Today is Friday and I spent time in classrooms. The first hour was spent in a handicapped classroom. There was only one student as most students with handicaps go to special schools. Japanese are trying to do more mainstreaming but it is coming about slowly. Next was an English class. These ninth graders have been studying English for three years. The class has 38 students so it is difficult to get many students involved with conversation. On to the technology class. The students in 8th grade had visited the high school last week so they were making a PowerPoint presentation about their trip. I was impressed that the project was very content driven. Again the class had 35 students so it was difficult for the teacher to help all of the students.
We began working with the probeware this afternoon. The science teachers were very excited about learning how to use them. I wish the interface was in Japanese.
Tonight there is a welcome party for me at an Italian restaurant. After the dinner we are going to the ocean to hunt crabs and also stop to see the fireflies. Tomorrow is Saturday and I am going to take the bus and go exploring.

Morinsato Junior High is located on the side of a mountain. Within minutes of the school are parks, an outdoor learning center and the research headquarters for an organization like the National Park Service or Game and Fish. The principal and my translator and I visited each site. The research center has a staff of 70 people and have a preserve located at their headquarters. We toured just a part of them and they told us about some of their research. Their are doing genetic engineering on cedar trees to prevent pollen from causing allergies. They are collecting different kinds of bamboo and evaluting growth patterns. They restored a former rice paddy to a natural wetlands area. They showed me the American crayfish which has become a problem in Japan and I compared it to the Japanese kudzu which has become a problem in America. Japanese people eat parts of the kudzu plant - my principal said that might help with our problem if we ate it. They also talked about the problem of too many deer and that urbanization has contibuted to all of these problems. It was interesting to see that we share many of the same environmental problems.
The outdoor learning center was built by the city about 20 years ago. It has facilities for 400 students to stay at the center. All 36 schools in Atsugi stay at this center at sometime during the year. It has many different facilities - cafeteria, small meeting rooms, large telescope (planetarium size) on the top floor, gymnasium with stage, cooking facilities for the students, public bath and tea room. It is located in a beautiful, wooded area. The city pays for it so the students only pay for meals and laundry fees when they stay there. When we visited, a class was there cooking in an outdoor facility. I was so impressed with this facility but the principal reminded me that school facilities in Grand Forks far surpass their facilities in Atsugi.

My lunch!
I had lunch with the students. The students all bring their lunches - I am able to order one from a delivery service. The student's lunches look like artistic creations. Myumi told me mothers feel tremendous pressure to not only fix a nutritional lunch but to make it look very beautiful. One particular student did not feel his was very artistic and would cover up his food after each bite. We asked if anyone packed their own lunch and no one in the room did.

Park near school.
Just down the road from the school is a beautiful park. It has flowing water, nicely manicured bushes, a few flowers and ponds with coy. One building houses a small museum and features a storytelling using pictures and a mechanical animated storyteller. Myumi said Japanese women tell stories to their children using picture cards. I hope I can buy one to bring it home with me.
Storyteller
Story cards
I got a DVD rental card with the help of Myumi. I can connect my computer to the TV in my apartment and play DVDs. That's nice as I don't understand much that is being said on the TV.

Wednesday was a very full day at school. I arrive before eight and did not get back to my apprtment before seven. I was so tired I fell asleep by eight. The day was filled with learning Japanese, presenting at an assembly and palnning our upcoming year's project. The Japanese children work hard to learn English so I worked hard learning to read a book in Japanese to the children. During the assembly the children walked in, sat for a short time as others were coming in the gym and then stood in very straight lines for the assembly. The purpose was to welcome me and another teacher here from Bangledesh who is modeling English lessons for the Japanese English teachers. I managed to read the book OK thanks to my teacher Myako who is one of my translators.
I visited the computer class. The room is amazing with the latest Windows computers, flat monitors housed in computer desks. The room has a large color copier and black and white copier printers. The teacher easily controls all of the screens in the room. There is a beautiful projector that also has a document camera. The students were doing research on a chemical that helps the orchids they planted to grow. As we walked around my translator told me they were definiteky looking at other material. Toward the end of the class the teacher took them all to one site and they all printed out the same material. The orchids are planed in another class so the technology teacher is trying to make the connection to other curriculum while the students are learning technology skills.
After school Mr.Otsuka and I with the help of the translator began planning the project for next year. We started looking at the equipment I had brought but I had left some of the software back in my apartment. The FMF project has asked the Japanese schools involved to participate in a Future Cities project. Unfortunately all of the directions are written in English. I went through the book and found critical pages that need to be tranlated and the translator is going to tranlate them. The project is sponsored by the National Engineers Week group out of the states. I hope that we might have some teams in Grand Forks that might like to participate this year. A government official saw this contest a couple of years ago in the states and wants to duplicate it in Japan. But language is causing a problem.
Today I am visiting two environmental centers in Atsugi.

