Japan

My students photographed life in Huntsville and compiled a book for our Japanese counterparts.  I showed it to the principal at the elementary school we visited.  She will try to reciprocate, but they do not concentrate on learning English in elementary school and she doesn’t want to create an undue burden on her teachers.  I said putting it in Japanese would work.  I’m sure we can find someone to translate.  We would love to have a few pictures of life in Hiroshima.  The Huntsville Times covered the story of the book the kids published on October 13.  From what I understand, we are halfway to our goal of 1,000 paper cranes.  BTW, thanks to everyone who saved the Times article for me.  I think most of the city saved them for me:)

I mentioned to my son’s neighbor that there is a teacher at the elementary school down the street who went to Japan with me.  I couldn’t remember her name since she was assigned to another city, but knew she lives in Annapolis.  I went online and looked her up.  Just after I found her, our neighbor came over with the school’s newspaper written by their 6th graders.  One article was entitled, “Who went to Japan?”  The neighbor was so excited since we had just spoken about it the day before.  I hope one of my students will write about my experiences in Japan and submit it to the PTA newspaper.  There is lots of information in my blog for them to follow up with an article.   I will see Shannon next week at my granddaughter’s future elementary school.  Perhaps I’ll be invited for “grandparents day” sometime.

Got a new grandbaby.  Her name is Vyera.  Was able to arrive in time to see her born.  It actually takes a lot longer to have a baby than one would think.  On TV, it happens so quickly.  Not like that very often in real life.  There is a lot of waiting.  So, we are all exhausted.  The nursery is getting set up.

What does this have to do with Japan?  I downloaded her pictures into a slideshow to show my son and his wife at the hospital.  Then, I asked if they’d like to see my Japan pics.  They watched them politely.  When I got home, I gave my son a gift for the baby.  It was a charm from one of the shrines I visited.  Actually, I got two.  One was a blessing of good health for the baby.  The other was a charm depicting the Year of the Mouse.  It has a pink stone.  Too cute.

When you enter a house or many buildings and rooms, you must remove your shoes.  Be sure your feet do not touch the floor outside.  I got pretty good at untying my sneakers and then taking one off, placing my foot inside the room, lifting the other foot, removing my sneaker, then putting my second foot in the room.  Many places have shoe cubbies.  Restaurants, meeting rooms, schools, etc. had these cubbies and you would trade your shoes for their slippers.  Here are some shoes in the school cubby.  The kids had to put on their street shoes to play in the schoolyard.  Notice the jump ropes.

Often, however, we would leave our shoes by the door outside.  Here are some middle school boys’ sneakers outside the gym during PE.  They were in doing sumo activities at the time.

So, this begs the question, “What about pets?”  I got this one answered at my home stay.  When the kitty wanted to come in, Keiko-san grabbed her, flipped her over, and toweled her down.  Guess it helps if your pet is white.

When going into a tatami room, you just wear socks.  No slippers are used in here.  Therefore, you don’t ever step on dirty floor with your socks.  I am taking my 4th grade students to a Japanese restaurant.  I need to remind them to wear clean socks:)

Tonight we had our final activity.  It was a stand up banquet.  Tough to take photographs that way.  We had a slide show/video show from the 10 different cities people visited in Japan.  Wow!  Japan is really different.  We had teachers in Okinawa wearing very casual clothes to us in Hiroshima being very formal.  Students in our schools wore uniforms while in smaller towns they didn’t.  Every city had something in common–kids are kids and teachers and parents care about those kids.

I am sad to leave although I’ll be glad to see my family.  There is so much I want to do.  Really wanted to see some pottery made here.  Wasn’t done in Hiroshima, but was in several other cities.  Want to see a tea ceremony–will do that tomorrow at 12:30.  We leave for the airport at 1:55.  Want to buy a couple more things, but room is getting tight.  We’ll see.  Time is short now too.

Have really enjoyed my time in Japan.  The people are so kind and gracious.  One of the messages we got is that we need to open our homes to foreigners.  My husband just told me a Russian-speaking Uzbek is coming to town this weekend so I’ll be visiting them this weekend.  Switch gears from Japanese to Russian.  Another interesting day in my life.

We each have two weeks to submit our revised follow-on plan to JFMF.  I am adding something about nuclear non-proliferation.  Also, I plan to do more with art.  Had a great activity yesterday showing how to add art and problem solving into the curriculum.  Art is being cut in Japan and the United States and it is not a good thing.

I will continue to blog as I learn.  It might not be as often as it has been, but check back from time to time.

Bath time was interesting. At 10:00 pm, Keiko-san told me to go take a bath. My bedroom was right out in the living room next to the kitchen. Was I to get ready for bed and put on my jammies? I asked about this. I had to dig out my clean underwear and jammies with everyone in the room. Oh, well. The kids said good night and I headed to the bathroom to take my bath. The bathroom is different from the toilet room. There are three separate areas. The first area has the sink and washing machine (which by the way is much smaller than ours). Then, there is a sliding shower door leading down a step into the shower/bath room.  It is all tile.  You are to take a shower and scrub off all the dirt and wash it all clean.  Then, you take the top off the bath tub and lower yourself in.  It is really deep.  The temp was set for 41 degrees Celsius.  I soaked for about 10 minutes and then dressed for bed.  Andy-san took his after me.  I heard Keiko-san call for Yoshi-san after Andy was through.  I was asleep and have no idea how long Yoshi-san soaked or even if Keiko-san chose to bathe that night.  Everyone uses the same bath water.  It makes sense if everyone is all clean when they get in.

We got to see a wedding at the shrine.  Well, it’s the picture taking part.  Someone could research the significance of it all.  Here are the bride and groom posing for pictures.  The family let me get to the front to get a few nice shots.

