I spent the morning reading 3rd grade science and social studies booklets into a digital recorder. Ask me anything about Thomas Edison or water vapor!

In the early afternoon, went to one of the two Shinto shrines to draw a stone dog. All the rocks scattered around the shrine have worn carvings on them. On the way there, we suddenly noticed that many of the rocks by the side of the road have markings on them as well, either writing or weathered sculpture.

At 3:00, one of the teachers invited us to go to mass. There were about 50 students in their uniforms, and they sang translated hymns which I could hum along with. I had mixed feelings. On the one hand, it was heartwarming to think of virtually the same service being held all around the world. On the other hand, as a non-Catholic, I kept wondering exactly how this culture benefits by orienting towards sin and the suffering Christ on the cross. They're already so careful and polite that there is a huge cultural shadow of suicide and sexual weirdness. No need to add the righteous Christian ones of religious intolerance and black-and-white thinking.

In the evening Yayoi and I fixed dinner on the hot plate in the little closet near our room. Three of the girls came by and said it smelled good. "Thank you," I said, and bowed. "What you make?" asked the boldest. "Our dinner is burdock root, mushrooms, and fish," I said, and showed them each item. "Mmm," they said, wistfully. There was a pause. "What was your dinner?" I asked. "Our dinner was Japanese meat balls," said another girl. "Did you like it?" There was a long pause, and they looked at their shoes. Finally, one of them said, "Yes, we liked it," and they all giggled. THAT is how the Japanese say "Not at all!"


After dinner, we went to the girls' dormitory on the 6th floor to meet with the three girls who signed up to sew bags that look like fish. Twelve of them showed up. Hmmm. We hastily came up with more fabric, and eventually everyone was happily sewing away, maybe singing or chatting with friends, or generally acting like sewing women probably have for the past 20,000 years. 

Afterwards, Yayoi worked on her own fish bag while Camilla and I tried to stuff all our things into a suitcase and make it weigh less than 50 pounds, or 22 kilos. So much of our accumulated booty is either silk kimonos or art books, that there was some trouble packing so that the suitcases' contents didn't rattle.

I taught a math lesson to all 80 kids this morning, on Fibonacci numbers. You add the first two numbers to get the third, and so on, like this: 1, 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 13, 21, 34, 55, 89, and so on. A little difficult to get anyone to say their answer out loud, but hey. Next, I had them draw a spiral. Fibonacci spirals occur in shells, in ears, and pretty much everywhere. Finally, we started dividing each number by the one prior to it. Not so far out in the series, this is the Golden Proportion, which is found in the ratio of your forearm to your forearm and hand, of your middle finger to your pinkie, and so on. But it was time to stop so that was another lesson that I suspect may simply vanish into the "inexplicable but who cares" file for most of the kids. A few of them lit up, though.

Next, calligraphy lesson for 7th and 8th graders. Now that I'm an expert in the subject, the class went really well. I managed to explain the ideas and the kids were enthusiastic about calligraphing a good piece.

After lunch, Session, a good one. Camilla and I started by teaching all 80 of the kids plus 10 teachers to sing "Oh How Lovely is the Evening." It's not only a round but a verrry slow dance. Picture 90 people who can hardly speak English, and who seldom do anything silly, and who are all wearing black uniforms. Okay? Now, picture me telling them to move the plants and the teachers' desks out of the way. I explain that they're going to hold hands and walk in a circle. Blank. Um, okay. I take the hand of one of the students, who is shocked, but gamely follows me to the back of the room and stays where he is put. Eventually, I got the idea across that ten of them should stand there and (horrors) hold hands. Okay. Now, to put 30 of them in a circle around this middle circle, that was not that hard, because the kids who were willing to volunteer for things volunteered. Finally, the remaining 50 kids had to be cajoled out of their seats and forced to take hands. Piece of cake. 

Now, picture me trying to get them to conquer their nervous giggles and sing a song that is new to them in a foreign language. Done. Next, I had them all go to right while singing, "Oh how lovely is the evening, is the evening," and then change directions while singing "When the bells are sweetly ringing, sweetly rining." Finally, at the "Ding dong" part they all stood in place and swung their arms in time. 

That's the setup. Now, with some shouting and arm waving, I got them to do it as a round. The inner circle started, then the next two circles in turn began, and lo! they sounded great and had a grand old time of it. It took actual yelling and grabbing people to get them to stop, after about 20 repeats. They could have danced all night.

