Dining customs in Japan

Question of the Day, Oct. 26

Q: What do they eat on and with? Please take a pic. (Carter)

Traditional Japanese style dining table.

A Japanese breakfast.

A: They eat at tables, like we do. Most homes and restaurants use tables and chairs just like ours, but some traditional style Japanese restaurants and homes use low tables, and rooms with floors covered by tatami mats, and people sit on cushions on the floor around the table.

They eat with chopsticks. Each food is always served in it's own little dish or bowl, and the dishes are usually an interesting variety of colors, shapes, and styles. The Japanese are very artistic in the way they present food; it is supposed to appeal to the eyes as well as the taste buds. I think perhaps the use of lots of small individual dishes is part of this philosophy, because it does make the meal look very appealing. I'm glad I don't have to wash the dishes, though!

Most popular foods

Question of the Day, Oct. 25

Q: What is their most popular food? (Jim)

A: It’s hard to name just ONE most popular food, but I think I can narrow it down to three.
1.) Seafood, including all kinds of fish, shrimp, squid, and octopus.
2.) Noodles. Japanese styles of noodle include udan, soba, ramen, and buckwheat, and they are usually eaten in a broth and topped with other good things like pieces of seafood, meat, tofu, green onion slices, mushrooms, or other vegetables.
3.) Rice.

School Visits

We leave our shoes at the genkan, and put on our slippers for walking around the school.

A student's ikebana is displayed at Motoyama Elementary School.

Student artwork and kanji, from an elementary school classroom.

Unicycles and stilts for playground use at Motoyama Elementary School.

Student artwork displayed at Sanyo Onoda City Asa Junior High School.

Jr. High and High School students almost all ride bicycles to school, so schools have big bicycle parking sheds.

Robots with light sensors, built by students at Yamaguchi Prefectural Onoda Technical High School.

This robot, also built by a student, moved the basketballs from one side of a complicated obstacled course to the other.

Over the past several days, our group visited 3 different Japanese schools here in Sanyo Onoda.  We spent a whole day at each school, arriving with the students and staying until 4:30 so that we could see the after-school club activities.  All the schools we visited had after-school clubs, and almost all the kids participated in the club activities, so the schools were still full of kids and teachers when we left at 4:30.

The first visit was to an elementary school.  Like CMDS, it had a kindergarten through 6th grade.  We arrived early so that we could greet the children as they arrived at school. It was a community school, and all the kids we saw were either walking or riding bicycles to school.  They greeted us with "good morning" in English as they passed; I think they had practiced saying it, in preparation for our visit.  They played on a big playground before school, and the school had unicycles for them to use, which some of them were riding around on the playground.  Then we went inside the building, took our shoes off in the genkan, and put on our slippers for walking around inside the school.

Throughout that day we visited classrooms, and saw students learning reading, writing, math, art, and music.  Girls were also taught ikebana, which is the Japanese art of flower arranging.  There were many beautiful ikebana arrangements displayed around the school.  One class that I visited was learning English by singing some of the same songs we know at our school -- they sang "There was a farmer had a dog, and Bingo was his name-o."  Another class sang "head, shoulders, knees and toes," while doing the movements.  I think songs are a great way to learn words in a foreign language, don't you?  Especially songs with movements.  At the end of the school day, we had a great surprise.  We were invited to the auditorium, and the children performed traditional Japanese taiko drumming for us.  It was great!  Afterward, they invited our group of American teachers up on stage, and with the help of the kids to set the rhythm, we got a chance to try it too. 

The next day we visited a lower secondary school (which would be called a Jr. High school here) with grades that are like our grades 7, 8, and 9 -- but in Japan, the grade numbers start over at 1st grade for each level of school, so that there is a 1st, 2nd, and 3rd grade of lower secondary (instead of 7th, 8th, and 9th), and also of high school.  My favorite thing at this school, other than meeting the kids, was some beautiful student artwork I saw displayed on the wall.  The afters-school clubs for this school were doing things to prepare for a city cultural festival that was going to be celebrated over the weekend.  Some were practicing band music, while others were painting signs.

