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!
After having been here less than an hour, a group of teachers went to the annual Lantern Festival near Himeji. We had to take 2 trains to get there. Children and teenagers and adults all took part in parades and lantern displays. It was a lot like a carnival or county fair – there were booths outside along the streets selling yummy food. One favorite is a cookie shaped like a fish, filled
either with custard or sweet bean paste. The town is on the Seto Inland Sea, so fishing is important here. The festival is an ancient Shinto festival that celebrates a bountiful harvest and good fishing. Four boys about 6th grade in age ride inside each large shrine, carried by dozens of young men. The boys are dressed in beautiful traditional kimonos, but they are not visible. You can see the back of their kimonos trailing out over the shrine. The boys are inside the shrines, playing taiko drums. The bearers lift and bow with the shrine, and sometimes they even toss it up in the air without holding it. It was breathtaking. Check out the pictures from the Lantern Festival. Do you notice anything interesting in the crowd?
Sayonara,
Mrs. Grumbling
Yesterday was another beautiful day in Tokyo. My last day here for a week. We head off to Himeji on the Seto Inland Sea stay for our visit to a prefecture (state) and ultimately our home stay with a family. Yesterday I spent the day with another JFMF-er — from Minnesota. It was interesting to compare our geographies and recreational interests. In our first (only?) free day, we visited Kamakura, a place recommended for a great day trip from Tokyo. We ate in a neighborhood sushi restaurant, where noone spoke English and the menu was totally in Japanese. We ordered with gestures and nods, having great tuna and cucumber sushi and miso soup. Wally met a collection of kitty cats the restaurant had on display near our table (one of 2 tables). We also had ice cream from a street vendor. Mine was sweet potato. They also had green tea, cassis, lychee nut as well as more familiar flavors. We toured several temples and shrines, and saw some amazing sculptures and gardens. I took lots of photos, but must rush right now to get on the train for Himeji. I hope my internet services work equally well once I get there tonight. I have found several red sox fans, both local and tourist. Go Sox.
Mrs. Grumbling
Konnichiwa!
It’s raining down hard tonight in Tokyo. But it didn’t ruin my evening plans, because I saw a Giants/Dragons baseball game in Tokyo Dome, and it’s covered. What an experience going to a baseball game in Tokyo! The fans are so orderly and organized, they all chant the same chant in unison! The home team lost (7-4), but Wally met some new friends. The game was sold out, but we managed to get tickets in the very last row of the highest seating area in the stadium. We were just to the right of home plate, and the seats were really pretty good!
This morning we walked to the Tsukiji Fish market. It must be the size of at least four football fields. It has more than 400 species of freshly caught seafood, weighing over 2,500 tons every day. We watched the tuna auction and took some interesting pictures. There is a stone monument near the exit. They say it is there to appease the souls of fish that pass through Tsukiji. We left the hotel at 5:00 a.m. so we could be back in time for our lectures and seminars that began at 9:00.
Something exciting happened at our hotel today. There were lots of security police and they even shut down the elevators to our floor for a while. This morning the crown prince (the emperor’s son) and the prime minister met on the 11th floor of our hotel. I don’t know why it was here, and not in the imperial palace. One of the teachers saw them, but I was eating breakfast.
Sessions today included one on Peace Education, with interviews with a survivor of Hiroshima and the daughter of a Hiroshima victim. We also had a presentation of kabuki theatre, with a lecture to explain more about it. We also met to iron out details about our trip after Tokyo.
Sunday is a travel day. We will take a train to Himeji, the prefecture we will visit for 10 days. I am not sure what my computer accessibility will be there, so I wanted to be sure to touch base today.
Sayonara!
Mrs. Grumbling
Today we had a day of lectures from education and government officials. We leaned about Japanese education and issues they are working on, as well as their view of their economic place in the world. The JFMF program booked really outstanding and important people for our seminars. Two members of their Diet (Congress) spoke with us, and answered our questions. Yuji Tsushima is the head of the LDP party, and spoke with us very eloquently in English. Kuniko Inoguchi is a woman member of their House of Representatives, and is so smart and frank. She got her PhD from Yale. Each of the 198 teachers was presented with two books by Japanese author Kenji Miyazawa. A representative from their publisher read excerpts from the books and spoke a bit about the author’s history and ideas.
Evening was dinner on our own in Tokyo, so I went out with 6 other teachers from our group to explore Tokyo. We saw the Japanese version of “Times Square”with a huge TV screen on a building. We visited their teen “high fashion” area, Harajuku. We found a two used kimono shops, and had fun examining the absolutely beautify fabrics in the traditional kimono and obi. We saw a calligraphy artist painting outdoors. We visited a Japanese “dollar store”, the 100 yen store. We found more than one store devoted to the holiday “Halloween.” We took a taxi and I was able to say a few words with the driver. We rode the subway. I learned that the cars drive on the left side of the street here, not the right like in the US. The cars have the steering wheel on the right side, not the left like us. I have only seen two people wearing kimonos, other that the actors in the play we saw. They are traditional and much-loved clothing, but are not worn everyday, only for special occasions. Tokyo is a very modern city and is very clean and everyone is very polite and courteous.
People ride their bicycles on the sidewalks here, not the streets. It is not at all scary, because they ride slowly and are very careful of the pedestrians. Tonight we visited a shrine, Zojo-ji, which dates from 1393 but has been rebuilt since then.
There are thousands of Jizo statues that my tour book calls mini-guardians of the remains of six shogun, that are buried here. Each statue has a red and white pinwheel standing beside it. We also walked beneath Tokyo Tower, and learned it has 4 floors of museums, shops, and restaurants in the bottom four levels.