The rest of session was about family and community, but quickly drifted off into various sideways exploration such as how Americans shake hands instead of bow, and how the Holocaust made refugees from Europe come to America. One of the students helped Yayoi translate. Three hours of this, and everyone seemed pretty interested even as we encroached upon dinner hour.

Camilla and I went on a lovely walk past the foggy dam, and crickets calling in the bamboo forests, and yam and rice paddies, and persimmon trees orange in the mist, and a generally Oriental experience.

Last night, Yayoi and Matsuname-san did us the enormous favor of going grocery shopping with us and buying a one-burner cooker with skillet. Now we can make our own food, and we do! I made scrambled eggs with onions and mushrooms for breakfast and it was mahhhvelous. Made the mistake of visiting the cafeteria for lunch - overcooked rice with shredded slightly off fish and shredded sweetened egg, along with unflavored potato soup. We made dinner on the cooker - yams and onions with sesame seeds on rice, followed by persimmons and Camembert.  Nice to have solved the stomach ache problem.

This morning I was greeted with, "Excuse me, but the plans have changed." Instead of teaching math, I went on a walk down the bamboo slope to the first persimmon tree and back. All the nice spider-infested weeds that covered the sidewalks when we first arrived have been weed-whacked, apparently by that one guy we see toiling away every morning on our walks.

Camilla spent the day working on her college applications, so I did the crafts lesson for seven elementary school students alone. We started with an ESL lesson, where I gave people different colored yarns and asked them to pass them around. "Please give the yellow yarn to him," I'd say, and there'd be a long pause while everyone tried to figure out "yellow." Then, with a triumphant smile, the yellow yarn would go to its proper home. In the middle, two Japanese teachers showed up to watch, so I was relieved that the lesson went well. We learned "wrap around your hand" and "tie a knot," and then I showed them how to make Ojos de Dios, the Huichol Indian decorations. 

Next, the 9th and 10th graders were to learn calligraphy. I wasn't sure where to go or whether I would be introduced or what, so there was a bit of a pause. Then I was motioned to begin, and had one of those hours that teachers hate. I said "Good morning," and bowed. Everyone said, "Good morning," bowed, and went back to chatting. I talked a little about the italic alphabet, asked people about Italy and alphabets, and got no takers. Okay. I wrote the alphabet on the board and talked about Japanese calligraphy, about art, about .... well, it was clear that I should stop talking and have them start. I showed them that c, a, d, e, and q are related, and asked them to practice. Somehow, the idea of calligraphy as a separate skill had not gotten across to everyone. These kids already know how to write the Roman alphabet, since it is one of the many scripts that the Japanese use in daily writing. So, about ten of the 40 didn't bother, another 10 scribbled single letters, and only about half the students "got it" and actually tried for careful, beautiful letters. Things finally gelled when I showed them "The quick brown fox jumped over the lazy dogs," probably because it was something new. Finally, another teacher arrived and I suggested we divide the class into those who wanted to continue and those who were better off studying other English work. So, that's what we did, and that was good.

After lunch, I had the little ones again. We made tassels for the Ojos de Dios, to much enthusiasm and Julie worship. A nice antidote.

Then we were whisked off by a shy, dapper teacher, whose name and specialty I never learned. He lives on about 15 acres of farmland in a picturesque farmhouse about 5 miles away. His wife is taking classes in fabric arts in Tokyo, and she showed us her cotton charkha, or spinning wheel. You turn the handle with your right hand and spin thread-thin yarn with the other. We discussed sheep wool, mugwort dyes, and weaving for a while. In the meantime, the teacher was walking around with their 6 month old baby. She was remarkable. She'd been sleeping under a bulky duvet in the middle of the floor when we arrived, and simply opened her eyes and watched us. After tea, the teacher picked her up and walked her around, and she just watched. My own babies were far noisier and more active. Could you have a cultural difference at such a young age? 

We went outside to walk around. The farm is on a hill, and so every hundred feet or so there was a terrace and a new little patch of tilled ground. There was a daikon garden, a persimmon orchard, a rice paddy, another mixed persimmon and chestnut orchard, and then up at the top of the land, several unused rice paddies and a fern patch. He said his neighbors give him rice so, since he has a full-time job, he doesn't work those fields. A spring fed the top rice paddy, and there were little channels dug into the clay to feed the water through all the lower fields. The teacher said that there were mountain crabs in the runnel, but we squished through the mud a bit without finding any.

