Journal 2002 - Tokyo
Good Morning from San Francisco!
Monday, November 18, 2002
Yesterday started with freezing rain and ended with sunshine and palm trees. It was an exciting day.
After 7 1/2 hours of flying, we arrived in San Francisco just after noon and were treated to lunch which was the third meal for most of us. In the afternoon, we got instructions and a panel of former participants showed us pictures, shared their experiences and gave us tips. One lady was given a kimono that was a family treasure from her home stay family. Another had a family that did not teach any English and toured him around their island all day. My favorite advice is if you have an upset stomach get a drink with a picture of a stomach and a smiley face and you will feel much better. A most embarrassing moment was a teacher who was asked to point out Kansas on an American map in a classroom and could not do it as the map was in Japanese.
I have been given the names and email of my host family and have emailed them. We will leave California around noon and will have an 11 1/2 hour flight. I am looking forward to it as there will be 100 FMF teachers with me and I can't wait to get to know them better. I also need to learn to use the new Digital Video camera.
I am ever so excited!
Hope you are having a good day!
Mrs. Pearson
Wednesday, November 20, 2002
Dear students,
Monday - Tuesday
I left San Francisco on Monday at 12:30 PM and got to Tokyo on Tuesday at 6:30 PM. We lost a day because of time zones. When I return, I will get the day back as I will leave Tokyo and get into Hartford just a couple of hours later.
Wednesday
We went sightseeing around Tokyo today...
The Diet
We were able to go inside the Diet building which is about the same as our senate in Washington. Diet is German for "place people meet together." They were not in session so we did not see any officials. There were a lot of school groups there and they treated us like celebrities. They wanted to shake our hands and "high five" and practice their English. The most impressive room in the Diet is the room the emperor uses. This one room cost one-tenth the cost of the whole diet building. The emperor is much like the Queen of England as a respected official but he does not have much power.
Sansada
We had a traditional Japanese meal at a very nice old Japanese restaurant. We were served on low tables and sat on cushions on the floor. The food was very good. I did an OK job with the chopsticks. We had rice, vegetables and a breaded deep friend pancake-like food that had vegetables in it and you dipped it. It was good.
Trees
Our guide said they have a lot of black pine in Tokyo and it is a very fragile tree that is an indicator of the quality of the air. Years ago they had a hard time keeping them alive but she pointed out that they are doing well today. I saw many gingko trees today. That is something Tokyo and West Boylston have in common.
Buddhism and Shinto
Our tour guide spent quite a bit of time trying to explain about religion in Japan. Shinto is an ancient religion that originated in Japan. It does not have a founder like other religions do. It is a religion of daily life. Buddhism on the other hand is the religion of the after life and it came to Japan from India. Neither religion has a single almighty god as in the Christian religion. The reason they can have two religions is because many feel Buddha was a Shinto spirit. The two religions seem to work very well together.
We went to a Shinto shrine and they have a ritual where you wash one hand then the other to purify the body, then you rinse out your mouth with the water and spit it out to purify the mind.
Odd, even, gardens and perfection
Japanese people do not like to get gifts in even numbers. I wondered about this and our guide tried to explain. In Japan you will find they go out of their way to have things not quite perfect. For instance, the Japanese garden is not symmetrical. They have a celebration when children are 3, 5, and 7 years old because even numbers are too perfect. It seems that if we were perfect, the gods would be jealous. They certainly try to be perfect but since they know they never will be, they make sure they keep everything around them not quite perfect. I will try to figure this out better and let you know what I find out.
Kyogen
Kyogen is a type of theater. It is a comedy but with ancient scripts. It was popular over 600 years ago and they use the same scripts. I enjoyed it and will buy a tape of the performance so I can share it with you.
Reception
We had a formal reception with the Minister of Education of Japan as a speaker. We had several other speakers. I was surprised to find that all the speeches were very brief. It was a pleasant surprise. They said it is a tradition here to have short speeches.
Jet Lag
I was very tired through the Kyogen theater performance and the reception and fell into bed at about 8:30 PM. I woke at 3 AM and it is now after 6 and I have not been able to go back to sleep. I hope I get used to the new time soon.
I love it here! I wish I could have brought all of you with me. Everyone is exceptionally friendly and try to please us.
