Following a very busy collection of weeks, a long-awaited week of travel bridged the third and fourth months of the year.

I caught an early flight to Kyushu and a train ride to Karatsu to start.
A friend, Jon, showed Mary and I a lovely time around his part of the world. He's a potter and has developed many relationships with other artists in the area, which has a long history of ceramic wares. He kindly introduced us to some of his favorite studios and the work of some amazing potters (and on the rare occasion, a potter him/herself), amidst showing us the popular historical sights, catching an onsen or two, and hanging out in his countryside village outside of Karatsu.

An old kiln at the Nakazato studio, now on the thirteenth generation of potters in the family.

Personally, visiting these places was a convergence of a couple worlds. I was moving backwards from work and theories I identified with in MN toward the land, the lifestyles, and the teachers that inspired it. Forms and methods were familiar, not only because I've seen where they have been brought and built upon in the United States, but also because they themselves are individuals in a long line of slow and careful development of techniques and ideas, originating hundreds of years ago in Korea.
I could go on. Let me know if you have questions.


I was lucky enough to then spend some time with a friend from college who is working in Akita, an area in the northwest mountains of the island of Honshu (what I often refer to as "mainland"). After a short stop in Tokyo, where the cherry blossoms were blooming in full and the elephants and panda bears of Ueno Zoo were frolicking in the sun, I took a lengthy and enjoyable shinkansen (bullet train) due north. An immediate sense of comfort and familiarity struck me as I entered the hinterlands, as quickly as my eyes caught the lingering patches of snow on the tree covered mountains and the voice of a child sitting behind me rang "YUKI!". Dan has made a lovely home for himself in the small town of Yuzawa and he makes a mean kimchi nabe to boot. Snow-coverd mountains, deep lapping lakes blue and sulfuric above active calderas, streets lined with well-maintained samurai homes, and a unbelievably tasty au gratin sandwich (seriously!) later and there is still much to be said about the few days we wandered together.

A very large, old tree nestled between the homes and businesses of Yuzawa.

You'll have to wait on most of the Akita photos, though. They're stuck, helplessly imprisoned, in my camera.

More photos from my spring break excursion can be found here.
Updated images of my life in Okinawa are at the end of this album.

Having a two-day weekend is very holiday-like these days, let alone an entire week. My time with friends, on trains, in mountains, beside waterfalls, they are vacuum-packed into intense and quick excursions filled with more that one would think time would allow and I treasure them as additionally amazing moments amidst my everyday work as a teacher which is never quite everyday-ish. I can learn things from my students that I could never learn romping across landmasses, and I do...almost every day. Great things come in big and small packages. Fancy and homely. Shiny and dull. It's not always a matter of going out and finding those things that spark excitement, joy, imagination...life. It's a matter of being aware that they're always there. Perhaps not of the dimensions you expected. Maybe not in those conventionally "beautiful" or "convenient" ways. It's highly possible your sparks are all kinds of scuffed-up. But that doesn't mean they aren't waiting for you. With you.

Nine Days. Eight Nights. A bunch of Junior High school students.




What sounds like a recipe for disaster was actually pretty great. It started out with three girls and eight boys. Two lovely and official ESL teachers from the States were flown in to Okinawa for the students' morning classes. Every other moment they were ours (Mary and I were everyone's “camp counselors”). We helped them make breakfast in the morning (pancakes anyone? scrambled eggs with vegetables? FRENCH TOAST?), get off to school on time, and then all afternoon we facilitated outdoor activities (Nature walk? Soccer? Kickball? Icebreaker games? We even kayaked in the mangroves one day!) and after dinner we taught them night games in English (which after much explanation and animation, often ended up having relatively close Japanese equivalents), played cards or board games, or had bon fires (fire safety was a problem, s'mores were beloved by all). And then it was time to help them with homework and get them all tucked into bed for the next early morning. We created a comfortable routine and became a happy ESL camp family. For the last three days, an additional six girls and two boys joined us.



Overall, it was a wonderful change of pace. I had the mornings to read or take walks (sans Naha's concrete, thank goodness) and the rest of the time I played. I had the pleasure to get to know these students personally, answer their questions without being rushed by jam-packed class schedules, and ask them questions that arose as we hung out together. We all came out of it having learned a lot about each other and our languages and cultures, through multiple long days together and small group/one-on-one connections. Genuine communication takes time, persistence, and focus.

As much as the internet provides me a forum for communicating with people around the world, I sincerely hope to see you soon.

About a month ago, back in early/mid-March, we gave ourselves a few weeks to prepare after learning about the upcoming friendship and knowledge exchange. An intensive week and a half preceding the arrival of the visiting Vietnamese students, I worked closely with two small groups of students from my high school gathering and arranging data for a presentation they would eventually combine with information shared by the Vietnamese students and give the presentations, together, in English, to the entire high school. Really long sentence. Gomen. Having little or no experience creating research projects of their own, let alone in English, we had a lot of work to do and each of my students put in a lot of time and effort to be ready for the arrival of the visiting students.

When they came the following four days were a rush, as if a great gale blew in through every window of a house and you had to hold on to the furniture to make sure it didn't fly to the other side of the room. We had no idea what resources the Vietnamese students had back at home, so we were prepared for a whole variety of things, but as they filed into the classroom in their uniforms, after touring the school in traditional dress, the speed of their English, the depth of their research, and comfort with active learning blew both me and my students away. Our major obstacle was removing me as a translator and creating a level of sincere communication between very different types of students.

I must say, over the next few days while we concentrated on getting to know each other, having fun, and finalizing the projects, I was extremely impressed with everyone's work. In addition, both the Japanese and Vietnamese students involved performed beautiful examples of traditional music and dance from each of their cultures, a feat that led me to wondering what I would have done with my high school classmates in the same position.
After hours of running between groups of students, plugging away at connecting the students despite their different levels and backgrounds and constantly correcting and revising everything from organization to layout to pronunciation, watching them present their projects on subjects from Asia's Role in the Modern World to Population Issues was a great grand finale to all of their hard work.



The exchange was not only of cultural ideas and traditions, of semi-prepared projects and time, but of students learning about what it is to be students. There are so many ways to teach, so many different education systems, so many ways to learn. Careful listening, patient problem solving, and articulation of resolutions was the meeting point for everyone—the way to step through differences and into a middle ground of growth. And questions. Questions are the seeds to the water of consideration, the sunlight of patience, and the nutrients of perspective. I am lucky enough to be one who is able to watch them grow.

Plant seeds.