The highlight of the day was the English lesson with the teachers and the top English students, about 20 people in all. The whole school has been studying Ancient Egypt and watched a BBC documentary series on how scientists figured out that the fall of the Old Kingdom was caused by a 200 year drought. Yayoi and I had already transcribed the documentary, and we were going to discuss it. First, everyone watched the series again. Next, I was asked to rephrase the first few paragraphs of the transcription.

Now it got interesting. Instead of focusing on the topic at hand, people felt free to digress, sometimes wildly. I started by saying that I would read from the first column of the first page. Somebody asked what a column is as compared to a paragraph. We must have spent 20 minutes on newspaper columns, rows and columns, architectural columns, and the Japanese word karumu, which sounds like "column" to their ears, and means newspaper column. Somebody asked Camilla if her hair was real, and I pulled it to show that it was firmly attached. We talked about swearing and the difference between God, god, and gosh. We talked about omens and ominous. We talked about toppling governments, bringing them to their knees, and political upheavals. It was just like a dinner table conversation.

Back at school. The first thing we heard this morning was, "Prease excuse me, but the plans have changed." Instead of what we'd worked out the previous week, now we are to give a lesson to the 11th and 12th graders, with the help of two good students, on how to write about the parent conferences in English. Please remember that we were not at the parent conferences. This was a cheery lesson on the part of us four teachers, but our students appeared to be petrified. They all claimed they liked it, though.

We made ourselves available afterwards to help anyone who wanted their English checked, but nobody did.

Camilla spent much of the afternoon asleep, possibly a mild illness, possibly exhaustion from our breakneck pace. In the mean time, I corrected a transcript of a BBC series on why the first Egyptian kingdom fell (climate change/drought). It made me understand once again how difficult English is. The word "the" is such a problem for someone who speaks a language where it is not used. Do you say "the Egypt?" No, but why not? This took THREE HOURS.

Then Yayoi and Matsuname-san took us off to get groceries. The cafeteria food here is pretty much inedible. I was willing to eat it anyway, but really, I don't do well with stomach aches. Camilla is fah moah refahned than I am and simply goes without food rather than eat sludge. Today I had lunch at the cafeteria while she slept. Overcooked noodles in brine, overcooked white rice, and soggy breaded fried fish. That was it. Anyway, we went out for Italian food, then bought an electric burner, a skillet, some eggs and cheese and mushrooms and a bag of rice, yams, onions, and cabbage. I feel better already.

We finished up the evening by learning our schedule for tomorrow. I do a math lesson, followed by, surprise, a crafts lesson, then a calligraphy lesson, then teach a round to the entire group, then teach the Egypt transcript to the teachers in the evening. I'm curious to see if that's what actually happens. It's certainly a hefty schedule!

At morning assembly, I gave a lesson on the wonderful things we can do with the nines times tables. The kids are whizzes at memorizing, so they don't need tricks. From their oohs and ahs it was clear that they'd never seen such arithmetical shenanigans before.


The rest of the day was filled with meetings and English classes. The format of the classes seems to be that the teachers deliver information, the kids think about it and maybe one or two bold ones ask a question. There is a lot of silence. Our lessons don't quite fit the format since we sometimes need translators and are a bit intimidating, but I think the fit is okay.

We both overslept the morning promenade, so I filled in some watercolors of local weeds. Breakfast was a slab of sugared egg, mashed potatoes in heavy brown sauce, and chopped lettuce. This cafeteria is a heavy burden for a hungry traveler to bear.


We had an appointment to meet the founder of the school, Father Takawa, who is 80 and a deeply venerated man. We met in the lobby of the school for instructions. Suzuki-san instructed us how to behave. We should sing out "ohayo gozaimas'" in a loud voice because Fr. Takawa is hard of hearing. We should tell him first that we want to help Yohane School's English program. Later, we should say that we are interested in Japanese culture. We should be very respectful.


