kdblog

Lisa, Ben, and Sophia arrived a little late and without luggage, but we are ecstatic about them being here. We stopped and picked up Sushi and had a great lunch and later went shopping in Ikebukuro. Sophia did very well for such a long day and jet lag.

The luggage is still in Paris. There is a baggage handlers’ strike that Lisa and Ben were not informed of. Consequently, they had very few of many needed items–baby items, clothes, contacts, power cords for camera and laptop, and toiletries to name a few. It appears that the luggage may not arrive for a week or more (possibly not until they’ve returned to England) since there is such a large pile of luggage.

So some of today (Thursday–the day after they arrived) will be spent shopping for more essentials. Fortunately, they will be reimbursed for much of this as they had purchased insurance.

This is the title of the course I am teaching in the School of International Liberal Studies at Waseda University. Classes started on Friday September 30th. I had 14 students registered but only 11 showed up on the first day. I was concerned about the low number, but then heard that many courses had only 4 or 5 students. I decided 11 would be a great number of students and we would get a lot of work done, everyone would get lots of speaking practice, and I would be able to give them lots of individual attention. Only two of the eleven students are native English speakers. We had a great first class, and I became even more excited about the course.

Today, my second day to teach the course, all 11 students returned, the three students who had not shown up on Friday came, and six more added the course. The class nearly doubled. I was a bit surprised. Still only two students are native English speakers. I believe that one or two of the students who were new today may be Korean. The students are interested in social justice! It feels so good to be teaching students who want to study social justice.

After the initial shock of the increased number of students, we got down to work, and although class didn’t go as smoothly today as last Friday, it was okay. (Many students had not read the assignments or participated in our first day activities to prepare them for today.) I am a bit concerned that I might have many more students on Friday. Friday is the last day to add classes.

Most of my students are first or second year students. That is to be expected because SILS is only in its second year. The two students from the US are both older. One is a junior at a school in the US and is in Japan for one year as part of a program (not Japan Study, the program I am connected with). The other student from the US is intending to earn a second bachelors from Waseda. He is an independent international student—not in Japan on a specific program like, Japan Study.

Students in the course are not only interested in social justice, they are also interested in education and social justice in developing countries and are excited about reading about Tanzania and the opportunity to study other nations. I had been warned (not by anyone from SILS) that the students would probably not be interested in Tanzania, so I would probably not have a large group of students. Consequently, I was pleasantly surprised by their interest in Tanzania.

I tried sending out a link to our apartment from Google Earth. It is cool for me to zoom in and see where we walk to everyday. I’m not sure the link I sent on email is working so here are two links to photos of where we live from Google Earth. Unfortunately, one can’t zoom in or out from these. These photos are also in our October pictures. To get there just right click on “Our area of Tokyo from Waseda University to Takadanobaba Station” below and left click on “view image”.

Karen, as you know, has been working as program director and Waseda University visiting professor almost since we arrived. I, on the other hand, have not had a paying job since my last paycheck from Knox College on September 1st. I have therefore been working at my employment. The first problem has been that I am on a “dependent” visa that doesn’t officially allow me to work in Japan. All written policies say this, and all the information about this has stated that if I found a company that was willing to employ me, I could bring documents from the company to the immigration office and apply for a permit to work part-time. So I did put my resume out to some places that I thought I might want to work for. One was Temple University’s Tokyo campus. Of course by the time we arrived, they had their fall semester set. Nevertheless I was called about an introductory marketing course when the adjunct professor scheduled to teach the course backed out. I interviewed there and it seemed to go well, but they offered the course to someone else. Marketing is not a strong area of mine, but they mentioned the fact that my being on a “dependent” visa was a problem. I also suspect that my ponytail didn’t help. However, the interviewer mentioned that there had been a change in what was necessary to obtain permission to work on a “dependent” visa. Basically, I only needed to apply for the work permit at the immigration office. This I did, and apparently I will soon get permission to work. Last week I began email discussions culminating in an interview on Friday with a human resources consulting firm– Phoenix Associates. www.phoenixassoc.com/html/index_e.html The interview went well and I have been offered a position there. The job entails working with multinational and non-multinational firms in Tokyo in training and development. About 10% of the work is English teaching. Most of the rest of the work is either specific skill set training depending what is needed or working with executives to keep their English language skills up. There is also miscellaneous other work that is somewhat hard to classify. The job pays well and the amount of work is flexible. Also, if it is a good match and if I desire it, Phoenix Associates can easily do the paperwork to get my visa changed from a “dependent” to a full-working visa. The only concern the interviewer had was my ponytail. He personally didn’t have a problem but thought some of the clients might. I should start next week sometime, although I still need to go through an orientation and do some paperwork.