Hope all is going well in West Boylston! I have thought a lot about you, my students and keep trying to take little notes of things I would like to tell you about. I need to get ready for the day now but will try to send pictures tonight.
Mrs. Pearson
Saturday, November 23, 2002
Saturday and Sunday were our free days and we could choose to do whatever we wanted to. A group of us decided to go to the museums in Ueno Park. It is an area in Tokyo that has a lot of museums. We started with The National Science Museum. It was a typical science museum with a neat physics area much like the Discovery museum in Acton, MA. We had a great time interacting with children and staff at the museum. Even though we spoke almost no Japanese and few could speak any English we found ways to communicate. Though surprisingly enough many under the age of 25 were able to do quite well with English. Most places had enough English around to get an idea of what was going on. For instance, for bathrooms, there is the work Toilet in English. They do not say bathroom because that is a separate room in which they take a bath. The toilet has a toilet in it. Anyway, the science museum has a neat part where they had leaves and bark from common trees in all parts of Japan. I took pictures of the displays and plan to put the information on our web site.
We then went to the Tokyo National Museum. We went just to the Honkan which is the main part and is an art museum. My favorite part was a set of block prints by famous ukiyo-e artists, such as Hokusai and Utamaro.
We then witnessed a strange site. A large number of folks that did not look well cared for, gathered in the middle of the park and took a piece of cardboard from a cart and sat on the ground. Then we were surprised to hear singing of protestant church hymns. It turns out these folks are homeless people. There is a religious organization that comes and sings songs with the homeless people that live in the park and then give them a meal. It was sad to see all these homeless people.
Next we went to the Ueno Zoo. I was excited to get good pictures of the Giant Panda and many many cranes. I often thought how similar American and Japanese families are. There were families laughing and joking like you would see American families. There was one little girl having a tantrum because she wanted something that her mother did not want her to have. There was a dad that scared his daughter with a fake lion in the woods and the mother did not seem to approve.
On the way home, we stopped at a sushi diner kind of place. You go in and sit at a counter and the plates of sushi pass by on a conveyor belt. You take off anything you want to eat. The plates are color coded. When you are done eating, they tally up your bill according to how many plates. Also the plates are color coded according to how much the food on it costs. It turns out I was not fond of much there so I ended up buying a hotdog from a Nathan's type place on the way back to the hotel.
Thursday, December 5, 2002
It is Thursday evening. It has been a wonderful/terrible day. We have been saying our good-byes.
This morning we woke up to a magnificent clear morning. For the first time, I was able to see Mt. Fugi from my hotel window. It was spectacular. I believe it is a good omen.
The agenda today was dedicated to closing presentations by each of the 10 groups. It was fabulous to see what everyone had been doing.
For our group, we had a PowerPoint that Tom Wetzl and I put together. It showed highlights of our time in Hamada. One slide was a picture of the American peace crane flag that we gave to the Hamada Junior High. There was a fairly strong positive reaction to the idea. Many commented to me later that is was a wonderful thing that my students did. There was a lot of talk of peace from the various groups but mostly from the Hiroshima group. I have purchased tapes of the presentations and some of them just need to be experienced. We were given peace cranes by the Hiroshima group. It was a very moving presentation.
This evening we had a sayonara (good-bye) banquet. We ate, sang songs, cried a little. In the final video, they showed footage from video we took at our NASDA visit. It was a first for the Fulbright Program.
I went for long walks in the Japanese garden and then along the mote that surrounds the hotel with friends, trying not to think of leaving tomorrow. (The mote used to surround a castle long ago.) This was a life changing experience and my group not only grew close professionally but we became family. It will be very difficult leaving tomorrow. They are taking us to the airport at about 10 AM, it is about 2 hours away. Then we take off around 3:30 PM. I have a 2 hour layover in Chicago and then get into Hartford at 4:30 PM. That will be after about 13 hours in the air but with the time zones, it seems like it is only an hour. I expect it will feel like one very long day for me. I will be drained and exhausted after such a long emotional day.
Thanks for your support and encouragement. This has been a life changing experience. I miss you all. I will return to school on Tuesday. The return jet lag and culture shock is reportedly incredible. We will see.
Mrs. Pearson