I spent the day in school for the first time. Miyako was my translator. I have to give a speech tomorrow so she helped me with some Japanese phrases and I also plan to read a children's book written in Japanese so she helped me practice. Morinsato Junior High is 18 years years old. It is located at the top of a hill with beuatiful foilage around it. You need to take off your shoes but I was relieved to see you don't have to wear slippers - just keep a pair of shoes here. I have a desk in the shared teachers ' room. There is another teacher visiting who will model English teaching for the students - he will also be here four weeks. The classes have around 38 students in them. They break up the math and English classes. Students decide which level they want to be in but teachers can also make recommendations. The students stay in thier classrooms and the teachers move from classroom to classroom. There is no cafeteria in this school so students bring their lunch. I can order each day for about four dollars and a lunch is delivered to the school. I visited an Enlish conversation class (the teacher was so nervous), a social studies class - they were studying prime meridian, equator and country borders, and an inegrated science class. In the last two years there have been three major educational reforms - a six day week to a five day week, a relative instead of absolute grading system and increased hours of integrated studies expected. Teachers are not pleased with less time and they feel it is difficult to accomplish all that they need. The idea of integrated studies is great but teachers do not know how to implement the curriculum so there is no continuity - some just use the hours to teach to the exam. Mr. Otsuka does not like his new textbook. He feels that there is no foundation built and it relies totally on the teacher - at this point teachers are not working together the way they should to make it productive.
The students clean the school - I helped and erased something that was supposed to stay - lot of help I am.
I now have a cell phone for my use while I am here. I don't know all of the features on the cell phone at home you can imagine what it's like looking at the directions in Japanese.
Time to go home. It's been an interesting but exhausting day

This entry covers Friday through Monday as it is Tuesday in Japan.
June 20
Today I joined the ninth grade class for their class trip to Kyoto and it was a tough day for me. First I lost my support group in my friends and Mr. Otsuka as he is a seventh grade teacher and did not go on the trip.. Then I wore the wrong clothes, I forgot to take off my shoes. I sat the wrong way at the table and my foot fell asleep. I had no one to interpret so I was lost.

The children were very good to me and I enjoyed the temples very much.


Our hotel is nice – located on the biggest lake in Japan – Like Biwa. It is a traditional Japanese hotel so when I went into the room I did not see a bed. There were tatamie mats on the floor and I thought they would be pretty hard to sleep on.



After I came back from dinner there was a futon mattress with sheets and a nice comforter with a sheet. The pillow had beans in it and I figured it would be pretty hard but it conforms to your head and is actually very comfortable. The Japanese dinner (yushuku) had many small courses, very colorful but some things difficult to eat with chopsticks. I finally saw that you could drink the soup out of a bowl. Rice seems to be served all of the time but you don’t not mix sauces or other foods with the rice. If you do, you bring the rice to the other food not the other way around. Tofu is also very common. I eat it but it certainly isn’t my favorite. Japanese eat many vegetables pickled. So far I have had radish, cucumber and eggplant pickles.

In the evening, in the lake,water is sprayed high into the air and colored lights shine through the spray – it’s beautiful.

I don’t know if I will feel this trip was a good idea. It may loosen up the children a little more as I see them out of the structured classroom, but it was tough jumping right in with so many surprises. I guess you can only dive right in and get your feet wet. Part of my problem is I am exhausted. I’m looking forward to sleep tonight.

June 21
What a day! The children were divided into groups of six and were sent off on there own to tour Kyoto. They had planned the trip before they came so knew what buses or trains to take and where they were going to go first. Each group had a cell phone in case something might go wrong. I was taken by taxi to Kyoto to meet Mr.Sukama, a 22 year old graduate student at Kyoto University.

He had previously been a student at Morinsato Junior High and had also just finished a teaching field experience in the 9th grade social studies class at Morinsato. Mr. Sukima belongs to a guide club at the university and guides groups for money but mostly for the experience as he is very interested in Japanese history. He spoke English very well even though he kept apologizing profusely for his English.

I learned that temples are Buddist and you will find statues of Budda at the temple. Shrines are gods centered (god of love, god of studying hard, god of safe traveling, god of health, etc.)