The third day, we visited a technical high school.  This means it was a high school that focused on preparing students for work in particular kinds of jobs, rather than for college.  There were courses in math, Japanese language, calligraphy (which is the art of writing kanji, one of the types of Japanese writing), and literature, but there were also many classes in things like welding, electronics, and robotics.  Almost all the students in this school were boys; there were only four girls enrolled in the school.  One of the coolest things I saw at this school was the robotic devices that students had built in their classes.  I saw some students testing small robotic cars that were able to follow the course of a black line on the floor with a light sensor.  During the after-school club time, we saw students learning kendo, a style of traditional Japanese fencing, as well as karate, and some more complex robots that students in a robotics club had built for a robotics contest.  It was very interesting to watch.

One thing we saw at all the schools, and which is a custom at all the schools in Japan, is "clean-up time," which is a 10-minute period near the end of the school day when the students all clean the school.  Everybody is busy sweeping floors, washing windows, weeding the school garden, or doing other things to clean the school during this time.  The Japanese call this "education of the heart," because they feel that it teaches service to others.  I think it is a very good custom.  In the elementary and lower secondary schools, the students also serve lunch to their classmates.  There is no lunch room.  Instead, kids eat in the classrooms, and lunch is brought into the class and a few of the students dish out the different foods for the others.  This is another practice of learning service to others.

I have many pictures from the school visits, but I don't have permission from the schools to post pictures of students on the internet, so you'll have to wait until I get back to Memphis to see them.  I'm looking forward to sharing them with you!

  

School computer lab

Question of the day, Oct. 24

Q:  Do they have computer lab at school? (J.C.)

A:  Yes.  Here is a picture of the computer lab at an elementary school in Sanyo Onoda.

Yamaguchi City and Sanyo Onoda

On Monday, we spent the morning visiting Yamaguchi University. The president of the university took us on a tour of the school, and we saw professors teaching different subjects. We saw a music professor giving a flute lesson to one student. I think she may have felt shy when our big group of 16 teachers, plus our host guide, a translator, and the university president all filed into the classroom and stood watching her as she was being taught. I know it would have made ME feel nervous to have such an audience of strangers; but she just went on doing what the professor was instructing her to do. She was a beginner at the flute, the professor told us, but already very good at playing both violin and piano. She wanted to be a music teacher, though, and she decided to take flute lessons because lots of Japanese students like to play band instruments in school, rather than violin or piano, so she wanted to be able to teach them.

Music lesson at Yamaguchi University

The most interesting part of the visit was when we met with some professors and some students in the university's teacher education department. They explained how they trained teachers for teaching in schools in Japan, and then we sat around small tables with the college students in the program, and asked each other questions about what schools are like in each of our countries. The college student I was sitting beside spoke just a little English, but with the help of the translator, and some paper and pencils, we were able to have a good conversation. She wanted to know what schools were like in America. When the session was over, we exchanged email addresses so we could email each other. She said that her email username was Japanese for "I like ducks." I think should tell her about Memphis' famous Peabody ducks when I email her, and attach a photograph I took of them this summer.
We drove to the city of Sanyo Onoda, where we will be staying for the next several days. We went to city hall for a meeting with the mayor, who made a speech welcoming us to Sanyo Onoda and telling us about his city. We were each given a gift of a pretty hand towel, wrapped in gift paper that was decorated with 2 patterned paper origami cranes attached to the front. Somebody took the time to carefully fold 32 cranes for those beautifully wrapped welcome gifts! A newspaper reporter took a picture of this welcoming ceremony, and the next day there was an article about our group in the paper.