It really was nice to only have to prepare for and teach one course today. I was supposed to have 14 students, but only eleven showed up. Nine of the students are Japanese-native speakers, and two are English-native speakers. Both of the students from the US are very kind and anxious to interact with the Japanese-speaking students. They are careful to not dominate even in the small group discussions. The students were all very shy, but expressed sincere interest in the course. I think it is going to be a great group, and honestly I am very excited to be teaching a course with mostly Japanese students.

One of the students from the US, Daniel, has been in Japan for about three years. He volunteered to take me to the SILS library to get reserves figured out. He is studying human rights law in Asia. That was a big relief for me and the students!

All this time, when people talked to me about the library, I thought they meant the huge, main library, but they meant the SILS library. The SILS library has the book I will be using first, and has ordered the other two to put on reserve! Can you imagine that! I don’t have to give them my copy of the text for reserve.

It was a very pleasant class, and I am looking forward to an exciting semester! David had some good experiences today, too. He’ll have to write about them, however, not me. 🙂

Preparing for the semester has been a bit challenging. I only had one of the three books I assigned for my course, and the book co-op only had one of the books—the one I had brought with me. I didn’t have a schedule to tell me the holidays, an orientation, or a faculty guidebook. This week, little by little, everything got worked out. One of the books came in the one box of books we have received, and the coop got the other one in, so I could purchase another copy. Do not ask me why I mailed the books instead of carrying them with me!! Honestly, I though mailing books in July would be plenty early. The new media rate the post office has is cheaper, but definitely slower! We have gotten a box of clothes we mailed from Seattle, about five weeks AFTER we mailed books from Galesburg. Anyway, the syllabus was done before 6:00 tonight; I am all prepared for Friday and Tuesday next week, and I am looking forward to teaching the course. And I have all three books!

Some of the trials and tribulations have not yet been worked out, but we have made progress. I do not have an ID yet, so I can only read material at the library. The ID will be 3-weeks in coming, so I am running a little low on patience related to library use. I would have liked to have used it weeks ago!

We also have yet to get our wireless Internet connection at the apartment. We are very happy to have DSL, but only one of us can use the Internet at a time. Since we have been in Tokyo, we have been trying to work out the kinks. The good news is that Japan Study is going to pay for our DSL each month, but the bad news is that it will be at least one more week before the wireless will be connected because we still do not have the account number or the password to allow us to connect the hub. David had a wireless hub sent to Tina and Lorrin, and one of them graciously sent it to us, so David would have instructions in English.

David is working away each day at learning to read labels! He started with food labels, and he is quite good (although not speedy) at reading labels. He has now moved on to other items. Tonight he bought bleach (a diluted variety) and drain cleaner. (Japanese drains are not made to handle hair like David’s and mine—too long and too much of it!)

The temperature is lower these days, too. We still don’t need jackets when we go out, but sleeveless shirts are not quite enough on some evenings. We actually stopped using the air conditioner a week or so ago and now even need a thin blanket at night.

Tuesday September 13, 2005
火日、九月　じゆうさんにち

I have spent 4 nights and days at NWEC thus far. It is a 10-day orientation, so we are not yet half way through our ten days. My responsibilities are lighter now as students are spending most of their time in Japanese classes. Michiyo, the Japan Study bilingual Program Associate, and I interviewed all 36 students independently for 15 minutes each in order to get information to help Michiyo find homestay families for them. Michiyo returned to Tokyo on Monday, and David returned to Tokyo on Sunday, so I spend most of my time in my room either studying Japanese or preparing for my course I will be teaching soon. I still have some interactions with students, but because I did not go to the cafeteria for lunch or dinner tonight, even informal time with students has been reduced.

I did not go to the cafeteria for lunch or dinner because I have not had good experiences trying to find vegetarian food at the buffet. The only place to purchase food outside of NWEC is a convenience store. Generally, convenience stores have several choices for vegetarians, but this convenient store is atypical. Several times I have gone to it and not found any actual meal-type food that I could be sure I could eat. I have only found o ni gi ri once. We got red-bean bau-dz once, and they seem to have them more regularly, but I didn’t care for the bau-dz that much. I have eaten a lot of peanuts over the course of the last few days. For breakfast, I do okay with two plain buns, a cup of coffee and a small box of pineapple juice in the NWEC cafeteria. For lunch and dinner, I have been having white rice with a very small dish of green pickles with sesame seeds or a very small, uninteresting salad.

