'Tis the Season

Well, as of yesterday school is out for the winter and we won't be back until early January. But before we said goodbye the International Club had a Christmas party. We made some paper snowflakes, ate some junk food, and played some Christmas games...and Scrabble. We hope everyone has a wonderful holiday season and we'll be back in January!

Tavistock Students in Japan!

We were very happy to host 20 students and two teachers from Tavistock College in the Devon area of England. Although they were only with us for three days, we made lasting friendships and enjoyed a truly meaningful cultural exchange.

Last Friday the International Club boarded a bus for Kasai Rinkai Park where we met the Tavistock students for the first time. We played some games to break the ice, visited the park's wonderful aquarium, and ended the day with a scavenger hunt around the park grounds. It was a great first day and really set the tone for the remainder of their time with us.

CCGS Students off to Nagano

Well, after spending about a month with us here in Tokyo our friends from Australia are heading to Nagano for another two months or so. They'll stay with homestay families there and study with students from Ueda Nishi Senior High School in Nagano Prefecture. It's a great school with some really nice students and we're sure they will have a great time up there.

We were sad to see our friends leave but we will always have great memories of our time with Sarah, Inger, Loise, Kate, and Brittany. We hope they will keep in touch and we look forward to seeing them again sometime soon!

Here are some pictures from their time her with us...

ASAKUSA DAY TRIP

KYOTO

FAREWELL PARTY

Take care. We'll miss you!!!

First Pictures from Kyoto!

Four of the students from Australia and two of our students spent three days in Kyoto. You could spend three years in Kyoto and barely scratch the surfice of the history, art, and culture to be found there but they made the most of the time they were there.

They visited several shrines and temples, participated in a tea ceremony, wore Japanese kimono, and watched a traditional arts show in Gion, the cultural heart of the city. Here are some of the pictures. More to come!

CCGS Girs and the Sports Boys

The students from Australia spent a class period with the students from the sports course. They had a great time talking about their home countries, answering questions about themselves, and making friends with the boys. Rumor has it that there may even have been some romance in the air but, alas, the girls are leaving on Friday. Sorry guys!

AUSTRALIAN STUDENTS ARE HERE!

Five friends from our sister school in Australia are visiting us for three weeks. They will come to Kanto Daiichi everyday to get to know our students as well as learn about school life in Japan. While they are here they will stay with a Japanese family and they will also have the opportunity to explore Tokyo as well as Kyoto. We're excited to have them here and we're happy for the chance to make new friends!

Here are some pictures from our first lunch together...

Eric's Corner - Wakayama Vacation Days 2 and 3

The second and third days of my hiking trip were fairly similar; a lot of hiking, a lot of sweating, no one to talk to. But I enjoyed it. Hiking alone for hours at a time is a great way to go if you live in one of the most densely populated cities in the world. Besides the peace and quiet offered by the forest, there’s also the added bonus of going at a pace that’s right for you. As much as I enjoy nature and the great outdoors, I viewed each leg of my trip as a course to be completed as quickly as possible. I didn’t like taking rests and often arrived at my goal an hour to two hours earlier than the estimates on the map. Had I been hiking with someone else I may not have been able to set that pace and a 7 hour hike might have become a 10 hour hike. Ugh.

Anyways, I stayed in a minshuku on day two and enjoyed the same good food and hospitality I had enjoyed the day before. Because I was the only guest I was a bit worried that I would have to talk to the owners all evening or that they would feel obliged to entertain me somehow. It isn’t that I don’t like talking to people (anyone who knows me knows that). But shooting the breeze in a second language requires a lot more concentration and even a casual chat about the weather can end up being pretty taxing depending on the other person’s speed and choice of vocabulary. But my concerns were unfounded. They cooked dinner, made my bed, and left me alone with the TV. Perfect!

The hike on day three pretty much the same although I had way too many run-ins with some type of flying insects that seemed really attracted to my scent. I don’t actually think they were dangerous but they made a loud humming sound and kept flying directly into the side of my face. But besides that the hike was pretty easy and 6 hours later I found myself at Yunomine Onsen and the Hongu Taisha Grand Shrine. The Shrine is considered one of the most spiritual spots in Japan and the entrance is marked by the world’s largest tori shrine gate.




