Japan

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 [...]

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 [...]

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 [...]

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 [...]

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 [...]

In response to Janie’s question, except for calligraphy, the students use mechanical pencils to write with for the most part.  I took a picture of the contents of someone’s pencil case. As you can see, they use pretty much the same things our students use.  However, our students like to use the erasers on the [...]

The principal (kojo-sensei) of Hiroshima Municipal Yasunishi Elementary School reminds me so much of my own principal, Mrs. Stokes.  Kojo-sensei greeted every child as they entered the school grounds.  She knows them by name.  She made her rounds through the school visiting classrooms and looking at student work.  No one was anxious or nervous at [...]

I love autumn.  Am so glad I was able to come during this season.  The leaves are beginning to change and soon it will be gorgeous.  I hope my host family takes me somewhere outside which is photogenic.  Am looking forward to that visit but don’t want to wish my time away.  It is flying [...]

There are two skills teachers in Japan must have, in addition to being able to teach just about any subject.  They need to play the piano and swim.  Each school has a pool and it is the teacher’s responsibility to teach the kids to swim.  They also teach them music.  We participated in music class [...]