kanazawa U, I must admit, made me think of Whatsamatta U where Bullwinkle the Moose went, but this was a decidedly different place. The protocol for this visit was to be repeated more or less the same way for all of our official visits throughout the week. First, members of the panel spoke and introduced themselves. Then, we in turn, introduced ourselves in Japanese, something we got pretty good at doing. Then some one from their side would give a speech, then one us would give a speech. Then the session or visit or Q and A (called “Q and A” always) would begin. Before we’d left Tokyo, we’d signed up for making speeches at different places. We’d also had a discussion with our guide as to the best name to use with officials and with students. In official situations, I would introduce myself to adults as Jean Beebe, but with kids I would introduce myself as Beebe. My colleagues took to calling me Beebe-san all the time, officially or not. I would walk through the hotel lobby and someone from the group would say, “ Hey Beebe-san,” which usually would get a bow from me. I have been given good marks on my bowing I will say which I think truthfully has to do with musical performance – bow low with your hands roughly at your knees and from your waist with a straight back. It’s respectful and nearly always appropriate and appreciated. Because of performance bowing, I really didn’t feel very self-conscious about it. There were a lot of photographs taken of the group too, so I had to work on the Professional Smile, which is very hard for me yet.

We learned that “sensei” is an honorific, something that you earn; you do not call yourself “sensei”, although in a general sense it means “teacher.” But like the word “lao shi” in Chinese, it means someone old, someone who’s lived long enough to have seen a lot and be wise. In the schools we visited, kids called their teacher “sensei”, I don’t think I heard them call their teacher using a name.

JFMF has a main agenda which is for us to visit the schools and different prefectures in Japan. This is the surface agenda. I am still thinking about the deeper agenda. In Japan, there are many, many layers to things. We are in this country as guests of the Japanese government, not merely to sight see, although we have had some opportunity to do that. Certainly one of the main foci has to do with bringing back the impressions of Japan we have received to our own country. A follow up essay to all of this would naturally be “What I learned in Japan This Summer.” My reinforcement of the Japanese history I need to study for my teacher exam and future position as well as my turning back towards Buddhism is only part of the story, though, as the Japanese way is not about individual quests, but group experiences.


In many of the schools we visited, we heard some of the same basic information and concerns about education repeated. Like our own country, concerns about students’ lack of social skills due to their use of the internet and so less face to face interaction with others was mentioned. We also heard again about the ills of a declining birthrate. When there were 3 or 4 children in a family, the mother’s had less time for each child. (The father’s role in this was not discussed. ) Now children are used to more of mother’s attention and they get demanding and impatient. As one speaker put it, “We think parents and children need to be more independent from one another.” Lack of independence leads to an “impatience” caused by an inability to delay gratification; this in turn can help to breed violence. Also there has been an increase of violent crimes in cities in particular and this is blamed on “virtual reality” - video games and the internet, including things like chat rooms. I actually agree with this, particularly the independence part.

Like in our own classrooms in the US, Japanese students are not all that interested in school. The people we met with acknowledge the increasing need to be entertainers and comedians. I like what they said though, which was that we as educators “need to teach them that reality is joyful…[We] need to tell them the importance of what they have learned as well..” I want to ponder the need to teach our students that “reality is joyful”. I think this is an important charge. How can we do this?


It is the Japanese government policy to educate everyone at the same level; there are national standards each school is supposed to follow. However, one panel told us that they are beginning to see students with “different characters” which might warrant a change in how they are educated. While there is currently a figure of 6.3% of students in all public schools with some sort of “learning disability” including ADHD, many parents do not tell the schools ahead of time that their students have any issues, so it just makes it that much harder to meet their needs. Most classrooms have approximately 40 students in them. The only classes with an additional teacher are Math. The Ministry of Education is currently trying to modify laws to accommodate the needs of the LD and ADHD students. Another sidebar I would add here is: Isn’t it interesting that they put LD and students with ADHD in the same boat? I wonder if the occurrence of ADHD isn’t a problem in Japanese society particularly because of their need to keep people on the straight and narrow. We were reminded of the Japanese saying, “If a nail sticks up, it needs to be hammered down.” People with ADHD sure do stick up sometimes, I guess.

In the last 14-15 years, most Komatsu Elementary schools have phased out the “uniform (i.e. clothing) system” for a variety of reasons given by parents, some of them practical ones: kids outgrow them and they are difficult to maintain. All jr. and sr. high schools in the country have their students wear uniforms. School is compulsory through jr. high. Uniforms are currently compulsory nationwide from jr. high through high school. “Compulsory” was a term used fairly frequently, as in “compulsory education”, a term which in its nature allows no equivocating, itself yet another interesting piece of clarity in the Japanese view of things. “System” was another term that cropped up constantly. I have more to say on this, I think.

Pictures at Daiwa Elementary school

How are things in Kanazawa? And other musical memories

Sunday, June 18, 2006


This was a serious travel day. We got up, went to breakfast and then dragged our stuff to the giant lobby. We were divided into prefecture groups so that we could put our suitcases in an area to be taken to Komatsu sepearately. We couldn’t check our own suitcases. I’m still not sure what that was all about. Then we sat around waiting to be called to the bus to go the airport for our flight to the Ishikawa prefecture. The bus ride to the airport was pretty painless since it was Sunday and so no traffic. We hung around the airport awhile until our flight was called and then it was about an hour to Komatsu airport. At this point, we were getting to know each other a little bit. People we had been getting friendly with in Tokyo were not always people from our prefecture group, but in some cases that was true enough. Various smaller groups of people took turns watching each other’s luggage while others explored the airport a little or just stretched their legs or whatever. The flight was about an hour. After we collected ourselves, we went to this weird hotel for a western lunch of something that I didn’t eat much of. The western food has been quite disappointing; in Japan give me the Japanese food, please. We were driven in the bus to the center of Kanazawa to a nice hotel where I unpacked the few belongings I had in the overnight bag I was allowed for this part of the journey, and set off for the geisha district. As usual, as seems to be the case for this trip, I kept trying to find some sort of shortcut or something which has generally been either inconvenient or incorrect in some way. I found myself wandering through a big market area which, as it was Sunday, was basically closed, but at least was a major landmark on the map. This market itself was a warren of streets and alleys, but I managed to find my way back out onto the main street to re-orient myself. Kanazawa, like many of the places in Japan we had been, was a small city with beautiful historic buildings in nooks and crannies along the way. It was also another city which had not been bombed in WWII, this always a factor one way or the other in the Japanese consciousness.