Here is our group with the mayor of Sanyo Onoda

The next morning we went back to city hall, where we had discussions with the school superintendent, and some parents of children who attend schools in the district. We learned a lot about their school system, and a new kind of lessons they are doing that are helping to improve the students' test scores. The best part of the day, though, was after lunch. We visited a senior citizen community center, which has a pottery club called "Rakuwaen." To be a member of the Rakuwaen club, one must be aged sixty or older. But for our visit, club members gave us each a chance to made a piece of pottery, with demonstrations of how to make a cup, a pot, or a square dish. I made a simple square dish, and wrote the Kanji characters for "Japan" inside it for a design. Some of the people in our group are art teachers, and made some very pretty and interesting designs. The fun part was getting to play with clay, and meeting the Rakuwaen club members who were there helping us all and showing us techniques. There must be other types of craft clubs at the community center, because in another part of the building we saw a display of beautiful handmade items made by the community center members.

A member of the Rakuwaen club shows us how to use a tube to mold a cup.

LeAnne, a reading coach from Florida, gets help from a Rakuwaen club potter. She is making this mug for her father, who lives in Tennessee. Guess what sports team he is a fan of?

Our group of JFMF teachers and the Rakuwaen club, in front of the community center.

Price of gas

Question of the Day, Oct. 23

Q:  How expensive are gas prices in Japan? (Patrick)

A:  This sign shows the price of gas at a station in Sanyo Onoda, Japan.  The lowest grade is 146 yen per LITER (not gallon).  A liter is just a little more than a quart; and a yen is worth a little more than a penny.  So, here's a math challenge:  approximately how much does that amount to in dollars per gallon?  A lot.

Trees

Question of the Day, Oct. 22

Q:  Are there different kinds of trees in Japan? (Robert)

A:  Here is a kind of evergreen tree that I have seen all around Yamaguchi prefecture. Although we have similar species in the U.S., what caught my eye about the ones in this picture is the lovely rounded shapes of the greenery. At first I thought that they just grew this way, and that this was a species of tree that I'd never seen before. Because I saw many of these trees that were as tall as a 2-story house, I did not think it possible that the trees had been trimmed into these shapes. Later, though, I learned that they ARE trimmed this way, and people who have them in their yards climb up on tall ladders to do the trimming.  Although I would be afraid to have to do this, I think the trees are SO beautiful! I believe they are cedar trees, but I am not certain.

Japan also has hundreds of varities of flowering cherry trees (called sakura in Japan).  Some of these species have been imported to the U.S. and planted in some gardens, but in Japan they are all over the country.  Cherry blossoms are the national flower of Japan, and the favorite flower of the Japanese people.  The time when they bloom in the spring is called hanami, and people celebrate with Cherry Blossom picnics and festivals.  They have been doing this for hundreds of years.

I've also seen some trees in Japan that we also have in Memphis, such as tulip poplars, the state tree of Tennessee.

A Visit to Hiroshima

Hiroshima Peace Memorial Park

The Children's Peace Monument.  

Origami crane mosaic pictures, sent to Children's Peace Monument.

Mike (on the right), a music teacher from Houston who is part of our group, trades iPods with a Japanese youth we meet at the public foot-bath onsen.  They check out each other's favorite music.

On Sunday morning, our big group of 160 teachers split up into smaller groups of 16, and each group headed out for a week in a different city.  My group's destination was Sanyo Onoda.  It's a small city on the coast, in Yamaguchi prefecture.  Japan, you may remember from my earlier blog posts, is divided into prefectures, and Yamaguchi prefecture is on the southwestern tip of Honshu Island.  It was a 2 hour flight to get there, and we arrived in the early afternoon and checked into a hotel in Yamaguchi City, the prefecture capital.

Yamaguchi City is locally known for it's hot springs, called Yuda Onsen.  The Japanese word onsen means hot springs.  There are lots of onsens all over Japan.  Because Japan is located at a point where different plates of the earth's crust are pushing against each other, water is heated below the earth's surface by the same pressure that causes earthquakes and volcanoes in the Japanese islands.  Yamaguchi City has some small public foot-bathing onsens in different parts of town, and one of them was in a small park right behind our hotel.