Good, we can do that, and in fact would like to. We walked outside, around and up and down, and then back inside. While people were being ushered hither and yon, I bumped into Father Takawa in the hall. He's a very old man in an old fashioned floor-length priest's robe, with six or seven hairs on his leathery pate and a face that radiates peace and wisdom. He beamed, pumped my hand, patted me, and then composed himself into stiff formality for the actual meeting. Everything went as planned, except that Camilla and I hardly spoke. Mr. Suzuki said our lines for us. Probably safest all around.


We rushed back to general assembly, where we taught "This Land is Your Land" using pictures on the chalkboard and little skits with me wandering and rambling, or Camilla seeing endless skyways. I think the words are a little hard for the group, but they are eager students and very happy to sing.


We walked along overgrown sidewalks by the side of the dam. A maintenance crew is tackling it, mowing down to the dirt and a little below. We'd watched a flock of greenish-yellow sparrow-y things in the goldenrod yesterday, but today they are homeless. The slopes are very steep and all the many rivulets and runnels are brown with silt. We wonder about erosion. Why isn't everything full of deeply eroded channels? Is this kind of drastic mowing a new thing to the country? There are tiny blue butterflies, larger yellow ones, normal sized brown ones with frilly edges and black spots. There are leaf hoppers, crickets, a long, fat caterpillar the size of an index finger, and those major spiders.

In the morning, the 60 boys go on a walk around the dam at 5:30, and the 20 girls go at 6:00. We joined them, of course. There's a lot of goldenrod growing on the disturbed soil, but the most wonderful things were spiders which built big webs everywhere. They have brilliant yellow abdomens with black and red markings.


Breakfast was chopped sugared egg, fatty ham, and cold tea served in tea kettles the size and shape of exhibition pumpkins.


Morning assembly was run by the Head Boy. He explained how to fill in a multiplication table, and then there was a timed drill. Can you fill one in in 70 seconds? Most of them could. I read out the answers in English.


Over the next few days, Camilla gave several groups slide shows of pictures of home, explaining things slowly and clearly. The most interesting group was the teachers, who asked penetrating questions and seemed to be willing, nay, eager, to sit for three hours in order to learn more about solar panels, bartering for eggs, and other American exotica.


In the afternoon, I sat in on an English skills evaluation. We three teachers sat on one side of a barrier of desks, and the student, a boy of about 16, came in, bowed, and sat down across from us. He read aloud from a third grade textbook, answered questions, and even chatted. I was impressed with his poise, despite his white knuckles. America, land of individualists, doesn't do this to kids - they're allowed their anonymity. But here, we've seen lots of people put on the spot like that, including ourselves, and asked to deliver speeches or to exhibit their knowledge. You get good at it. Not only that, but people are genuinely interested in listening.


At the teacher's meeting in the evening, Camilla and I were the featured attraction. We were asked to explain: US history, immigration to the US, Catholics vs. Jews in European history, and all points between. 


These teachers seem to orient towards work rather than family. You read about that, but in practice, it doesn't seem as grim as I'd thought it might be, despite the formality of protocols and heirarchy. The relationships between the teachers are deepened by these endless meetings, in which ideas as much as planning are discussed. This is lubricated by the truly hilarious dinners they share. 

Morning assembly is for all 80 of the kids at Yohane, aged 11 through 19. This one was an English lesson. They chant the alphabet: a apple, b bear, and so on, and then get a phonics lesson from an American textbook. Lots of writing, lots of time to think, not that much actual English, all instructions in Japanese. Much later, I suggested that the instructions could be in English. "That's the way we do it here." Okay, then.


During study hall today, the kid next to me was falling asleep over his English. I shocked him into alertness by offering to read aloud to him, and I like to imagine that it was helpful. Another kid asked me to proofread an English essay, which was not bad at all. Finally, I tried to work out how to use the tools and materials at hand to prepare for a card weaving lesson. Three younger boys helped. Only one could understand any English, but they muttered amongst themselves and dared to repeat my words, and it was quite satisfying all around.


In the afternoon, we had an appointment to meet with the vice-principal, Suzuki-san, who gave a detailed and well-constructed lecture to Camilla and me on the school's history. Basically, a Catholic priest visited France and the US and wanted to start a school which would prepare students for a global economy. Later, he decided to embed an experimental school into the larger school, and recruited a gifted teacher with a Japan-wide reputation to be the principal, Yokose-san. Yokose-san recruited a staff, not from trained teachers but from people who were successful in other fields. Wow.