The geisha district,“Higashi”, was a good march down the main street and across a bridge. The area was extremely clean and unencumbered by tourists as it was Sunday. I walked around for a little bit, through narrow streets with houses from the 1800s lining them. In one lane, I saw a woman dressed in a traditional kimono, and I took a discreet picture from behind her as she disappeared down the street. I have been trying to avoid taking pictures of every blessed thing, and not sure I am succeeding in this, and also trying to respect individuals’ privacy. I ran across some of my comrades who pointed out the geisha house, Shima, which was the recommended one. Again, because it was Sunday I had the place to myself and roamed shoeless through the low-ceilinged tatami matted rooms. Had there been many tourists in there, the place would have been quite crowded, I think. There were teiko drums, lutes, and a case of combs, and other things including the money counting area with a small pipe and abacus. The kitchen was interesting with wooden buckets and implements and I took some good pictures in there. At the center of the building, there was an inner courtyard that had a lovely garden with a small stone pagoda in it. Japan really has wonderful gardens in all sorts of places. Even in the residential streets of this district, people had small gardens or plantings in front of their doors. Quite a few were our either tending their gardens or sweeping, always sweeping. Japan is a clean country all in, I’d say.

I met up with my two main pals plus another lady, and we went to the Sakuda Gold Leaf Company. Kanazawa is known for its gold leaf. Although I didn’t buy anything in there, it was fun to look around. We were served a complimentary cup of tea with flecks of gold leaf in them; this is supposed to be good for rheumatism. I haven’t noticed any since; maybe it works.

The four of us walked back to the hotel and freshened up for dinner. I was not feeling all that well, mentally or physically, transitional stuff probably. But I met my two friends in the lobby for dinner and we ended up going to a local sushi place right around the corner where we were the only people in there besides the couple who ran it. We ordered by pointing to the illustrated menu poster on the wall and counting how many of each sushi item we wanted in Japanese. We sat on the floor on cushions in a tatami area. This was really just a local joint, and the people were extremely nice. Here in Japan, I have been eating the raw stuff in sushi situations without hesitation, although I have not eaten anything with tentacles, even purple tentacles. I felt 200% better after eating and just relaxing a little. Once I got back to the hotel, I organized my stuff – a nightly ritual – and went to sleep.

Shore Leave

Saturday, June 17, 2006


Well, like the crew of the Starship Enterprise whose mission was a little different and slightly longer despite a fall in their ratings, and their untimely demise until reruns, we were released to practice our version of the Prime Directive with a free day. I could not justify making the 6 hour round trip to Kyoto which was also going to cost over $250 just in bullet train fare for more peakbagging. Not with one day off. Although, yes, yes, I’m sure Kyoto is nice.

I opted for Kamakura, an hour’s train ride south and boasting a bunch of Zen Buddhist temples and monasteries, beautiful gardens and a giant Buddha statue. There was a big group going from JFMF, but once again, I woke with the sun, bolted down a big breakfast of fish, rice, vegetables, and coffee and took off with my cloaking device on. I ran into a fellow lone traveler on her way to the subway who gave me a couple of useful tips, like which station to get off at if I wanted the east end of town, where a couple of key places were. Then we went our own ways. I wrote a brief thank you to her on the whiteboard at the hotel later, since I never saw her again.

The ride on Japan Rail, the train line, was pretty uneventful, and more like a long subway ride than a train ride given how the seats were placed. I got off at Kita-Kamakura station which was not the one at the center of town, but the one I wanted given the mysterious MaryBeth’s recommendation. One of the things that struck me as soon as I got off the train at the station, even while I was still on the platform, was how the place smelled of flowers and greenery. There were countless flowers in great variety in bloom there and since it was the rainy season, it really was plush and lush and green, just like the Kindergarten song says about the rainforest, only different. It never rained the whole day, though, and the sun was out nearly the whole time. I was very glad to have Ruthie’s hat which may get accidentally stolen, but sorry I didn’t wear sunscreen. How am I going to explain the color of my neck to the dermatologist, I wonder?

The first thing I did was buy a bottle of water at the nearest vending machine which was about 2.2 feet from the exit of the station. I walked down the road as I did nearly every place else in Japan except parts of Tokyo, and found the first temple. There are not really sidewalks per se in Japan, so you have to walk along the side of the road on a sort of shoulder, although it is very narrow. Cars, the few trucks they have in small towns, bicycles, and motorscooters all use the road. One of the best pieces of advice we were given back when we first arrived in Tokyo was that we should not jaywalk because traffic would be coming at us from an unfamiliar direction. This is certainly true. I always look both ways when I cross, jaywalking or no, but here you could be looking in the wrong direction, thinking it was safe.

The first place I went was Tokei-ji, once a women’s convent and temple, part of a Zen Buddhist sect. It was a truly beautiful and peaceful place with wonderful gardens. Because I left Tokyo early, I missed the first wave of tourists into town and the place was nearly empty. Kamakura is nestled in some hills and most of the monasteries and temples are set back into the bottoms of the slopes and have trails leading up into the hills. Some are connected to one another by hiking trails in the wilder areas off the road, but I didn’t have the kind of time to truly explore them.

I spent a fair amount of time in the gardens which were carefully tended. Many gravesites had a sort of vase with a beautiful fresh flower arrangement in it. This made sense since the art of flower arranging is one of the Zen Buddhist practices for self-discipline. I think I should concentrate on Tai Chi and calligraphy, but that features later in my tale. I also went into what was the old temple itself. It was an exhibit of scrolls and other artwork and a statue of a standing Buddha who was quite beautiful and powerful. This was still truly a holy place. The women at the gate and tending the monastery/museum were lovely, and readily handed me an “English interpretation” for which I was grateful.