Dining here is a big contrast with meals prior to coming to NWEC. The freshness of vegetables in Tokyo and a bit more flexible schedule gave me the opportunity to prepare some great meals. I am ready to return to our apartment and the Tokyo grocery stores!

I must note, however, that for our welcoming dinner, we went to a restaurant, which prepared vegetarian food for the vegetarians. It was the best Japanese meal we have had that was not prepared in someone’s home kitchen!

The NWEC facility is quite nice. Groups stay here for educational purposes, so it is like a hotel for educational groups. It also has things like a pool, tennis courts, a sports field, a small Japanese garden, and hot baths. Unlike a hotel, it has lobby space that is actually used by the groups to hang out in informally. The food is cafeteria style, and if the group is only here for a day or two, it is probably quite satisfactory. A 10-day stay means that the food choices get old quickly. The vending machines have drinks (many of which appear to be alcoholic) and cigarettes. I haven’t seen one that would be typical in the US with potato chips and candy bars. Places to eat outside of NWEC are few. Although we are only an hour from Tokyo, there is a 10:00 curfew, so student can’t really go into Tokyo easily after classes. Also, there is no obvious Internet access. Michiyo says she is able to take her computer somewhere and connect to send messages that she has already written, but it is quite expensive and troublesome. Since I even have trouble using the phone in the room and my cell phone, I have not pursued use of the Internet.

Because we are supposed to be in educational activities during the morning and afternoons, the air conditioning is turned off in our rooms, and when the cleaning women come around to clean the room, they seem to expect me to leave. The rooms can get kind of warm but they do turn it back on during lunch. It turns out to be off for a couple of hours in the morning and a couple of hours in the afternoon, so it isn’t that bad. It is still quite warm here, which means that staying in the non-air-conditioned room is generally cooler than going outside in the sun.

The Japan Study Students met and went with their host families today which means Karen and I are back in Tokyo and have access to email, the internet, phones, and food. Karen is no longer sequestered in Musashiranzan with 36 20-22 year olds. That was an experience she will need to describe.

We did celebrate the autumn moon festival with moon cakes (actually we split one), tea, and the closest thing we could find to a pommelo (a large grapefruit). The moon was big and bright.

We have discovered that we can get anman (red bean paste manto) and three different kinds of onigiri–ume, kombu, wakame–from most convenient stores. Actually the convenient stores here are really convenient. We shipped our luggage from musashiranzan through a convenient store so we didn’t have to take it on the train. It was delivered today in the evening when we asked them to deliver it. One can also pay most bills, get money from the ATM machines, and recycle, cans, bottles, and plastic trays.

Neither Karen nor I have written anything for a couple of days because Karen’s Japan Study Program students arrived Friday. They go on a ten-day orientation about an hour out of Tokyo as soon as they get here so we have not had computer access and have been quite busy. I just got back to Tokyo but Karen is still there and will be there for the whole ten days. I will go back there probably twice, so may not be posting or responding to emails at times.

It is a large group of 36 students from all over the USA and some from other countries attending USA colleges. Two were my students at Knox and one is my advisee. She is from China and has taken all my courses. She brought a gift of vegetarian moon cakes (without the egg yolks) for us and we are excited. We haven’t had moon cakes for twenty years or so. The autumn moon festival (which is apparently not celebrated by the Japanese) is next week and I hope we can have a small celebration with our three Chinese students and our Korean student (the festival is apparently celebrated in Korea) and maybe some of the few other students who have been to China and have studied the language and culture.

Karen spent part of yesterday and all of today and perhaps will spend part of tomorrow interviewing students to help determine best matches with home-stay placements. Yesterday evening we went to the official welcome dinner at a traditional Japanese restaurant. They prepared a wonderful feast. Karen and I and two vegetarian students were served all vegetarian food and it was simply the best Japanese food I have ever had.

The orientation is being held at a women’s center that has many hotel rooms, seminar rooms, dining hall, and various sports facilities. The students are in intensive language/culture classes most of the time for these ten days. Karen has and will have sessions with them as well for program related and home-stay related information and cultural sensitivity. The food at the center is not very vegan friendly, but the two vegetarian students seem to be managing ok. I will take some food back from Tokyo to supplement what Karen can eat.

That’s it for now. I will be putting some more pictures up as well.

David