As soon as we checked into our hotel, most of us headed for the train station.  Our host and guide had told us that it was possible to get to Hiroshima City in an hour's time, by taking the Nozomi shinkansen -- the fastest bullet train.  There is a monument, a park, and a museum in Hiroshima memorializing the tragic event of it's destruction by the atomic bomb during the second world war.  After hearing Keijiro Matsushima, the hibakusha I met in Tokyo, I knew I had to go to Hiroshima if I had the opportunity.  We were able to reach Hiroshima by mid-afternoon, and caught a streetcar from the train station to Hiroshima Peace Memorial Park.

We spent the afternoon learning about the history of Hiroshima, both before and after the bombing, from the museum.  It was very saddening.  We walked around the large Peace Memorial Park, where the museum is located, and looked at different memorial monuments.  The one that I most wanted to see was the Children's Peace Monument.  This monument exists because of the efforts of school children, who started fund-raising activities to raise a monument in memory of their classmate Sadako.  Sadako survived the bomb's blast, but then developed leukemia 10 years later from exposure to the bomb's radiation.  During her last months of life, she folded hundreds of origami cranes, because of a legend saying that anyone folding 1000 paper cranes will be granted a wish.  Sadako's wish was to live.

So this is a monument initiated by children, and I think that it tells something very inspiring and encouraging about the compassion, wisdom, and hope of those children.  It has the following words inscribed on it:

This is our cry.

This is our prayer.

For building peace in the world.

The monument is surrounded by thousands and thousands of brightly colored origami cranes, in glass cases, that have been sent by people from all around the world who want to express their desire for world peace.  The inside of the monument is a bell, with a metal origami crane as the clapper.

You can read the true story "Sadako and the Thousand Paper Cranes" in our school library, to learn more about the history of the monument.  You can also click here to go to the Hiroshima Peace Memorial Museum website, and take a virtual tour of the museum.

Some of the origami cranes I saw displayed had been used very creatively, as mosaic pieces glued to a flat surface to make a picture or design.  I've posted some pictures of them above.  Which do you like best?  

We got back to Yamaguchi City around 9 p.m., and on our walk from the train station to the hotel, we passed the public foot-bathing hot springs and decided to take off our shoes and soak our tired feet.  While we were sitting and soaking, we met some Japanese people, and then some Taiwanese people (vacationing in Japan)  who came to enjoy a hot foot bath at the onsen as well.  It was really great talking to them, trying to communicate across the language barrier.  Fortunately, there was somebody in each of their groups that spoke a little English.  

Working at communicating with different language speakers is actually fun, as long as everybody is really willing to try.  It can become a little like playing charades, with lots of hand gestures to try and show what you mean, and lots of nodding and smiling.  Anyway, we were disappointed when the onsen closed down at 10 and broke up the fun.  All the water drained out, and we had to put our shoes back on and go back to the hotel.  It had been a really long and busy day, though, and I fell asleep almost as soon as I got to my room.  With nice clean feet.

Baseball

Question of the Day, Oct. 21

Q:  Do they play baseball in Japan? (Henry)

A:  Yes, baseball is very popular in Japan.  The Japanese word for baseball is yakyu.  It is played in schools, and there are both amateur and professional baseball leagues for adults.  I haven't had a chance to see any games while I've been here, but two other teachers in our group went to a professional yakyu league game on Saturday, and they said it was great.  To find out more about Japanese baseball, click here.

Streets

Question of the Day, Oct. 20

Q:  What do their streets look like? (Mary Baylee)

A street in Tokyo.

A back street in the town of Sanyo Onoda.

A:  Like our streets in the U.S., they come in big, small, quiet, busy, and everything in between.

There is one difference between Japanese and American streets, though.  Look at the picture below and see if you can see what's different about the flow of traffic.