It was starting to fill up with people, so I hit the road again, and boom, there were a zillion Japanese people enjoying one of their own great towns. I walked down the now pretty crowded road – Lonely Planet gave a good description, but used terms like “across the road” and then didn’t specify distances – to Jochiji Temple. This temple was founded in the 1200s and is considered one of Kamakura’s five best temples. I think it was number five, but who’s peakbagging. Apparently, there is something you can get called a Temple Card which like the National Park Passport in the US, you drag around to the temples you visit in Japan and then they stamp it for you. I learned about this later, which is probably fine because I could see what this could do to my Be Here Now Mentality. That temple card is more about an “I Was There” mentality, hardly Zen. This was another beautiful place with cool gardens. I bowed to the Buddha there and definitely felt the better for it. Then I walked up into their graveyard area on the hillside. I got a good view of things and was able to sit down on an ancient stone step, consult the map and drink some water in peace which also felt good. I decided to go on to Kencho-ji, the number one Zen temple in Kamakura and a working monastery.

I was getting sort of peckish, but didn’t want to eat in a restaurant, so I stopped in a convenience store for some fruit juice, which was really fine. I had had extra fish for breakfast. Then I found the number one temple; you couldn’t miss it.

Kencho-ji is a huge complex that at one time was comprised of over 39 buildings. The zendo where the monks lived was off limits, but you could go into the Buddha hall and listen to a dharma talk by one of them and get a view of them kneeling on their mats. Some of the really old ones were either in deep meditation, or sleeping; many of the young ones wore eyeglasses. Although open to the public, the talk was of course in Japanese and I felt a little silly standing in the back there, the only gaijin. I did not feel like it would be OK to take picture of these guys, particularly as they were meditating, but I sure wanted to. They had very nice deep maroon robes. By walking a kind of porch around the Buddha hall, you could get a view of the beautiful Zen garden where birds were circling and bouncing off the water with their beaks. I think they were a pair of swallows. I sat on a bench there for a little while just relaxing. What a concept.

Behind this was a road leading to a trail which went up the mountainside and eventually hooked up with one of the longer hiking trails. I hiked up the side of the mountain which led to a small temple, Hansoubo Temple, at the top of the trail. This was a good climb, but I was rewarded with a wonderful view not only of the big temple complex below, but also of what looked like a few blue tailed skinks on some rocks, and some sort of raptor bird gliding on the thermals off the mountainside. The temple had goblins guarding the last bit of stairs, but I got past them. Although temple was closed, I got a look inside; it was sort of like a small Zen Buddhist Chapel. Then, back down the stairs to poke around the rest of the big temple’s grounds. After this, the game plan was to get to the main station at the center of town and take the bus out to the Dubuitsu, or the Great Buddha.

It was a nice hike in the sun to the center of town which was a major shopping street, and also just the place of commerce for a middle class city. I walked into one place that looked like it was going to be a sort of Japanese food court, which it wasn’t, but the little collection of shops there included a luggage and handbag store where I was able to purchase a very inexpensive bag to drag all my loot back to the US. Score! I am thinking I may trade it for my gym bag and reclaim that nice duffle for other use, but whatever. I really can’t explain how relieved I was. I wasn’t really praying to the Buddha or whoever else might be listening for a bag exactly, but finding it went a long way to relieving my monkey mind. And what a bargain!

I found a vendor on the street selling hot red bean dumplings or whatever they are, and I ate two for my lunch, remembering to take the paper off the bottom this time. Then I went into a drugstore to pick up some needed personal items and buy some very cheap film. In the Japan Times that morning, thoughtfully brought daily to our rooms at the Akasaka Prince Hotel, there was article about how digital cameras are laying waste to the film industry and that the once big German AGFA company has gone belly up. It is affecting the price of film generally. Apparently, it is Americans with their throw-away mentality, according to the Japanese paper, that are supporting the film industry with their purchase of disposable cameras. Some people have these as their only camera. (I, on the other hand, am beginning to see why one would drop the yen on a digital SLR, but not this year, I don’t think.) This is partially why Fuji Film in land of Fuji-san him/herself is cheap, as long as you buy it someplace like a drugstore. So I got some.

I made it to the train station and saw a group of American girls, well, young women, on their way out to see the big guy, so I got on the bus. We JFMFers had been warned about appropriate dress in writing and verbally more than once, and these ladies were dressed in spaghetti straps with various pieces of undergarments suggested and sandals. I was sitting in the back when a group of Japanese businessmen sat down near me and behind them. I understood enough to know that they were very interested in these ladies’ attire, or lack thereof, and the oldest guy was goading the younger one to do or say something, which thankfully he didn’t. These girls weren’t out of place for the States, although not dressed to my taste, but they sure were in Japan. They weren’t out to do anything but go see the Great Buddha. Japanese women in general are more dressed up and certainly more covered up.

The road out to the Dubuitsu was jammed and we were sitting still in traffic a lot of the time, so the girls, the Japanese business guys, and I all bailed at one point and decided to walk. I went down a side street hoping to catch a parallel road to the main one and avoid all the foot traffic, but there wasn’t one. However, there were 3 striped and talkative kitty cats outside a store! One was very friendly and I got a woman to take my picture with it. One of its siblings was tired of having its picture taken and went under a parked car. The third just supervised. I walked down the road after playing with the cats, and then discovered it was not the great Buddha’s road, but the road to another temple. I wanted to see the great Buddha though, and was afraid he was going to close (he did have hours, which is a little strange, now that I think about it) so I pushed on down the road.

The Great Buddha was very big and very popular, but when I went to bow to him, I didn’t feel all the same energy I had around the many other Buddhas I had visited in Japan or even the ones in the MFA in Boston. When I got around to have a look at the back of him, there were windows cut into the back of his head with mesh screens. This seemed weird as I couldn’t figure out why there had to be a breeze through the windmills of his mind or anything, (or is that dharma wheels of his mind). Then I got around to the gift shop side of him, and sure enough, for a couple hundred yen more, you could climb up inside him, like the Statue of Liberty. Well this explained it: bow to that Buddha, and you are bowing to all the energy of the huddled masses that have in their tired and hungry manner been climbing up into his head all day. He’d turned out to be the Sissy Museum of Kamakura, or maybe the Not So Great Buddha, no disrespect intended.

