Dear Students,
As some of you know, I went to Japan in late May. The purpose of my trip was to visit several high schools and introduce the students there to UCA and the Intensive English Program. I also had time to visit some friends and former students and do some sight-seeing. I had a really great time!
I want to tell you about my trip. I think it's too long for one letter, so I'm going to divide it into several parts.
I got up at 2:30 a.m. so that I could be at the Little Rock airport by 4:30. My flight left at 6:30 a.m., and I was told to be at the airport 2 hours before the departure time. That was really early!!
First I flew to Houston on a "prop" plane; that is, is an airplane with a propeller rather than a jet engine. It was very noisy! I sat next to a man whose wife teaches at UCA. He was going to Honduras to help with a project building houses for poor people.
I had a two-hour layover in Houston, and then I got on a 777 airplane to go to Tokyo. Wow! The plane was wonderful. Before this trip, I had not flown overseas since 1987, and I noticed that these big planes have changed a lot! Every seat back had a little screen on it, and every seat had a remote control built into the arm. All the passengers could choose between several movies, music channels, TV shows, and video games throughout the flight. The remote control was a little difficult to operate, but I managed to watch "A Beautiful Mind" and "Ali" during my flight. It was great! I guess this is old news for you world travelers; most of you already know about this from your trips to the United States.
I thought I would spend a lot of time sleeping on the plane, but between the movies and the 3 meals that were served, I stayed pretty busy! We had two full meals and a big snack. We could choose between Japanese food and American food, and I chose Japanese each time. Some of you know that before you eat in a Japanese restaurant, the waiter or waitress gives you a very hot, wet towel to clean your hands. The flight attendants did this also. I was sitting next to an American military man who was stationed in Guam. Apparently, he didn't know this Japanese custom with the towel. When the flight attendant came around with the towels, I held out my hands to take my towel. The guy next to me saw what I did, and he held out his hands, too. When the flight attendant dropped the hot towel into his hands, he said "Ouch!" very loudly and dropped it. He didn't know that it would be hot!
The 13-hour flight went by surprisingly fast, and I arrived in Tokyo around 2:00 p.m. Then I had to take a short flight to Osaka. On this flight, I got a seat in business class. I still don't understand why I got "bumped up" to business class, but it was fantastic! I fell asleep during the flight, and the flight attendant woke me up to tell me that we were passing by Mt. Fuji. Unfortunately, I was too late to see it!
When I finally arrived in Osaka around 7:00 p.m., I calculated that it had been more than 24 hours since I left Conway! I was really tired! My friend Mami, who was my student at Boston University in 1989, met me at the airport with her mother. I was so happy to see a familiar face. They took me to a very nice restaurant that served crab. All my Japanese students have told me that this restaurant is very famous in Japan. The food was delicious! It was served in the "kaiseki" style, which means that many small dishes are brought to the table one by one. I was able to sample a lot of different types of Japanese food, and I liked everything!
Even though I was so tired, I was fascinated by the first sights and sounds of Japan. One of the first things I noticed was that the streets were narrow and most cars were very small. I was also surprised at the Osaka airport when I encountered a style of toilet that I had never seen before! It was not a "sit-down" toilet but rather was on the floor. To use it, a person has to squat down instead of sit. I had seen a "squat" toilet before in Niger and also in France, but this one was a little different, and I was not sure which way to face!
I spent the night at Mami's parents' house in Suita, Osaka. Even though I was exhausted, I found that I had trouble falling asleep. I'm not sure if it was jet lag or just excitement about being in a new country!
Oh, I forgot to mention something that was very important and annoying throughout my whole trip: MY BAG. I took a lot of gifts to people in Japan, including 4 huge picture books about Arkansas for the high school principals that I visited. So I had to take a large suitcase, and it was very very heavy because of those big books. Luckily, my bag had wheels; only Arnold Schwarzenegger would have been strong enough to actually carry it! It was still very heavy even to roll it. This bag caused a problem throughout the whole trip. Some train stations in Japan have escalators, but many of them don't, so I had to bump the bag down stairs many times. If you visit another country and have to take gifts to people, I recommend buying the smallest, lightest gifts that you can find!
On Wednesday morning, Mami and I went to downtown Osaka. We stored my bag in a locker at the train station and went to Hankyu Department Store, which was a very nice store that I would compare to Dillard's or Neiman-Marcus in the United States. We met my friend Yoko Ikeda for lunch at a restaurant on the 8th floor of the store. Yoko and I were classmates in the TESOL (Teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages) program at Boston University. It had been more than 10 years since I last saw Yoko!
We had another "kaiseki" meal, and it was delicious again! It was really interesting for me to try so many small things to eat. I kept saying "What's this? What's this?"