Kamakura

The entry gate at Tsurugaoka Hachiman-gu in Kamakura.

Double-click to look closer at the details of the beautiful entry gate.

The bright colors and square shapes make it look to me like a giant Leggo building.

Mother and daughters in kimonos and regular dress.

The main gate at Engaku-ji

Bamboo and stone water fountain in garden of Engaku-ji.

On Saturday, I and the other teachers in the Japan Fulbright Memorial Fund teacher program had a free day to explore Japan on our own. Some teachers stayed in Tokyo to see the sights, some went to see Mt. Fuji, and one group went all the way to Kyoto, a historical city that is over 2 hours away by bullet train. I chose to join a group that was going to visit Kamakura. It is an ancient historical city that was the capital of Japan from 1192 to 1333.  It's only about an hour from Tokyo on the regular train (which is much less expensive than the bullet train!)

The first shogunate government ruled Japan from Kamakura, and moved the capital there.  A shogun was a military ruler.  Before 1192, Japan had been ruled by an emperor, and the capital had been in the city of Kyoto; the emperors would appoint their top military leader with the title of "shogun." 

 

But the military shoguns gradually became more and more powerful, until they finally took over control of Japan from the emperor in 1192.  Although Japan still had an emperor after that, he was just a figurehead, without any real power.  Click here to learn more about shoguns.

 

Kamakura is a small city, on the eastern coast of Honshu island, and is surrounded by wooded hills.  It's very beautiful.  It was nice to get away from the big city for a day and walk around in a smaller town.  It's a popular tourist destination, though, especially on Saturdays in the spring and fall, so the streets were fairly crowded with people.

There are many ancient historical sites to visit, and we went to four of them.  The pictures above show some of these sites.  We saw some women and their young daughters dressed in kimonos, the traditional dress of Japanese women.  Most women in Japan only wear kimonos for some special occasion or traditional ceremony, so we think that they were probably celebrating the daughters' birthdays.  In Japan, there is a special celebration in November for children aged 3, 5, and 9.  Maybe these families were celebrating it early.   

Money

Question of the day, Oct. 19

Q:  What does their money look like?  How much is $300 in Japanese money? (Graham)

A:  Japanese money is called yen, and I've taken a picture of all the coins and a couple of the bills.  The coins are shown both front and back.  From left to right, they are 1 yen, 5 yen, 10 yen, 50 yen, 100 yen, and 500 yen.  The 1000 and 5000 yen bills show pictures of the imperial family.

One yen is approximately equal to one cent of American money; so the coins are roughly equal to (from left to right) a penny, a nickle, a dime, a half-dollar, a dollar, and 5 dollars.  The 1000 yen bill is worth just under $10, and the 5000 yen bill is a little under $50.

Halloween

HaloweenQuestion of the day, Oct. 18

Q:  Do they have Halloween? (Evie)

A:  Yes.  Although Halloween is not a traditional Japanese holiday, I was surprised to see Halloween costumes and decorations in stores, like the toy store in the pictures above.  I learned that Halloween has been adopted by Japan in recent years, and Halloween parties have become a popular trend.
 

Hibakusha

Meeting Keijiro Matsushima, atomic bomb survivor

On Friday morning, I attended a class on Peace Education.  One of the speakers I heard was a man named Keijiro Matsushima.  Mr. Keijiro is a hibakusha.  That is the word that the Japanese use for survivors of the atomic bomb.  Mr. Keijiro was a high school student in Hiroshima, sitting in a classroom on the morning of August 6, 1945.  He was looking out the window when he saw two planes flying very high in the sky.  What happened a few seconds later changed his life forever.  

As he described the terrible things he saw that day and in the days that followed, I found it hard to even comprehend so much suffering.  He told us how, in the years that followed, hibakusha were looked down upon by other Japanese, many of whom mistakenly believed that the symptoms of radiation poisoning were a contagious disease that they could catch from contact with the survivors.  