When we were in Vienna last summer, Ruthie and I went to “The Sissy Museum” which has nothing to do with rainbow flags or the like as she, Sissy, was old Viennese royalty. I think we can blame Rick Steeves for that one. Anyway, what we should have done was skip Sissy and spent the whole day out at the big summer palace where they had a botanical garden and a zoo and bunch of other cool stuff in addition to the doily furniture which was nice. I should have stayed at the temple at the end of the cat road maybe and skipped the Big Buddha. Oh well. Stamp my card, please.

I got myself on foot back to the train station at this point and went into a restaurant on the second floor of the station recommended by The Lonely Planet. They had plastic tempura dishes with prices on them in the window and I ended up taking the waiter out there and pointing to the one I wanted. I also had to explain that I wanted hot udon, because apparently you can get cold udon. No thanks. This all worked out, and I got to eat in peace.

For some reason, my return ticket didn’t work – I think I confused the two when I got off the train getting in to Kamakura and invalidated one by accident or something – so I had to buy another ticket back to Tokyo. On the train, I was pretty tired and spacing out. A group of young deaf Japanese men in cool outfits got on at one point and were signing to each other, and this was pretty fascinating (how is Japanese sign language like ASL? Is it? I watched them), so I missed my stop. I had to exit the train system to use the subway, which meant I had to use a fare adjustment machine since I was past my stop, then suss out the subway from there. I could do this, but I felt frustrated with myself for making mistakes, then I thought I should cut myself some slack. I mean, I was in a country on a different continent alone for the day where I did not speak the language and had a great day, so its Ok if I couldn’t do everything perfectly. Hmm, maybe the Buddha is helping after all.

Once I got back, I used my new bag to organize my stuff. We had to leave a bag in Tokyo with anything we would not be bringing to the prefectures, so I put my goodies in there and took it to the secret room where the entire group’s stuff was. We will get it back when we return to Tokyo, of course. Then I prepared an overnight bag for the first night in Kanazawa, Ishikawa Prefecture before we receive the rest of our luggage for the stay in Komatsu. There has been a lot of packing and unpacking and organizing and reorganizing. The big old LLBean Travel Wallet and shoulder bag was a terrific last minute purchase. We are getting many gifts from officials and people and tons of handouts, and I keep needing to resort through the items.

I have been glad that I have been taking the time to write out this journal, but it is extremely time consuming. Because I have to sit the History exam three weeks when I get back, I am concerned about needing to refocus my attention. There is just so much to say, and the days are so consuming that I cannot keep this going in real time. But I plan to keep going. Next entry: Kanazawa and the Geisha District.

This really happened on Friday, June 16, 2006

This day time was taken up entirely with two presentations, one of which had to do with the status of women in Japan and one about the master teacher program which I signed up for thinking it was something else on the website a lifetime ago. Then we had a briefing about our upcoming prefecture tour. I took extensive notes about these, but will not include them here.

The master teacher program was sort of a wasted lecture for me in some ways, although the speaker was very entertaining. It was primarily geared towards science education. However, in the true JFMF spirit of networking, I got talking to a guy from California I had been seated at breakfast with earlier in the day (see, it did work) about an international networking project he is doing as a history teacher. He is connecting, via webcams, teleconferencing or whatever it is that this is called now, with history teachers from different European countries (I need to ask him which ones) to share what their perspective on WWII is. This makes an awful lot of sense to me, especially given the fact that WWII is still such an aspect of the collective consciousness here in Japan. It is mentioned to us one way or another in nearly every public presentation we receive as a group. More on this later, I think.

After this presentation, we met in another room in the hotel conference for briefing on our prefecture visit to Ishikawa, Kanazawa and Komatsu City. This was a basic run through of our schedule for the next few days. One sort of minor stressor is that I have accumulated some stuff on this trip and needed to leave a bag in the hotel with this extra stuff in it while we are on the other side of the country for a week. But I didn’t yet have one of those bags.

After the briefing, I changed clothes again - so many costume changes with so few outfits, and headed out to the shopping district to visit the famous Oriental Bazaar for a few gifts. This was another underground trip with very handy directions provided by JFMF and it was easy to find. It was in a fairly trendy area called Shibuya-ku. I did end up getting some stuff there – saw a couple of my comrades there, and the prices were good, much better than the money changers outside the Shinto shrine. Then I decided to find a place to eat. I walked around a bit and found a restaurant from The Lonely Planet, but it was sort of pricey and was a kind of French fancy sandwich place, not what I was after. I walked back towards the conveyor belt sushi place and passed a Mc Donalds, in front of which was a nearly elderly American woman. It was her dog that caught my attention though; it was some sort of little very furry curly haired tiny breed of a dog with a sparkly light blue New York Yankees shirt on it. The woman was staying with her daughter’s family for three years in Japan, and she just loved it, she said. Her daughter came out at one point to see if I was dangerous or something, but after I basically passed muster (she was probably worried about her old mother speaking to strangers all over Tokyo) I moved along, took a pedestrian bridge across the street and went into the conveyor belt sushi place.

I was ushered to a spot at the counter where the sushi was going by and saw Xaiofan from my group who was there with two Japanese friends she knew who lived in Tokyo. Despite all my group ditching, I was glad to see her, and she waved in a friendly fashion and shouted over the heads of the people nearby to greet me. She pointed out the colored plates on the wall with the prices next to them and let me know that the price of the sushi was based on the color plates. The sushi makers stood in the center of the counter and as they made the sushi, they put it up on the conveyor belt. You just stack the used plates on top of each other in front of you as you finished one. Tea came with the meal and you served yourself from a spigot built into the countertop. An American student with two Japanese friends was there who verified my pronunciation of “May I take a picture?” in Japanese, so I got a couple. Like most places in Japan, if not all, you pay at the till, and here, it was someone’s job to total up your plates when you were ready to get up from your seat, and hand you the bill. I had maybe 4 plates of sushi – I have been more than willing to eat raw stuff here if it salmon or tuna as the fish is truly outstanding. I really am enjoying the fish. This came to less than 100yen, or less than $10. Couldn’t beat the price.

