My favorite teacher was there in Japan - experience. She took us to a school where we toured facilities, met with students and talked with Japanese teachers. She shared lessons that are taught to students in their high schools but are new and out of the norm for the national Japanese curriculum. She took us through the countryside and we toured internationally known landmarks and national treasures. Being in Japan also allowed all of the American team to experience first hand the five themes of Geography:
My colleagues could tell me a better story about location. By the time they arrived in Japan, July 27, Thursday at 4p.m., some of them had been up for 24 hours. We had a 20 minute commute to the Shinkansen, and a 2 hour train ride to Hiroshima. Japan was indeed far away!
One physical characteristic of the Japanese is that they are experienced travelers. By living in such compressed spaces, there is not much room for extras. I have counted the people arriving at Osaka International with more than one suitcase. There were 20. They were all Americans going to Hiroshima by Shinkansen. A train that you must board in one minute. A train with a 4'X5' storage area between cars. There is no room for a cart with two suitcases and 3 carryons. Multiply by 19 (I had one suitcase and 2 carryons) and you have quite a party trying to board a bullet train with a 6' by 3' door opening. But that was an introduction to the place of "little" space. We were treated to individual hotel rooms, air-conditioned meeting rooms, restaurant lunches and dinners. I was a diplomat instead of a teacher. Any question or concern we had was taken care of. Culturally, visitors are tended to with care and kindness. But in their own lives, the Japanese practice dally the functions of quality, beauty, and harmony through the attention to city infrastructure, their accomplished artwork and publishing, and their existence in a place with a population density of 327 persons per square mile compared to the 71 persons per square mile in the U.S.
We traveled on many systems that exceedingly ran on time. You can travel by city train, taxi, bus, subway, car, ferry, airplane, regular train and the pride of the Japanese - the bullet train. We did lots of walking also. Japan is a very accessible country because of their excellent transportation system. If it's not there, the Japanese are presently building it.
We could not hide! We were foreigners and it showed! We couldn't use chopsticks or blow our noses without someone staring at us. We were dressed very casual compared to our colleagues who wore ties and long sleeved shirts to seminars everyday. We gazed longingly at grapes that were $30 a pound U.S. dollars. We wrote on the front as well as the back of postcards just so we could use our 85 cents worth of postage. We bought cans and cans of POCARI SWEAT from the 1 million vending machines available in Japan.
The culture and customs of Japan are quite particular to their unique island nation. Our U.S. team had lots of fun discovering them in the process.
If you want more details on ARGAJA (Activities and Readings of Geography of Japan) please contact me. Mahalo Nui Loa to the Hawaii Geography Alliance, The University of Hawaii Foundation, Western Michigan University, Hiroshima University, The Hiroshima Geographic Alliance, The United States-Japan Foundation and the Center for Global Partnership, Japan Foundation for their sponsorship and support of this program. Sayonara!