I’ll try to attach a few photos.
Sayonara,
Mrs. Grumbling
Today we had a both a Japanese style breakfast and American style breakfast buffet. The Japanese breakfast included a yummy green salad! I could get used to that.
We went out to lunch today to a traditional restaurant in the Asakusa district of Tokyo. We had to remove our shoes before entering the dining room. We knelt at low tables on pillows set on straw mats, called tatami. We fit 200 people in a relatively small space, not needing chairs! A way for us to eat at M. L. Day School on early release days?
Dinner tonight was a buffet with speeches and officials from the government of Japan and the American Embassy. There was so much food I didn’t even get to look at it all, much less eat it. The sushi was lovely. I think I tried some squid, among other delicacies. I found a fresh fig, a favorite of mine, among the fruits set out for dessert.
We heard from one of the Diet members of the House of Councilors, Wakako Hironaka. She would be equivalent to one of our U.S. Senators. The minister-counselor for Public Affairs of the American Embassy, Ronald Post, was also very interesting. He thinks it is very important for all of us, but especially our young people, to recognize what we have in common with people from around the world, while at the same time we examine, explore, and even celebrate our differences. He said the Japanese government is interested in having more school children from other countries attend school in Japan.
We visited the Japanese Diet, which is a beautiful building that is similar in function to our Capitol building in Washington, D.C. We met lots of school children visiting on field trips. I took a few pictures, but we didn’t get to talk with them very much. A few children met Wally, the Red Sox Green Monster, who my school sent along with me to Japan. The children either wore uniforms or matching yellow hats. It reminds me of the matching T-shirts summer rec has our chidren wear on field trips.
At Asakusa we visited the Asakusa Kannon Temple, the oldest Buddist temple in Tokyo. It is also called Senso-ji. According to tradition, the temple was founded in the mid-seventh century to enshrine a tiny golden image of Kannon, the Goddess of Mercy, which had turned up in the nets of two local fishermen. Most of the present buildings are post-war reconstructions, but sweeping, curved, tiled roofs give it an atmosphere it must have had hundreds of years ago.
Visitors waft incense smoke, thought to have curative powers, and considered to be the breath of the gods. There are countless small shops with souvenirs, kimonos, sweets and lots more along the way to the temple. There were many tourists there, and the spiritual use of the space seemed in no conflict with the bustling marketplace.
We had a lecture and performance of traditional Japanese kyogen theatre. This type of short play is a comedy that has no scenery or props except a pine tree background and a fan that serves as any needed props. I hope to bring home a tape of the performance to share. Wally met one of the actors and liked the traditional masks.
We heard some traditional Japanese music that was very calm and soothing. There was a stringed instrument called a koto and a bamboo flute called a shakuhachi. The music was very beautiful, and when I took a photo I noticed that the notation on the sheet music did not look anything like our own.
Tomorrow we have lots of lectures. Our big adventure will be deciding on a restaurant for dinner “on our own.” Hopefully, there are some photos attached to illustrate my message.
Talk to you soon.
Sayonara,
Mrs. Grumbling
In my last note I mentioned I crossed the International date line on Monday, and came out on Tuesday! Here is a picture from the plane’s tv screen, showing out flight plan as we crossed into a new day.
Why is our route such a curved arc? We flew over Alaska and the Bering Sea to get to Japan.
Look first on a map, then on a globe!
Greetings to all from Tokyo.
We left from San Francisco on Monday Oct. 15th mid-day, crossed the international date line mid-flight, and it is now 10:50 p.m. in Tokyo. The flight, itself, was 9-3/4 hours. Try out the math!
I’ve been in the hotel since 6:30, had a meeting, and a college student named Eri took a few of us out to dinner at a restaurant. I brought “Wally” along. She recognized him immediately, and said “Oh, the Green Monster!” Eri even took Wally’s picture with her cell phone. We had a lovely soup served in the tea pot you see. Wally likes Japan!
The view outside my hotel window is of Tokyo Tower. Quite lit up, and just a few meters taller than the Eiffel Tower, on which it was modeled. The tower was built in the 1950s for radio and television transmitter purposes.
I am so tired, and plan to sleep very soon. Breakfast tomorrow is at 7:15!
Good morning. It is just after sunrise in San Francisco. I took a photo from my hotel window. I leave shortly for my 10 hour flight to Tokyo. Last night we met the teachers from all over the US, including Alaska and Hawaii, who have been selected to be part of this awesome program.
All 200 of us were last night the invited guests of the Consul General from Japan to the US, at his home in San Francisco, with a view of the bay. We had sushi. There was a centerpiece that was a model of the Golden Gate Bridge on the table made of carrots and sushi. I’ll try to attach a few photos from the elegant event last night.
This program is all about the students and the teaching. Imagine getting to talk with 200 teachers about ways to share Japanese culture with the children. My roommate last night was also from Maine, and teachers high school art in Maranacook. She is also an amateur actress with Gas Light Theatre.
This program promises to be very exciting, but demanding. We only had 10 minutes after panels and lectures yesterday to change for our elegant evening with the Consul General and his wife. I can’t wait to learn more, and share it with you all whenever I can get on line.
Wally is here in the hotel with me now. Hello to everyone, and special thanks to Mildred L. Day School staff and students for the awesome surprise assembly Friday. Your messages, well wishes, gifts and cards will be with me in Japan, and forever! Thank you for your enthusiasm and support! We will have so much fun learning more about the world beyond Maine and the U.S.!
I should sign off now, but will try to attach a few photos. I am thinking of you all.
Mrs. Grumbling and Wally
