And you thought this blog was dead...

Hello my friends, family, and folks of the internet. Once again, こんにちは! I am returning to Japan after two and a half years for the summer through a program called Princeton in Ishikawa. (What is Princeton in Ishikawa, or PII for short? Glad you should ask. Kindly follow this link for more information: http://www.princeton.edu/pii/index.xml ) I'll be learning an academic year of Japanese in eight weeks and hopefully making some new friends. Those of you who know me should find it no surprise that I'm trying to go back to Japan, to the extent that I'd agree to suffer school in the summer. The things I do for love of a language/food/culture/country I tell ya...

This is just a small note to remind you that this blog is ALIVEEEE. Expect more posts as soon as the action begins, so put this on your bookmarks page and be prepared to be amazed...

All the best,
Claire

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Homecoming

This is it. It's Friday, February 3rd and in less than 24 hours I will leave this house for Tokyo train station, which will take me to the airport, which will take me...home. Most of this week has been taken up with goodbyes: to schoolmates and teachers, and later, close friends. There were tears involved. I think the photos will do it a lot more justice than I could: Kohei, from tennis group. All the tennis people got together for dinner at an okonomiyaki (think cabbage pancake, with yummy stuff like shrimp in it) but first we went to a boardwalk which had nighttime light shows. Top: Anime Club. They threw a small party for me, where we ate lots of food and watched (what else) anime and talked. Bottom: one of my English classes. They asked me to teach them an American game for the last day, so I taught everyone how to play Heads-Up 7-Up. They were pretty good at it. The other exchange student, Nom, and my Japanese teacher. The last view of school: the walk leading u...

Enoshima: The Heavenly Maiden and the Dragon

This past Monday was a national holiday -- Mountain Day -- so, of course, Troy and I headed to the beach instead. Well, to an island near a beach since (as some of you may know) I'm not exactly the beach-going type. Plus I'd just climbed Mount Fuji, which was more than enough mountain for me. Enoshima is a small island off the coast of Kanagawa Prefecture, fairly near Kamakura. It's connected to the mainland via a bridge, so you can just stroll on over from the train station. The entire island is dedicated to Benzaitan, the goddess of everything that flows -- time, water, speech, music, and knowledge. According to the "Enoshima Engi," (a history of the shrines and temples on Enoshima) there's also a legend associated with the creation of the island involving Benzaitan and a dragon. In brief, the area around Enoshima was once wracked by violent storms and earthquakes. Eventually the tumult ended and a heavenly maiden (Benzaitan) descended from the clouds....

In Praise of American Teachers

SPOILER ALERT: This post is going to be part rant, part commentary and part revelation, so be prepared for a lot of text and some opinions (which may be rather harsh). Since I've had about a week of school I think I'm just about qualified to make comments about the type of education in Japan, and a bit of confusion I have about world education rankings. Let me be rather blunt at first: a dull teacher at an American school is already more intersting than a teacher at a Japanese school. The best examples I have for this is comparing American math and science classes to Japanese math and science classes. Science and math classes that I've always had have been very teacher-student and student-student interactive, with discussions, questioning, and interactions with the material. Japanese math and science classes are completely lecture based, where the teacher either reads directly from the textbook or instructs the students to. Even when the teacher wrote on the chalkboard (y...

Rice and Ramen

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