After this, I sort of wandered around this trendy district nearby and people watched. It seemed to be largely populated by 20ish kids in great post punk outfits and hairstyles. It looks like getting a tattoo on this trip will be right out since they are still associated with the Yakuza or Japanese Mafia. Too bad (?) Then, I checked out a used clothing store that had great prices, but I decided I might be getting too old for that sort of thing, although some neckties were starting to look pretty good. Then I thought, where would I wear a necktie? I might be too chicken to start getting stylish. Maybe.

Dieting after the Fish Market

(This entry is still the Fish Market Day , Part II. As a neophite, and someone concerned with keeping up with the writing as much as the bells and whistles of the blog, I have not delved into how to shuffle blog enteries around. They post according to the day and time you post them,logically enough.)

After breakfast, we boarded a tour bus to see the Diet Building which is the legislative building in Japan, analogous best to the House of Commons in England. The Diet members are either from the House of Representatives or the House of Counselors. This was fairly interesting, although you could not take any pictures inside. It reminded me of architecture in Vienna, and one of the things I want to look up in the material they gave us is its age. They have been giving us so much reading material that it is hard to read it, take notes on it, digest it or anything. (Not deliberately to make a pun about Diet and digestion or anything.)

It is as if our time is divided into two types of activities --- the official ones which in general are interesting, and the independent activities which we all rush to do sort of like sailors on liberty or something. There is so much to see here and we do spend a fair amount of our time inside.

Lunch was in a district in Tokyo called Asakusa, not be confused with the district our hotel is in which is Akasaka. The bus was parked in a narrow street just outside the entrance to a large Shinto shrine plus another Buddhist worship area. Our guide called the giant incense vat, similar to what they had in China outside the Buddhist shrines, the "Holy Smoke" which I thought was pretty funny. It was a rendezvous point later. We marched through a line of outdoor shops, stalls and kiosks, all covered with a retractable roof, to get to our restaurant. The group ate upstairs in a big tatami room and we were served an excellent tempura meal. Some of the people had never had tempura before and it was again a little sad to see how many people were really sort of afraid of the food and uncomfortable with the experience generally. I think that one of the themes that is coming up again and again for me personally is gratitude --one of the positive themes anyway. Here I was grateful for my past experiences and the gift of my relative physical fitness and strength.

Lunch was an officially sanctioned eat and run sort of deal, so as soon as I had chomped – my ability to use chopsticks and get up easily from a very low table at which I had been sitting on the floor were definite, er, assets here – I took off to browse through the shops and breathe in some Holy Smoke. The holy sites at the far end of them were really quite powerful spiritual places, and all of this commerce right at their doorsteps harkened the Moneychangers outside the Temple story in a way. I prayed in front of the Buddha, for the first of many times, for peace and compassion, and this was quite a moving experience. The Buddha and I go way back.

The afternoon’s lectures were a mixed bag. We are being powerpointed pretty regularly, and with the love many of our speakers have for quantification of everything, this makes a lot of sense. We get statistics with everything, and I can see adopting this style of looking at the world a little more, though I think I would miss my broad brush with which I am so fond of painting everything.

The two Diet members were from different parties – I took handwritten notes in my other book about them – and one was male and the other female. The gentlemen at one point seemed to imply that the cause of the Japanese economic decline and birthrate is due to the fact that women are in the workplace – at the face true enough, but it sure stirred the crowd up. The moderator commented that “The temperature in the room has just increased.” This got a polite chuckle from us.

It was literally a bit more difficult to listen to the second speaker from a large Banking Corporation, not because his topic was uninteresting --- more statistics and numbers on Japan’s economy—but because his delivery style was lacking in diction and rife with “umm,uhhhs” and the like. Oh well. I would have liked a power point of that because I wanted to look at the numbers even if I couldn’t actually understand his pronunciation of them.

After the daily costume change, I went out to eat with a woman who is also in the Komatsu group. We walked out to the area near our hotel, but first stopped in a pachinko parlor to give it another go. What a din!! Through gestures and whatnot –the attendants spoke no English even if I could have heard them, which I couldn’t—we figured out how to put a 1000yen note (=about $10) into the machine and turn the handle to release the balls. They fall into a tray and then are shot up into the machine by your turning the handle. Unlike my dad’s old machines, these are completely electronic and play songs and have a variety of themes including fish and seashells, anime characters, and other things. The women were playing the seashell ones, so we did too, although I wanted to play one with an anime character on it. There were also some that had mini TVs mounted to the side of the machines, so that if you were insufficiently stimulated by the machine itself, you could watch tv or the stock market. Incredible. Depending on your score, balls get replenished in the tray. If you get a whole bunch, the attendants will bring you baskets to store them in. On the machine, next to the score, which other than reading as a number I could not decipher,there is button to press to summon the attendants. Some people had 3 or 4 baskets of what must have been thousands upon thousands of balls in them. You can turn them in for prizes right there. There is also apparently a black market of prizes for sale someplace where people who’ve hoarded the prizes sell them. We played for about 7.67 minutes and promptly had our money eaten up, so no prizes for us. But it was something I wanted to do. It doesn’t look like I will be partying a great deal on this trip as I am finding myself hanging out with meditators and at least one open-minded non-proselytizing born again Christian, as my dinner companion later turned out to tell me she was. So, blowing 10yen in there didn’t seem too bad.