I used chopsticks the whole time I was in Japan even though my hosts always asked if I wanted a fork. (When I go to another country, I like to try to follow the customs there. You know, "When in Rome, do as the Romans do." I think this is the best way to learn about another culture, and it's also polite to the hosts.) I noticed that I was always the last person to finish eating because I was so slow with my chopsticks. Also, in Japanese restaurants, you do not usually get a napkin to put in your lap. Remember the hot towel that I mentioned before? You keep this towel throughout your meal, but since it was wet, I didn't want to put it in my lap. I tried to be very careful not to drop food into my lap, and that also slowed me down while I was eating!
I was fascinated by the beautiful dishes I saw in Japan. I really wanted to buy lots of ceramic plates, bowls, and cups, but I knew that they would be heavy in my suitcase and also might get broken. Remember my heavy bag? I really didn't want it to be so heavy on the way home!
After our lunch, Mami had to go to her job, so Yoko took me to her house, which is near the Osaka International School. She showed me the school, where her children are students, and we also had coffee and dessert with her husband. Yoko's husband is American and speaks Japanese fluently. They have two children--Eriko and Wataru. I met Eriko when she came home from school, but Wataru was on a school field trip and was not home. It was really wonderful to see these two old friends, Yoko and Mami, from my graduate school days!
Yoko took me to the bullet train station, and I boarded a train for Kyoto. It normally takes more than an hour to drive from Osaka to Kyoto, but the bullet train trip only took 15 minutes! Amazing! Yukiko Hayata, a UCA graduate who was an IEP student many years ago, met me at the train station. Yoko had called her by cell phone to tell her which train I would be on, and Yoko also warned Yuki about my huge bag. So Yuki was prepared! She found a place where I could leave the bag in the train station, and then she and I went out to explore. We visited a Buddhist temple near the station and then took a bus to Gion, the geisha district that I had read about in the excellent book "Memoirs of a Geisha."
For those of you who don't know, a geisha is a professional woman who has been trained from the time she is a small child in the arts of conversation, dancing, and singing so that she can entertain men. For the pleasure of her company, the men give her tips, and this is how she makes her living. Some people think that a geisha is a prostitute, but that idea is not correct.
I was amazed by all the small restaurants, bars, and tea shops in Gion. Yuki showed me the names of geisha written in beautiful Japanese calligraphy on small blocks of wood over the doors of the shops. These small signs mean that a particular geisha visits the shop regularly, so a man who enjoys her company knows to visit that shop.
I wanted to buy a traditional wooden hair comb for Mrs. Bowles, so Yuki and I stopped in a few souvenir shops. Here I got my first shock of the trip: the prices! I had a hard time translating Japanese yen into dollars (you know, I am not good at math!!), but when I figured out how much the colorful laquer-covered combs cost, I almost fainted. Mrs. Bowles is a good friend of mine, but there is a limit . . . (just kidding). I was able to find a smaller comb that was not laquered, so I bought that instead, and I think it was just as nice as the colorful ones.
Yuki and I went back to the train station and ate dinner. I had cold udon noodles with a very delicious dipping sauce, and she had curried udon noodles. It was wonderful to see her--it had been several years since she graduated from UCA. She will be coming back to UCA this fall for graduate school in music!
We took a train to her parents' house. On the way, she called her parents on her cell phone, and, you guessed it, warned them about my bag and asked them to meet us at the station. Her father rolled my bag all the way to their house, through a maze of little streets. I was tired again from a long day of going from place to place, but I enjoyed talking with her parents (Yuki was the translator!) and playing with her cat, Nana. I started missing my cats!
I spent the night at Yuki's house and again had trouble sleeping! I woke up at 5:00 a.m. and could not go back to sleep for a long time. At this point I understood that I was feeling jet lag.
On Thursday morning, Yuki's mother called a taxi for us. What a considerate mom Yuki has! She knew that we would both be totally exhausted if we had to drag that heavy bag back to the train stop. The taxi took us to the train station, where we took a bus to the Osaka airport. I don't want to forget to mention the taxis: They were so clean and neat compared to American taxis! If you see a taxi in an American city, you notice that it has been in many small (and sometimes not-so-small) accidents, but the Japanese taxis are unblemished! Throughout my trip, I noticed that Japanese drivers are very careful and polite to each other, unlike American drivers! No road rage in Japan!
At the airport, Yuki and I walked around and looked at souvenirs, and we had sushi for lunch. Delicious yet again! Soon it was time for me to get on the plane and travel back to Tokyo to start the "business" part of my trip.
Wow! I can't believe I have written so much, and I've only talked about my first two days in Japan. I have a lot more to say, but I'll save it for my next installment. Sayonara!
Lynn Ramage Schaefer, Interim Coordinator
Intensive English Program
Department of World Languages, Literatures, & Cultures
Irby Hall #207J
University of Central Arkansas
Conway, AR 72035
tel: (501) 450-3671
fax: (501) 450-5185
LYNNR@mail.uca.edu