welcome to japan

Hi all,

As some of you know and some of you don’t, I’m currently en route to Japan. For those of you who didn’t know, surprise! I’m in some sort of teacher Fulbright program thingy, where teachers head on a three week trip to Japan, check out their educational system and their culture and then bring some ideas back. Pretty sweet deal

So I flew out of JFK yesterday and landed in San Francisco for a day-long orientation. The orientation was ok – we sat around for an awfully long time given that most of us had had to get up in the wee hours of the morning to catch a flight. Last night we went to the Consulate General’s house for a reception, which was crazy. There were about 160 of us in a house that easily supported that many people and overlooked the Golden Gate Bridge and Alcatraz – some cool stuff. Oh, and the food was unreal. Eel, sushi, dumplings. They called it a prelude. I was hanging out with someone from Texas who was using a fork because she couldn’t figure out chopsticks, so I guess I’m a step ahead.

Also, of the 160 people, there are probably 5 who are under the age of 30. Of the 15 people in my group, I’m the only one under 35, most of them have kids who are older than I am, and they’re all married and stuff. Gonna be interesting.

So I’m in the airport, getting ready for the long flight to Japan. We’ll be in Tokyo for a few days, then we split up into our different host cities with about 15 people in each city. I’m in Hiroshima, which, when I tell people, they get super jealous, which I guess is a good thing. In Hiroshima we have a homestay and I have “I love NY” t-shirts as a gift for my host family, and just yesterday I found out my host family is a 60 year old man and a 57 year old woman. Not really what I would have brought if I’d known. I bought a cool map thing in the airport, but it’s not quite as cool as some of the other things people brought. Like maple syrup and books on architecture and stuff. Oh well, not the end of the world.

Instead of sending you all emails as updates and cluttering up your inboxes, I’m setting up a blog (I know, the apocalypse is near) that I have creatively dubbed http://www.claymaninjapan.blogspot.com/. It’ll mostly be a record of what I’m up to for my students, but it’ll be a nice way to track the trip.

Oh, I don’t actually have email access right now while I’m writing this; I’m writing it in a word document and I’ll send it when I get a chance.

That’s about it. I’ll keep you all updated, and I look forward to showing everyone pictures and telling lots of stories.


10/13-10/14

Looooooooooooooong flight. We took off from San Francisco atabout 11:30 am on Tuesday (which is 3 hours later than East Coast time) and arrived in Japan at 3 pm on Wednesday (which is actually 2 am East Coast time) so it was a little less than a 12 hour flight. Rough stuff.

So instead of going to sleep, like we all wanted to do, we had a reception and met up with Japanese volunteers who had studied in the US on Fulbrights who were supposed to take us out to dinner. Some groups got college students who wanted to go out partying, and some got really cool octogenarians (I’ve always wanted to have a chance to legitimately use that word. We got a 50 year old Japanese woman and dinner was pretty uneventful, except that I’m awesome with chopsticks, they pour raw eggs on their chicken skewers and we had this delicious duck that was cooked in front of us over a charcoal spit, wrapped in something called a Hoba leaf. And two of the people in my group were like “no, I don’t like duck” or “no, I don’t think I’ll try that.” Who’d have thought I’d be the adventurous one trying any and everything. Also, portions are small, so I’m vacuuming up any extra food in sight. I may be gaining a reputation. Oh well.

Then the lame people in my group went off to bed at about 9, but since my body thought it was only 8 in the morning, I wandered around with a few other people and checked out some cool magazine stores – you wouldn’t believe some of the magazines they have here. Everything is manga-style.

Finally went to bed around 11 or so, making it an insanely long 26 hour day.


Tuesday was sightseeing, which was actually not very cool. We rode on a bus for most of the time and never really got a chance to walk around