Over the years, this discrimination has stopped, and hibakusha are no longer looked down upon in Japan.  Most of the remaining hibakusha experienced the atomic bombing as children, and are in their seventies or older.  Mr. Keijiro, who told his tragic story in such a quiet, gentle way, feels that it is his responsibility to share it with others.  He does this in order to try to insure that atomic weapons are never used again, anywhere, anytime, against any people in any country in the world, ever.  Nobody who hears his story can help but believe in the truth of this message.

Pets

This woman is walking her long-haired dachshund on the streets of Sanyo Onoda.  This is the same breed as my dog, Shadow, but a different color -- my dog is black and tan.  

Question of the Day, Oct. 17

Q: What kind of pets do they have? (Olivia)

A: According to a Japanese man who went to dinner with us on our first night in Tokyo, and whose job is selling pet insurance (so he knows the statistics), 50% of pet owners in Japan have dogs and 50% have cats.  He didn't mention other types of pets, so I don't know if guinea pigs, birds, etc. are also common.  I'll try to ask and find out when I get to the smaller city and have a chance to talk to more Japanese teachers and students.  So far, the types of dogs I have seen in Tokyo include a labrador retriever, a poodle, and a dachshund.  The lab was at the airport, and he was being used by customs inspectors to sniff people's suitcases, so he must have been trained to sniff out drugs.

Vending Machines

Question of the Day, Oct. 16

Q: What do the vending machines look like in Japan? (Nick)

A:  As you can see in this picture, they are similar to our vending machines, but they always display a sample of the actual items being sold.  Do you recognize the American actor whose picture is on this machine?  His image is used to advertise a brand of iced coffee called "Boss."

Tsukiji fish market

View from the 40th floor of the hotel.

Frozen fish being sawed into pieces.

Buyers inspecting the tuna before an auction.

Yesterday morning I got up at 4:30 a.m. to go to Tsukiji fish market, here in Tokyo.  This is where commericial fishermen bring their catch, very early each morning, to sell to buyers who supply the grocery stores and restaurants of Tokyo with fresh seafood.  It is the largest fish market in the world, and has been nicknamed the Wall Street of the fish trade.  It goes on for blocks and blocks.

I saw all kinds of seafood being sold, including scallops, oysters, squid, and octopus, as well as all kinds of fish.  The highest prices paid at the market are for blue fin tuna, which is used in the most popular kind of sushi.  The tuna are huge.  Most of them are flash-frozen on the ships where they are caught, to keep them fresh.  Buyers inspect the tuna, using metal bars with hooks at the end (they look like small crowbars) to cut off a small piece which they can look at closely.  They are looking for a high fat content.  The higher the fat content of the tuna, the higher the quality is considered to be.

After the buyers have had a chance to look over the different fish, which have each been numbered, an auctioneer rings a bell to announce the beginning of the selling, and then he begins auctioning off the fish.  This is very lively, and fun to watch, as you will be able to tell from the video.

When I got back from the fish market, I had breakfast at a restaurant on the 40th floor of the hotel, with windows looking out on the city below.  I have uploaded a picture of the view.  Look closely at the white shape in far distance sky, which looks something like a cloud floating in the horizon.  It's not a cloud; it is the snow-capped peak of Mt. Fuji!

I spent the rest of the day attending lectures on the Japanese education system, the economy of Japan, and the Japanese government.  The speakers were university professors from different Japanese universities (including the vice-president of one university), and Yuji Tsushima, a Diet Member who has been elected to the Japanese House of Representatives for the past 33 years.  The lectures were very interesting and informative.  They made me want to learn even more about Japan.

Fast food

Question of the day, Oct. 15

Q:  Do they have fast food in Japan? (from Mary Grace)

A: Yes!