Suzuki-san is an animated and kindly man, so by the end of his talk, six or seven students had gathered around us to listen. The conversation rambled, and Camilla and I ended up giving a talk on Washington State history, not something that either of us feels qualified to do, but I think it's inconceivable to a Japanese that one wouldn't know one's local history. So we tried.


In a way that I've come to see is typical, all the plans now changed. No longer would the English lesson for the school focus on ancient Egypt. Instead, Camilla and I would talk about our home and about Washington State history. Okay, then.


word of the day: konnichiwa - good day

Yohane, or St. John's School, is an experimental school inside Gyosei International School. Students still wear the uniform - an antique French naval officer's coat for the boys and standard Catholic girl's grey skirt and blazer for the girls -  but their schedule emphasizes self-directed learning. It's extremely unusual in Japan, but sounds very familiar to us homeschooling Americans.

Breakfast was chopped lettuce and chopped sugared scrambled eggs. After last night's feast, it was funny to have cafeteria steam table food. Afterwards, we met to be briefed on the opening ceremonies. "Please sing a song," we were asked. Yikes! 

At the morning assembly, Camilla and I were stood up on a dais, handed microphones, and asked to introduce ourselves. The students were attentive and sang us two lovely songs, in parts. We sang "Ego Sum Pauper," an old Latin round. Speechifying, clapping, more speechifying, clapping, bowing. At the end, Mr. Oyster bounded onto the dais and yelled, OHAYO GOZAIMASU! and gave a gym-teacher delivery of the morning news, and the plan for the day. When he was done, he called for ... I don't know what, but everyone adjusted themselves into calm, and when they were all quiet and composed, he barked a command, they all bowed deeply, and that was that.


The main classroom is ringed by bookcases, and has desks for all 80 of the kids, arranged in work stations. Some kids chatted, others slept, but most seemed to be working on individual projects. They each are responsible for a potted tree, so the place, which would be a bit grim looking without them, has a quite comfy feeling.

Yayoi took us on a walk around the hill that the school is on. It was a gray day, the vegetation around us is getting ready for fall, and a few tiny blue butterflies flitted around. We could hear crickets. The plants seem tropical, though some winters have a little snow. A pharmaceutical company has a factory near the dam at the base of the hill, but other ambitions to erect an "academic park" didn't materialize. The dam is fed by cement channels and vigorous roadside runnels. Small farms have traditional farmhouses with blue or black curved ceramic roof tiles. There are tiny rice paddies tucked between the road and the hill in odd shaped fields, and enormous kitchen gardens with yams, soybeans, and kales and mustards. Orchards are tightly packed with semi-dwarf trees of all sorts, mostly persimmons, Seville oranges, and chestnuts. 

As we walked, birdsong made the place sound like a zoo; melodious trills mixed with prehistoric cackles. Little bamboo forests had a different ecosystem, with a characteristic birdsong coming from near the tops of the bamboo.

We stopped at a house which Yayoi thought might sell bread, but it didn't. Instead there was an open workshop with tschotsches like letter holders and birdhouses. A short old woman with an intricately wrinkled face appeared and gave detailed information which went right over my head.


Next, we found a cemetery. There was a poignant row of stones from the 1700's when there was a cold season and the crops failed. Someone had left a row of beer cans on a newer grave. Wooden prayer sticks, calligraphed by monks for the dead, were arrayed behind some of the newer graves.


A series of three tori, or wooden gates, led up a winding path to a shrine in a bamboo grove. Cut paper hangs in the rice ropes through which the kami can enter. The deep shade, the melodious but unfamiliar birdsong, and the simple wooden shrine gave it a feeling of depth and mystery.


Back at school, we were featured at a nervewracking meeting, where we Camilla and I were shown to a desk facing a semicircle of 15 chairs on which 15 black-suited teachers sat, staring expectantly at us. After an endless wait, the meeting host entered with xeroxed sheets which I'm pretty sure explained who we were and what we could offer. We gave little self-aggrandizing speeches, and then the tension broke. Each of the teachers introduced themselves, and it turns out they all have a sense of humor and all are willing to try being creative in a foreign language. Now we are introduced.


In the evening we were invited to a traditional Japanese restaurant by the younger teachers. We sat at a thick slab of wood with our feet underneath, and ate from an endless stream of dishes, mostly fish. The conversation was friendly and very funny. These guys know how to enjoy themselves!