I have talked often about the size of classes - well today was a very different experience. I visited a junior high school with 3 students and nine staff members. Connected to the junior high was an elementary with seven students and eight staff members. This school is located near a dam that was completed two years ago. There used to be about 100 students in this school before the village was flooded by the dam that was built. For the last 14 years there have been just a few students in this two story school with gymnasium and swimming pool. I asked if anyone eve questioned the resources that went into keeping this school going (the teachers who teach here even get paid more because they have to drive a ways to teach there) but the attitude is that every child is entitled to an education - teachers are specialists so that's why they need that many staff. By bus it would take less than a half hour to send those children to another school. Again, elementary and middle school students walk to school and so these students live too far to walk. No one considers a bus. Now that is an amazing situation. I just kept thinking how much smaller classes could be in some of the other schools if the resources weren't being spent this way.
The rest of the morning and part of the afternoon were spent touring the recreation areas surrounding the dam and also visiting the dam. I guess it took thirty years from the beginning of planning to the completion two years ago. This dam helps supply water to the Yokahama area.
I need some sleep tonight as I was up way too late last night with broadband Internet in my apartment. It was nice to catch up on US and Grand Forks news.
Dam
Area near dam

This morning was the meeting with the Mayor of Atsugi and the Superintendent of Schools. The Superintendent in Atsugi is appointed by the mayor and is usually only on the job for four years. There are 36 schools in the Atsugi district so I would think it would be difficult to accomplish much during that short period of time. The Superintendent and the mayor were very excited about an upcoming exchange with New Brighton, Conneticut. Seven middle school children will spend ten days the end of July and the beginning of August visiting New Brighton. The Superintendent talked about the need for school reform. I have promised my interpretor's sister-in-law who teaches 38 third graders that I would suggest smaller classes whenever I got a chance. So I talked about smaller classes with the superintendent..... The mayor was interested in North Dakota and Grand Forks. I gave him some booklets that I had brought from the Chamber of Commerce. City and school officials are always amazed at how few people live in North Dakota. On the way back to school, we visited the river and saw fishermen fishing for sweetfish. They use a nine meter pole with many hooks that snag the fish. The students finished their term tests today and had a large pep rally for all of the school teams that will participate in the sports festival this weekend.
I came back to my apartment and found my broadband Internet access working. I plugged in my trusty Mac and it connected immediately. TV is also broadband but guess what - it's still in Japanese. I'm far from understanding a complete sentence yet.
Superintendent of Schools
Mayor of Atsugi
Pep rally for weekend festival
Sweetfish fishing

July 1
Today the principal took us to a 15 room farm house built in 1891 that has been preserved. This was a house of a big rice plantation. The house and gardens were beautiful. I learned that rooms are built to fit tatami mats not the mats to fit the room. An average room is usually six mats. Some of the rooms in this house had 12 mats. We then visited an elementary school. The principal first gave me a calligraphy lesson and then we visited classrooms. Most classrooms had 36-40 students. We observed fourth grade writing (the students were creating a newspaper around the topic of water quality), second grade math (the students were learning measurement), third grade integrated studies (different small groups were working on projects focused on hatching silk worms in the classroom, paper stories, shadow boxes….some sort of presentation), first grade alphabet, fifth grade music (they were singing Swanny River in Japanese) and then we had lunch with the sixth graders. The students take turns serving the lunch in the classroom and then all of the students clean. The sixth grade students were interested in sports, climate, rules in school, etc. I plan to spend more time with the principal at a later time to find out more about his school. He obviously enjoys his job and loves to talk about his school.

Farmhouse built in 1891
Garden surrounding the farmhouse
Calligraphy lesson

June 30
The junior high students were reviewing for term tests so another Fullbright teacher, a teacher from her school, the lead teacher from my school, Myako and Myumi and two city officials traveled to Hakone about an hour and a half away. There we visited historic landmarks from the feudal era, oldest road in Japan, Lake Ashi, Hakone Hot Springs, and Chakoku-no-mari (Open Air Art Museum) and observed an artist doing Hakone-Zaiku, an inlaid and mosaic craft. There was no rain and the weather was cool. What a fun day. At the Hot Springs they would boil eggs in the water, the sulfur would turn it black but the egg itself would be a nice hard boiled egg – tasted good
Hakone-Zaiku
This strip of wood art is then used to create objects such as boxes,fans, jewelry,etc.
Hot springs
Open Air Art Museum
Stained glass inside one of the sculptures
Warning about wild boar

June 29
Myako and I took three different trains to get to Yokahama. We spent time in the largest Chinatown in Japan and then visited the port. I bought a souvenir of Chinese art – glass bottles that are painted from the inside – very intricate details. I was invited to Myako’s parents for dinner. Myako’s mother and father live on the bottom floor of the house and her brother, sister-in-law and two children live on the top floor. (It’s a beautiful house.) Myako’s brother works for Xerox as a software developer – he said that there is still a high demand for software developers in Japan. He also talked about education and said it is very hard to get into the University but once you are there you don’t need to study hard as the University is very easy. His wife teaches third grade and has 38 students in her class. She has no planning time during the day and is responsible for all subjects – including music, art and physical education. She believes that American children are more expressive than Japanese children and she wondered some techniques she could try in her class to help her students be more expressive. It seems that one major change that could occur that would help would be to have smaller classes. I sincerely enjoyed the 8 year old and 2 year old children. I had brought them books written in both Japanese and English. The first thins the 8 year old did was to copy the English letters – he did nice work.

Chinese art
Chinese violin music
Yokahama port

June 28
It’s Saturday and Myako is going to take me shopping and then to the ocean. I took the bus for the first time and knew you didn’t pay when you got on the bus but I didn” know I supposed to take a ticket so I would know what to pay at the end. Luckily Myako was at the bus station and cold show me how to choose which of the five fares I should pay. The next bus ride will be easier. I found an Internet Café that allows 30 minutes of free Internet access so after checking email we went to the book store. I was excited to find paper stories there and bout tow of them. The Japanese story is on the back of each card so Myako can translate it for me. I thought it would be fun for our students to see if they can figure out the story from the pictures and then I could tell them the real story. A quick trip to the electronics store and I discovered I should only buy from a Duty-free store. They stock different products for some reason. We drove to the ocean and watched the many surfers and early beach goers. This is one of the most popular beaches as it is only an hour and a half from Tokyo. Each summer they build temporary buildings for concessions and showers and take them down when the summer is over. The first weekend in July is considered the first beach weekend. We ordered Pizza Hut pizza for dinner at Myako’s apartment. She bought this place with her brother fifteen years ago and it cost $300,000. It is worth half that much now as the economy in Japan is very poor.It was my first American food from a restaurant ( I eat a steady diet of peanut butter sandwiches in my apartment.)

Ocean view
Temporary buildings
Hawk - whose name means kite