Yunomine Onsen is the oldest onsen bath in Japan, discovered about 1800 years ago, and is the only onsen designated a UNESCO World Heritage site. After checking in to a nearby minshuku I walked over to the famous Tsuboyo bath house, a tiny cabin with a small bath designed to hold no more than two people. For over a thousand years pilgrims along the Kumano Kodo route have made their way to Yunomine onsen and used the same Tsuboyo bath to heal not only their bodies but also their spirits, performing purification rituals in the sacred waters. In fact the healing properties of the bath and the spiritual calm the waters bring are so legendary that the little cabin has even made its way into a kabuki play, bringing the hero of the story back from the brink of death. It was with this powerful and inspiring knowledge that I stepped into the bath and was struck immediately by a single thought, a thought I’m sure has been shared by a millennium’s worth of visitors – “TOO HOT!” The water was almost comically hot and I wondered just how in the hell anyone had ever been able to stand it. Well it turns out that you really should read the instructions before trying these types of things. Had I bothered to read the sign I would have known that a hose pumping cold river-water into the bath was available to my right and that it was strongly recommended that I turn it on for five to ten minutes before entering the bath. Roger that. I followed the instructions, gave it another shot, and found the experience to be every bit as physically and spiritually refreshing as advertized. It was a wonderful way to end a long day of hiking and I felt great and ready to tackle day four.

Or so I thought…

Eric's Corner - My Summer Vacation

The students are writing about their summer break so I thought I would post an account of what I did over the summer...

I had a wonderful summer vacation this year. I took two weeks off and headed down to the Kansai region of Japan, which some readers (hi, Mom) will recognize as the first area of Japan I lived in when I came here 8 years ago. The area is most famous for cities like Kyoto, Osaka, and Kobe, but I was headed to Wakayama, a very beautiful, very rural prefecture made up mainly of farmland and mountains (the name “Wakayama” means something like “Mountain of Peaceful Song”). I had decided to hike along the Kumano Kodo, a series of ancient pilgrimage routes running through Wakayama prefecture as well as parts of Nara and Osaka. I had given myself 13 days to hike 150 kilometers and after two and a half years in Tokyo I was really looking forward to spending two weeks as far away from the big city as I could get. In the end, my hiking trip was shortened to only 6 days for reasons I'll get into in later posts. But regardless of length, it was an amazing experience and I'm already thinking about going back next year!


DAY 1: Seiganto-ji Temple to Koguchi
Distance: 16km hike

My trip began in Kii-Katsuura, home to Seiganto-ji Temple, a beautiful temple situated near the Nachi Waterfall. It really is a lovely area and the view of the temple with the waterfall in the background is pretty inspiring. The trail head to the Kumano Kodo is here and after spending the night in a small minshuku (family owned inn) next to the temple I struck out early in the morning for the first of six days of hiking.


The forest was deserted. In fact during the first six days of my hike I met maybe 10 people. The only real experience I have with hiking is at Mt. Rainier in my home state of Washington and there are ALWAYS other people hiking along the same trail. I’d never gone a full day of hiking without seeing another person and ultimately the lack of other hikers forced me to rethink my route as I didn’t want to be stranded alone in the woods with a broken leg. But for the first day, at least, I welcomed the solitude and spent the day soaking in the clean air, beautiful views and silence afforded by the mountain trail.






I spent the evening in a tiny village (Seriously tiny. The elderly couple who owned the minshuku where I stayed told me there were only about 100 people in the whole town and the average age was in the low 70’s.). I was delighted to find a clean, cool river perfect for swimming and after taking a dip I fell asleep on the warm rocks for a few hours. At dinner, I was served tempura, tuna sashimi, and fresh fish caught in the same river I had been swimming in just hours before. It was just what I needed after a long day of hiking. I really liked this minshuku and the owners were perfect- friendly without being too chatty. They even called ahead to a minshuku in the next town and booked me a room for the next day. Their Japanese was also really easy to understand which came as a relief. I had worried that in such a rural place people would have some pretty thick accents and would use a dialect unique to the region, but it wasn’t a problem. I went to bed the first day with a full belly, looking forward to the next day's hike.