Introduction

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

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

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

Day One

DAY ONE (06/08/08)

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

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

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

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

Day Two

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

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

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

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

Day Three (and morning of Day Four)

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Day Four

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

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

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

View from Breakfast Room

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Days Five and Six

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Our hotel at night

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Day Seven

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

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

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

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

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

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

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