We had lunch at a very nice restaurant and dinner at a very traditional, and expensive Japanese restaurant. There must have been at least ten courses with a couple bottles of beer. Mr Sukama is going to be a teacher so he explained curriculum changes have been occurring in the last two years. WE talked about Japanese children and his observation is they are not real happy. They go to school all day and then go to cram school (private school) in the evening. I tried to communicate the elements of active learning and the process of helping students become self-directed learners. Mr. Sukama asked great questions and took notes when he wanted to remember something or ask another question. We discussed learning strategies, Internet research, need for new set of information skills, the use of computers in the classroom, the concept of students sharing responsibility for different aspects of content, and critical knowledge. Mr. Sukima talked about how he wants to help students but new methods are very abstract and not concrete. The sights and food were amazing but I think I enjoyed talking with a future teacher as much as anything. Mr. Sukama said I could be his American mother and he wants me to come to his wedding to Uka in two years. Another thing we discussed was the differences in roldes of men and women in Japan and America. Men get married later as they have to work very hard to support the woman. He was very interested in shared roles and seemed to understand the possibility of more happiness on the part of both people when roles are shared. It obviously was a fantastic day and made for the difficulties the day before. We often met the students groups as they were on their tours. They were having so much fun and were so enjoying their independence. I was also asked questions by students as speaking English was one of their assignments.
National Treasure
Gardens



June 22 -
Not much sleep last night. I took a bath in the public bath – the final step was going into a large hot tub where the temperature was very high. When I came back to the room my patio door was wide open. I was quite nervous about my purse with all of my Fullbright money in the room. I was worried about waking up in time so I didn’t sleep very well. Hey, no rice for breakfast – buns with jam, eggs, pasta salad, and sausage (like hot dogs). We took a boat across Lake Biwa to a museum focused on the lake and surrounding environment. The museum was very well done but of course I could not read Japanese so I didn’t get as much information as I could have.
Museum

It appears that we have many of the same fish. I got a poster of the fish and I will have to translate it. I saw kids in the morning catching blue gills and Mr. O. told me that many of the fishermen were fishing for rock bass and lake trout. After a box lunch we headed for the train (Shinkansen) for our trip back to Atsugi. We arrived at the school about 6:30 and Mr. Otsuka took me to my apartment. It certainly is far beyond my expectations and will be a fine place to stay for four weeks.
Apartment building
I have air conditioning, a washer (when you put clothes in it spins a little and determines how much detergent you need to put in) a drying room (you hang your clothes on hangers, put them on a rod in the bathroom, close the door and set a warming fan to run for up to three hours) a refrigerator, microwave, three futons to sleep on, and a TV (I haven’t found any English channels but occasionally there will be a song or two in English). I am paying the $40 to have Internet access but it will be like webTV and won’t be in for about a week. There is a ladder you can climb to a small space that can be used as a bedroom. I think I will use that space for storage and not climb up and down the ladder. I think I might also get claustrophobia. I have a little patio with glass sliding doors. There was also a goody box with necessities – toilet paper, trash can, hangers, laundry detergent etc. The Vice Principal and her husband took me out for an Italian dinner. She has been at the school for only three months but has been an educator for thirty one years. She was very interested in learning why I wanted to be part of the Fullbright program. I won’t be going to the school tomorrow as it is a vacation day for the students that went on the trip.

June 23.
I met my two translators today and what a treat. Their names are Mayumi and Miyako and they will take turns spending time at the school while I am here. Today they came and showed me how to use the things in my apartment, introduced me to the bus, took me grocery shopping, out to lunch and then to the electronics store. Mayumi teaches English at the University and has a boy at Mornisato Junior High and a girl at the high school. She learned English at the university and spent a month in Los Angeles and a year in Australia. Miyako is a free-lance interpreter. She spent five years in the US and attended college in Rockford, IL. While there she worked with a non-profit agency that helped women with issues of depression, panic and abuse. She is very interested in starting a organization that will support women in Japan. We talked a lot about the differences between Japan and America concerning women’s roles. I so enjoyed meeting them and look forward to our time together. After unpacking, I took a couple hour walk around the area where I live. It’s the rainy season now so the umbrella came in handy. With new groceries in the fridge I decided a peanut butter sandwich sounded good. I miss my family a lot but I am not homesick. I wish that I could share these experiences with them. I find that I talk to myself a lot. Tomorrow is the first full day at school.