As frequently happens to me while traveling, I was starting to get concerned about where we should eat. Many of the restaurants had plastic food in the windows with price labels. This was not always as helpful as it sounds, as it was sometimes difficult to identify the food the plastic models were supposed to be representing, but it was far more useful than signs written strictly in Japanese. Neither Lynda nor I wanted to eat raw beef, maybe sushi, though, and neither of us wanted a lot of meat. We stopped in one hole in the wall place that looked cool, but it was all in Japanese, and no one there spoke any English. At the doorway, just an opening with a hanging in front of it, there was a vending machine that sold tickets for food items – everything a la carte, clearly – but we sure had no idea what these items were as the vending machine was all in Japanese. You bought the tickets, handed them to the counterman who gave them to the cook, and presumably you would then get your selections served to you; a sort of real-person automat, and a great concept, and a genuine sort of experience to have, but we just couldn’t read the Japanese. Damn. We shrugged and smiled in an exaggerated fashion, probably looking slightly idiotic, and left.

We found ourselves at an Udon cafeteria sort of place, a very small and very clean restaurant where they had a picture menu. The woman behind the counter knew a little English “No meat, normal udon” which is what I had – broth, noodles and veggies. Very good. This was where Lynda told me amongst other things, including some of her experiences in the Peace Corp, that she was a born again Christian, which I was slightly fascinated with, particularly as I did not seem for any reason to be offensive to her and she was not interested in preaching the gospel to me. It did explain why she knew who Mordecai was, though. And I was thinking she must be Jewish before that, and that was why she was so nice and open. I am having a ton of my misconceptions about all sorts of things taken apart here, and not all of them about Japan.

Just Say No to Peakbagging or Plain Yoga, No Mat

Thursday June 15, 2006

I awoke at about 4am or so with a migraine and took a pill and tried to get back to sleep, but I just couldn’t. In my best Seize the Day mindset, I decided to bathe, dress and go off to the Fish Market. The hot, hot bath plus the pill worked wonders and that headache did get kicked. The JFMF people are incredibly organized in so many ways and they had provided a handout that gave the subway lines to take to the fish market. So I set off. At the bottom of the stairs to the street, I hesitated and almost turned back with an alternate plan to walk around the gardens or something. I was very glad that I didn’t. The subway system is really quite easy to manage once you know what to do. In the envelope with our food mad money, we received a brochure with a map and instructions on the fares and everything else. I thought of Rick Steeves, as this is the type of information he would appreciate. I purchased a 24 hour ticket from an automatic machine with the thought that I would be using it in the evening, but that didn’t turn out to be the case later. Nonetheless, it was the easiest way to navigate the subway. Like the new Charlie card (which let’s face it, it is a much younger American cousin to systems used in Europe and Japan) you use it to enter and exit the gates. Like in Europe, they tell you on an electronic sign when the next train is due, and by golly, there it is, on time. Nearly every time I bet. It was fairly easy to make the connections, although like New York, you go up and down stair cases and walk through corridors underground a bit. I was glad to have had this type of experience as a traveler previously.

I got off the train after making a transfer, and when I got off the train onto the platform, a transit worker asked, “Fish Market?” in English, and when I replied in the affirmative, he pointed me to the right exit. I met an American couple at the head of the stairs who were also going, but I decided to use the footbridge over the busy street. The gentleman in the couple declined as he didn’t want to be bothered with the stairs. A map outside indicated that you could cut through a parking lot of what turned out to be a university. I chose that route and found myself on the outskirts of the marketplace outside the fish market itself. This was a fascinating area full of stalls of tons of fish, of course, but also other items. In addition to fruit, dried fish, drinks, and knick knacks and cooking stuff for sale, there were a few stuffed – taxidermy style – creatures around. I walked literally up to one of the entrances of the Fish Market (please note capital letters) and decided not to go in. I felt very strongly that it was their workplace and I would be an intruder, along with whatever other tourists would be there. So I didn’t go in. I took a lot of pictures, and more importantly took my time outside the area among the stalls in the alleyways. At one such place, I went to what I thought was a cooler/fridge with a glass door to get a can of green tea. I was quite surprised that it was in fact hot tea, hot green tea in an aluminum can. I decided to get it anyway, for the liquid as much as the caffeine at that point, and it cooled off pretty quickly. Afterwards, I asked the woman if it would be OK if I took her picture, which she was fine with. I also got a very small can of excellent coffee – this cold – and drank this down nearly in one gulp. I took a lot of pictures.

When I ran in to some other people who had gone inside, there was a lot of peakbagging talk and semi-posturing, “Well, we saw The Auction.” This is a daily fish auction of a giant tuna, which would be cool thing to see admittedly but I feel that since we have precious little unstructured time that I wanted to make my own true choice. Someone later also talked about how she felt like an intruder, and she did go inside. Another person said, “Well there was a special place to stand to watch The Auction, and there were people from all over the world there. But no flash pictures were allowed”. I still didn’t think the fact that there were "people from all over the world there" made it right to intrude upon, but wisely for once, refrained from expressing this opinion. I did say that for me, I was glad to take the time outdoors and explore the surrounding streets. I had a time restraint due to breakfast and morning meetings. Peakbagging be damned.

The Pride Goeth Before A Fall Department:

I ran into some folks from the program on the way back to the subway. I really wanted to continue to move at my own pace. They were asking for directions a lot etc. (And besides I know all about trains and everything, right? Plus there was the virtuousness of not having peakbagged.) I kept going at one point, and then stopped to take a picture in the subway corridor. When I got down the stairs to the train platform, one was getting ready to pull away, so I jumped on it without looking Sure enough, it was going the opposite direction than I wanted to. So I had to get off at the next stop and cross the platform and pick up the train going in the opposite direction.

Figures.

Professional Attire

June 14, 2005



Breakfast was in the large banquet hall that basically turned into our headquarters for a great deal of the Tokyo part of the program. Despite the presence of 200 of us at some point during the serving period, the buffet lines moved quickly and efficiently. I think if there was two things I would bring back to the US it would be this efficiency without freakish control and the poise and manner that has flowed from our hosts and hostesses without the disingenuousness it might have.

This was a day of presentations in the morning and afternoon.

