Linking Maine and Japan

Konnichiwa from Himeji, Japan!

I arrived in Himeji yesterday, mid-afternoon. I rode with the 19 other teachers assigned to this town on the Shinkasen Nozomi “bullet” train. This train travels really fast (faster than any we have in the US). Our guide and translator told us Nozomi means “hope.” We saw Mt. Fuji from the train as we rode past. Its peak seemed to have only a small amount of snow, but the mountain towered much higher than the clouds.

We spent our first full day in Himeji visiting the nearby University that trains teachers. We had conferences with the university professors and some graduate students who are teachers. We learned that we are thinking about some of the same ideas in teaching and learning.

On the way to the university we saw rice fields. The rice had already been harvested but the rice stalks were stacked up and being dried to make tatami mats and crafts. We also saw some bamboo forests. Because bamboo is plentiful, it is a good material for spoons and chopsticks – it is a renewable resource. We also saw lots of goldenrod along the roads. Our translator told us it is an invasive species introduced there from the U.S. We also saw some fields that looked like huge, yard-sized, hot pink rectangles. When we got close we saw that the pink was a field of cosmos flowers. I grow them in my own garden in Maine!