Tokyo

Akasuka festival

Actor Don Kenny performing a kyogen play

Chopstick store

The Diet, Japan's legislature

Tokyo is amazing!  We arrived at Narita airport Tuesday afternoon (although it was still Monday night, back in Memphis), and the bus that brought us from the airport into Tokyo was on a highway that was really a HIGHway once it got into central Tokyo.  It rose up on a ramp until it was, for a few miles, at the level of about the 12th floor of the skyscrapers we were driving by.  It passed so close to some office buildings that we could look into the windows of offices and see people working in them.  It's the highest highway I've ever seen!

After going to our hotel, we took the subway to eat dinner at a part of Tokyo called Ginza.  The Ginza area is a big shopping section of town, with huge department stores, as well as many small specialty shops.  We went into one store that just sold chopsticks and chopstick rests.  The chopstick rests are little stands that you lay your chopsticks against when you set them down at the table.  There were sets of chopsticks made from different kinds of wood, some lacquered, painted, or inlaid with mother-of-pearl.  

Some were very expensive.  I imagine that fancy chopsticks are bought to use for special occasion meals or fine dinners served to guests, just as in our country many families might own a set of fine silverware that is only used for special occasions.

Today we took a tour of the Japanese Diet Building.  This is NOT a building where people go to lose weight!  The word "Diet" in Japan refers to their legislature.  The Diet in Japan is like the Congress is the U.S., where elected government officials make laws.  

Across from the Diet is a huge library, called the Diet Library.  It is surrounded by gingko trees.  Just as all the states in the U.S. have a "state tree," the prefectures in Japan have a tree as well, and the gingko is the tree for the prefecture of Tokyo.  We have a gingko tree outside of our school library at C.M.D.S.!  

Next we went to a local festival taking place at the Akasuka temple area of Tokyo.  Lots of families were browsing the booths that were selling all kinds of candy, crafts, and souvenirs.  I found out that when you buy something in Japan, they usually wrap up each item separately in pretty paper, or put it an individual small paper bag with pattern or design on it.  The Japanese  love beautiful paper, and use it in many creative ways.

Later this afternoon, we saw a play.  It was a style of traditional Japanese theatre called kyogen.  This style of theatre is 600 years old, and all of the plays in kyogen are comedies.  The play we saw, called "The Inherited Cramp," really made us all laugh.

After the play, the main actor told us about the different kinds of traditional Japanese theatre, and showed us wooden masks that are used in some kyogen plays.  I bought a video of performances of "The Inherited Cramp" and another kyogen play.  When I get back, you will get to see two of these comedy plays on the video.

From San Francisco

I was honored to meet Mr. Yasumasa Nagamine, Japanese Consul General

JFMF teachers at the Japanese Consul General's residence.

I am sitting in the San Francisco airport, awaiting our flight to Japan.  

Yesterday I flew to Chicago and then to San Francisco in the morning, and went to an orientation meeting (with the other 157 teachers who are going with me on this trip) all afternoon.  It was fun to meet all the other teachers.  There are at least 2 from every state.  There are 4 of us from Tennessee.  

My favorite part of the flight was when we flew over the mountains.  Look at a map and see which mountain range lies between Chicago and San Francisco.  They are the tallest mountains in the lower 48 states of the United States.  They were dusted with snow.  I have been camping in these mountains, and have seen how beautiful they are from the ground; but seeing them from above was amazing, because I could really see their shape, all together, and how wide the mountain range is.  It made me think about pioneers crossing them in covered wagons.  It is a good thing the pioneers couldn't see these mountains from above, because I think they would have just given up and stayed in the East!

Last night we were honored to be invited to a reception at the official residence of the Japanese Consul General in San Francisco.  He made a short speech, to welcome us.  He is a very gracious man, and made all of us feel at home.  His house overlooks San Francisco bay, and we could see the Golden Gate bridge, and Alcatraz, from his veranda.  After a few more short speeches, we had a buffet of Japanese food, with sushi and many other good things that I don't know the names of.

In 10 more hours I will be in Japan.  I am so excited!  

Sayonara for now.  Keep reading lots of good books while I'm gone!

Ms. Gray