In the morning, we heard a presentation by Tsutomu Kimura (“My English friends call me Tom; please call me Tom.”), the President of the National Institution for Academic Degrees. This was actually quite illuminating and very easy to listen to. His power point presentation gave a great visual for the statistics he quoted, and he talked with ease and appropriate humor. Apparently, the Japanese schools are not doing all that well, at least in comparison to how they were doing, and this is tied to the behavior of the students. (!!) We received a copy of the power point, and I took some notes on it. I found this lecture to be quite stimulating and interesting. I am very intereted in the metacognitive view of education, I think, particularly the sociology of schools.

In the afternoon, we watched samples of traditional Japanese theater. The first was a style I knew nothing about called Kyogen. The performers were two white Americans who performed a comedic play about a man who wanted to steal a dwarf tree from his neighbor and what happened once he was discovered. The gentleman also discussed different types of masks.

The second lecturer of the afternoon was a Japanese American who’d come to Japan to do his doctoral dissertation on Japanese performance arts and ended becoming a traditional Japanese dancer himself. He had a slide presentation which included quicktime movies (Mac equipment, I noticed) He never did finish the dissertation and now lives in Japan.

He had quite a lot to say, more than I could write down, and his visuals were key. I think this might well be a video I order.

The highlight of this presentation for me was being able to watch a dancer put on her make-up as he described it. She came in already with her hair in a skull cap. Afterwards, he sang with a woman who was playing a shamimasen and another man, and the dancer danced. I think that at one point, as a vocalist, he "had all the notes", and it was unclear to me whether some of his minor vocal difficulties were due to the fact that he had just been talking or what. I did enjoy this demonstration lecture very much as well.

We had an opportunity to have a little time on our own before the reception at night. I did get an email out and was able to clean up a bit.

My friend Reggie has been giving me a hard time about my clothes, however. Some of the people here are totally dressed to the nines, and brought the suitcases to do that. This really is a deluxe hotel, which is a different style of travel than I am used to. I could have had more dressier outfits had I wanted, but I think that there will be a laundry issue later that I will be able to avoid, one that involves time and expense.

The reception was fun. There was a certain amount of relatively brief speechmaking. I stood in the front for this and I think it helped me enjoy it more than I might have, although I am so auditorally oriented, who knows. I circulated and chit chatted with this and that person. There was a lot of Western food served, which I always find so disappointing. I am not interested in having a watered down experience, although this allow a comfort level that I haven’t experienced to the same degree as before. It was officially over at 8:30, but I bailed at 8, and I think there were folks who’d left before that, judging by how much the crowd had thinned out.

After I went back to my room to change out of the dress clothes, I wandered outside on my own for a while. Bascially, I just walked up and down streets. I had to buy a nail clipper which was easy enough to do, although I really felt the language barrier. I think I am not an unfriendly person in general, at least on most days now, and I really felt the absence of being able to speak very much, especially given the degree to which people are very polite.

The clerk in the drugstore gave me a free sample of bath salts, which I haven’t used yet. The bath salts in the bathroom at the hotel are pretty strange. One says it is bergamot, and I have no idea what bergamot smells like, so can’t really judge the smell on its own merits. When you put it in the bath water at first, it is a very bright yellow color. However, if its authenticity is at all related to the peppermint salts, I doubt it is real bergamot scent. The peppermint is decided not peppermint, and it is a fantastic blue shade at first. However, neither are irritating physically in any way and smell OK, so I may use them again.

I went into a fairly large bookstore where, ding ding ding, the books were all in Japanese. (!) I still do not get the written language of course, although I look intently at kanji when I can and can pick out a lot of characters. I am sort of making myself do that. I did purchase a few postcards, however.

Although I wandered a bit too far in one direction and decided to retrace my footsteps to get back to where I was, I felt pretty safe out there on my own. I might have gone into some place for a drink, but I chickened out in the end. I did go into a pachinko parlor which was a noisy, smoky and utterly confusing place, but I did not play as I could not figure it out. Did go into an arcade and play “Out Run” twice, got the extra time twice, which was pretty fun. I was the only female in there.

When I got back, I worked a little on this journal, and then all of a sudden, just crashed.

Time Travel

June 12, 2006
June13, 2006


More documentation by people of the breakfast buffet which seems slightly excessive. It is a standard American breakfast buffet with a decided lack of cereal and NO cats on the table to offer companionship or commentary. This is slightly sad, but decidedly less furry.

Already I have assisted several people with new digital cameras they have brought – cameras I have never seen before_- mostly to delete pix they don’t want. Next on the agenda will be giving the definitions of really long words or opening jars with tight lids, two of my other specialties. Oh and taking pictures of people with their own cameras; that can’t be too far behind.

I had another minor run in with authorities – this time American authorities instead of Chinese ones – about trying to take a picture of something official. In the SF airport, they have kiosks, sort of like free standing ATM machines, that you need to visit if you are not an American citizen. They have the Homeland Security logo on them. They take info, a digital picture and a fingerprint. They are manned (or womanned in this case) by people in uniforms. I did not see this official until she came up to me, but that could be for any reason. There were also TSA cops around with guns and badges. One of the kiosks I wanted to take a picture of also had an “Out of order” sign on it which of course to me added to the irony. Well, I was politely stopped by an official in a uniform who told I could not take a picture, but that if I had questions I could visit the website. This was posted on a sign next to the machines in several languages. I did not write down the URL, but I think I will visit the website, now convinced that when I do, they will throw cookies into my computer and start reading my mail. Won’t they be disappointed.

I felt sort of sheepish at being semi-busted, however politely, but also am really sort of , well, outraged is the wrong word, confused, frustrated, satisfied that this is just the sort of thing our government and current administration would have a hand in. It makes me want to think more about how free is our country. Ruthie and I were talking the other day about how we as humans are always in a state of war. It is the novel 1984, really. But of course, when I went through the screening procedures at the head of the gate area, I was glad enough to do it, hypocrite that I am.

This flight is 9 hours and 10 minutes long – is scheduled to be. I am ashamed to say that I watched two trashy movies with ridiculous jock heroes (both with much cheering, slo mo, tears, etc, and both boys got the girl at the end) in them and most of King Kong (an abridged version) nearly twice. I felt bad for Kong, and he wasn’t a real ape, just a computerized ape that sometimes looked pretty fake. Except his face. I hated when he died at the end.