Slippers are everywhere. We wore them in our hotel rooms, in museums, in the schools, and then in our home stay. You take off your shoes when you enter. This happened every place we visited and our home stay was no exception. They provided us slippers so we didn’t have to dig ours out of our suitcase. Good planning on their part. Then, there are slippers in the toilet room. They are there all the time. You don’t wear your house slippers in there. Keiko-san made her house slippers. They were constructed out of old T-shirts. Waste not, want not. One shirt will make a pair of woman’s zoris. We call them flip-flops. When I was a kid they were called zoris, as do the Japanese. Now I know where that word originated. Keiko-san had made us each a pair. She said it would take too long to teach us make our own. I’m sure Andy-san will figure out how to do it when he returns—he’s pretty clever that way. I’d like to have my students research this so we can make some for ourselves. It really is a cool thing. We learned how to make cranes—we can learn to make zoris. However, I’ll bet the directions are in Japanese. Would someone see if they could find directions for T-shirt zoris, please? Let me know in a comment to my blog what you find.

Notice Andy-sans slippers at the temple.  I thought the green was interesting.

It is 20 degrees centigrade in the house. I put the futon on overnight brieflyWarmed me up quickly. They don’t use heaters here like we do. There are a couple of electric wall units up high. One is in the bathroom, one in the kitchen. They are for heating and air conditioning. I ask a lot of questions, yet hope I’m not being annoying.

We had a treat last night. Keiko-san’s and Yoshi-san’s grandchild (mago) came over to visit, along with his parents and a friend. They stopped by at the end of dinner. Keiko-san speaks English quite well. She takes lessons once a week. Having people come visit like we are has got to be a help. They have visitors about three times a year.

Keiko-san asked if we could have sukiyaki for dinner. It is a pot of soup with beef, onions, mushrooms (shitake and shigoya), leeks, cabbage, clear noodles made from a vegetable, and a geen leaf I’ve never seen before. The base is from water and soya sauce and sugar. No problem. Have at it. We watched Keiko-san wash and cut up each vegetable and put it in separate piles in colanders, bowls, and on plates.

It took about twenty minutes to wash and cut up the vegetables. The meat was sliced thin and was about 3 inches long by 2 inches wide, give or take. The meat was packaged in a bag lined with freezer paper that she had to cut open.

Once everything was washed and cut she put an electric Dutch oven on the table (with heating pads under it to protect the table). She crawled under the table to plug it in.

The table itself is large enough for about six people. There were mounds of food. I figured she would have lots leftover. She put a cube of fat in the pot.

It was like putting a square of butter there and she moved it around with chopsticks. Once there was some on the bottom, she pulled the fat out and put it on one of the plates. It will get used again some other time, I’m sure. They waste nothing. Next, she put about eight pieces of meat in the bottom along with some water and soy sauce.

These made a nice sauce. She started adding vegetables in piles around the pots. The pot didn’t get stirred. In a few minutes we sat down at the table. Yoshi-san had gone to the store and purchased a couple of things to drink. I had mentioned Calpis, a fizzy fermented milk that I had once, and he bought that for me. It sounds bad, but tastes great. Comes in different flavors, but this one was plain.

To begin a meal, everyone puts their hands in prayer form and says itadakimasu (bon appetit). Now, all that food didn’t come close to being gone. Only a portion of it went in the pot. We each received a bowl of rice, chopsticks, and a small bowl for the food. We used tongs to get what we wanted out of the pot. I got to go first. Keiko-san told me to dig to the bottom to get some meat. So, I took some of each part of the pot and waited for everyone to be served. Once I saw that my host, Yoshi-san, was eating, I took a bite. Delicious (oishi). Keiko-san added some of the food to the pot to cook while we ate. I figured this was leftovers for tomorrow since we had eaten so much already. Nope. Get some more food. I kept eating and they kept telling me to get more. Finally, I said I couldn’t eat any more. Andy-san is a big guy and we discovered early that he has hollow feet. He kept eating and Keiko-san kept filling the pot. Even Andy finally said he couldn’t eat any more. Now it was time for the “kids” to come and eat. We got up and went in the other room. Keiko-san stayed with us and we gave her some gifts to thank them for having us stay with them. They received T-shirts, a map of New York City, Alabama/Auburn baseball caps, candy, bookmarks, and a book showing Alabama through photographs.

What a gracious family we are staying with. I say “we” since Andy-san is staying here now as well. His host family had an accident and couldn’t accommodate him. My host family was able to have Andy-san and me stay with them. I will sleep in one part of the living room. It is a six-tatami mat room. The shoji (sliding paper door) divides the large room and the other side is eight-tatamis large. That side is now Andy-san’s room. We each have our own exits. My guess is that the couple’s children used these rooms when they were growing up. It is so similar to the apartment arrangement I stayed in while in Russia. I slept in the living room on the couch as their daughter did when she lived at home.

Now, I am sleeping on a futon in the living room. It is like camping. There is the “air mattress” (bottom futon,), It is made of cloth and has stuffing in it. This has a “sheet” on top made of a terry cloth type material. Next comes the “blanket”. It has three layers like our quilts. The top of it is terry cloth, the middle is a thin layer of batting and the bottom is a cotton which looks like it’s stitched to the batting. On top is the futon “blanket”. This is really difficult to describe. It seems like a comforter inside a duvet but the duvet has an open area in the middle of the top with material like we have in a simple bridal veil. There is a zipper along one side so obviously that center part comes out. It’s like a blanket in a blanket. We were told it is getting chilly in the morning so the top futon is very necessary.