So we have passed over the International Date Line and it is tomorrow, while it is still today. I’d like to think this is something about the Zen-like eternal present, but as it turned out, it was a lot more about the eternally present jet lag.

Once we got to Narita Airport, we were greeted with a VERY friendly phalanx of Japanese people with JFMF signs directing us to baggage and then to a greeter who put us in lines according to our city group. The customs line was very long, but very quick. I unlocked my bags in case they wanted to look inside them and worried that my prescriptions were going to paint me as a total lunatic even before ‘I opened my mouth and proved that myself, but we were treated with incredible diplomacy and courtesy.

There has been an emphasis repeatedly and deservedly about how we are in fact guests of the Japanese government. The diplomatic aspect of our mission here is key, and at this stage of the game, it is very much felt by me.

The Japanese people I have observed here are incredibly warm, with a very wry sense of humor that I for one appreciate. The folks who have been hosting us are of course quite articulate, but always with warmth,. I think if I admit it to myself I think I thought that they were not these things, with the possible exception of articulate.

Once we arrived at the hotel, we were put into another series of very efficient and quick lines and given our room keys. My room is on the 20th floor, where the business office also is, fortunately, and has a major view, as do all of them.

I have taken photographs to document the modern amenities here. My two favorite things are the very deep bathtub and the kimono style robes that you can wear. There are fluffy terry American style robes in the closet, but I am trying to maximize that Japan Thang, so I have been using the other robe.

We were assigned to numbered groups of four or so to go out with Japanese students for dinner. On the bus on the way from the airport, we were given 24,000 yen to use as per diem food money. Some of our meals will be provided as part of the program, but we will have many on our own, particularly dinner. The group I was in also connected to another group, as the two young women were friends.

We walked to an area fairly close to the hotel where a lot of male businessmen in nearly identical black suits with white dress shirts were walking. We went to a restaurant that was at the top of the escalator where we had a very brief wait. When we went in, sure enough we had to remove our shoes, remembering not to step back on the “unclean” side of the threshold. We walked in stocking feet to a locker area. Each locker held two pairs of shoes, one on top of the other, and was locked with a wooden key. The key was really a piece of wood about the size of a 3x5 index card that went vertically in to the slot below. It stuck out with a number and a Japanese character on it. I stuck it in a pocket for the remainder of the meal.

We were escorted to a table that sat in a space cut below the floor to walk on. Directly next to us, separated only by a large decorative cloth screen was a large family group, sounding like they were having a celebration. We actually shared our very large table with a party of three businessmen, with the condiments and tray of other accoutrements as a sort of barrier. They were smoking, as many more Japanese folks do, but I have been in much smokier places, and it didn’t seem as bad as it could have been, given the somewhat confined quarters.

The menu was somewhat overwhelming, although each item had a picture. We were also all so tired at this point. In the end, we each indicated to our hostesses what we wanted and they ordered together. Our waiter was a young man with a sort of wireless PDA in which he entered the items we wanted. There was a wireless, silent (to us) bell (Circular device with a button) on our table that you could use to get the waiter. The way the tables were situated, there was no way they could do any sort of circulating to check on their tables' status.

The food was excellent: sushi, noodles, a big bowl of mackerel, shredded radishes, some puffy fried things, salads, etc. We ordered together and tried a little bit of each thing. I was dismayed to see how uncomfortable one of my colleagues was with the food, using chopsticks, etc. but now in retrospect, I guess if you couldn’t eat because of the utensils, and you were hungry, you might be little frustrated.

Before the meal, the girls each bowed their heads and said a sort of formal thank which roughly translates into "Thank you for the food I am about to receive." This is not a really religious thing, just a polite acknowledgement. The meal concluded with one as well.

The meal seemed a little long after a point though. At one juncture, the waiter came back with something that apparently the ladies hadn’t ordered. I was impressed on this occasion, as I had been generally, at how poised they were. They were able to handle the mistake with little to no fuss, as was he. It was as if they had a public persona and a private persona. The difference is that it seemed genuine. This trip includes a fewAmericans who have a smile on their face and seem polite, but what lies underneath may be something else.

Finally, much to our entire party’s relief, I am sure, we got the bill, and walked back to the hotel for bed.

Learning to Bow

June 11, 2006


A meeting of friendly and open people upon landing at SFO. I don’t really know what I thought I was going to find amongst this huge group of teachers. There are 200 in all, from all 50 states plus the District of Columbia.

The bus to the hotel – just south of the SF airport, was very modern with video screens in it that showed you the view outside from the of the bus . I really thought this was strange since you were so high up and could look out the windows as usual. This was the first of many indications that the technology piece of this excursion was going to be much bigger than any other sort of adventure I have had, at home or traveling.

Very nice room with a view of the southern part of SF bay. Apparently in Japan, we will have our own rooms, but here I had a roommate who turned out to be very nice, and an “ethnic Mennonite” whatever that is. Many of my colleagues are documenting every single thing about this trip from checking in to meetings and lunch and breakfast. Cellphones, laptops, digital cameras and a fair amount of brand spanking new video cameras abound. This laptop is adding a certain amount of weight to my bag, perhaps more than I anticipated, but it is OK.

The cocktail party before dinner was a good idea for everyone as it sort of loosened everyone up and it seemed like folks got geared up, certainly dressed up for it. I hung around with Reggie who I met at the baggage carousel in SF, and some other folks. The thing that I am noticing, which plays into my Homogenization of America paranoia is that people seem on the surface to be the same wherever they come from. Is this part of Bush’s NCLB stuff? (I’m sure Bush is behind it somehow…) The prevalence of advertising, or what? Except of course if you talk to folks, they aren’t all like that . There a lot of nice people here and there are some people here I do not need to get to know very well. And there are some people that are OK just to talk to certain things about. But mostly it is pleasant enough.

Haiku for June 10, 2006

western rain fills skies
cranes spread wings, shake off water
keep balance, ready