2009 Japan Trip Table of Contents

Feb. 14-15: And We're Off!
Feb. 16: To Mt. Koya-san
Feb. 17: Mt. Koyasan Area, Umeda, and Namba
Feb. 18: Kyoto and Teramachi
Feb. 19: Nagasaki and Kwassui University
Feb. 20: Kwassui High School
Feb. 21: Nagasaki with Kwassui Homestay Families and Return to Osaka
Feb. 22: Home again!

Feb. 22: Home again!

One last early morning and trip to the konbini, where we picked up some breakfast and lunch items:

Then we were on our way to the airport that we thought would put us on our flight back home.  However, as one of our students put it, "We were done with Japan, but Japan was not done with us!"

When we reached the Nagoya airport and tried to check into our flight from Nagoya to Tokyo, we were told that it was six hours delayed, and we would never make the Tokyo to San Francisco connection.  Thinking fast, Hurley Sensei calculated that we could make the Tokyo flight, just maybe, if we quickly caught a series of trains taking us from Nagoya to Tokyo instead.

Thus at 10:00 AM we began our long series of train connections, sometimes making it with only a few minutes to spare.  The highlight was a spectacular view of Mt. Fuji on the Nagoya Station to Tokyo JR train:

At 2:45 PM, we arrived at the Tokyo airport, ran up the stairs and asked to check into our flight, which was scheduled to leave at 3:30 PM.  The airport staff was so kind and efficient that we were able to check in our bags in just a few minutes; and good luck must have been with us, because there were no lines at security or at immigration.  When we ran onto the plane, everyone was already seated and ready go to; as soon as we sat down, the door closed.

Hurray!  Hurley Sensei was very proud of the group for focusing and making that fast, difficult 5-hour train ride with the multiple tight connections.  We were so happy to be on our original flight and not waiting in the Tokyo airport.

So, happy and tired, we made it home.

Feb. 21: Nagasaki with Kwassui Homestay Families and Return to Osaka

The morning and midday of February 21 we spent with our homestay families touring around Nagasaki.  Some of us visited the Nagasaki Atomic Bomb Museum, which described the horrible effects of the atomic bomb and pleaded for future generations to prevent this from ever occurring again.  Others spent time at the Nagasaki Heritage Museum, which featured buildings and actors in period dress, as well as an exhibit on Egypt.  Still others visited Glover Gardens, an estate from the 1800's built by a wealthy Englishman.  A few went shopping ... again!

We met back up again at the Nagasaki train station around 3:45, and said a tearful goodbye to our homestay families.  Although students had only spent two days with them, they were very grateful for their homestay families' kindness and already missed them.

Back on the train to Osaka, we wrote in our journals and hung out with our friends.  Then one of the students had an idea ... wouldn't it be fun to go to Mos Burger, the best teriyaki burgers in Japan, on our last night?  The only problem was that we got back to Osaka at 10:10 PM, and the youth hostel said our curfew was 11:00 PM, only 50 minutes later.  Hurley Sensei said that the walk to Mos Burger would be 20 minutes long, and 20 minutes back, leaving us with only 10 minutes to order our burgers!

Thus began one of the fastest walks of our lives.  We made it to Mos Burger in 10 minutes, unfortunately took a long time to order, rushed back to the youth hostel, and made it by 10:58 PM.  Yatta!

Feb. 20: Kwassui High School

After spending the night at the homestays, the Wilcox students made their way to Kwassui High School to experience a normal Japanese high school day.  Arriving at 8:00 AM, we took off our shoes and slipped on the plastic slippers that we encountered everywhere in Japan.  Then we headed towards chapel, the first event of the day.

Chapel was short -- three hymns and a prayer or two -- and halfway through the speaker introduced our group to the school.  As the chapel full of young Japanese high school girls giggled at us, we bowed, and then sat down and finished the service.  When the Kwassui students filed out of the chapel, we moved to the front, where Hirao Sensei had set up a large projector screen and projector.  We watched a cheerful video depicting the various components of a Kwassui High School education: English classes as well as the usual math, social studies, science, and literature; sports; dancing; camping; music; study abroad.  It was impressive.  Then we were off to classes.

The first class was English with Hirao Sensei, where we played some icebreaker games that had us laughing with his class in seconds.  In one game, we all sat together in a circle, with one person standing in the middle.  This person would say, "People who ..." and would add a qualifier, like "People who ate rice with breakfast" or "People who like chocolate."  Then everyone with that characteristic would have to switch seats, and because the circle was one seat too short, someone new would end up standing.



In another game, one student would read a sentence to the other students, who would look at the array of cards in the middle of the circle and try to find the card with the hiragana letter that starts the sentence.  Our Wilcox students and the Kwassui students were all diving across the circle in attempts to reach the right card.

Next was math class, where we followed a geometry lesson about the angles in triangles inscribed in circles.  Although the lesson was given in Japanese, one of our Wilcox students was able to solve one of the sample problems that the math teacher wrote on the board.

Then lunch, where we joined a huge crowd of Kwassui students eating curry with rice, udon, or hamburger meals.  Following lunch we were off to social studies class, a lecture on economics with a quick-talking teacher who managed to explain the demand-supply curves, the Meiji era, the effects of media, and the Wealth of Nations all in one lecture.  When he stopped once to ask students to solve a problem, three of our Wilcox students stood up to answer it -- two incorrectly before the third wrote the correct answer and bowed to the lecture hall with a flourish.

A third-year junior high school English class followed, with the youngest students we had met thus far.  We made origami again, this time with more complex patterns, and practiced speaking Japanese and English in conversation.

Finally our day was over.  You can read Kwassui High School's PDF report about our fantastic day here.  

We returned to Hirao Sensei's classroom to meet up with our homestay families, many of whom were in the same high school class that we had followed throughout the day.  Going home with our homestay families, we spent the afternoon with them, ate dinner together, and again spent the night at their houses.

Feb. 19: Nagasaki and Kwassui University

Finally a day of relative restfulness after our sightseeing in Osaka and Kyoto.  We woke early enough for a long train ride from Osaka to Hakata, again enjoying "konbini" convenience store onigiri (rice balls) along the way.

At Hakata, we found an udon stall that would sell us steaming bowls of udon on the cold platform -- we bought tickets from the vending machine next to the stand, handed the tickets to the women working in it, and they handed us a bowl of udon noodles in hot soup.  Since there were no seats, we ate next to the Japanese salarymen, standing at the counter around the stall.

After another long train ride from Hakata to Nagasaki, we arrived around 2:00 PM.  At the station was Sergio Mazzarelli, an English instructor at Kwassui University.  Hurley Sensei and Dr. Mazzarelli had run an online video and messaging exchange program, in which these Wilcox students and the Kwassui University students described aspects of their hometown or Santa Clara culture.  You can see Dr. Mazzarelli's webpage for this project here.  After this exchange, we were excited to meet our online foreign exchange friends in person.

By this time rain was falling through the cold Nagasaki air, so we brought out our umbrellas and sprinted from the train station to the Kwassui University bus waiting a block or so away.

The trip up to Kwassui University showed Nagasaki to be another Japanese modern, vibrant city.  Kwassui was founded 130 years ago by an American Protestant woman who wanted to provide Japanese women with an opportunity to receive an education.  Thus, the school looks similar to a university that might be on the east coast of the United States -- lovely, decorated cream-colored exterior walls with lots of old trees around it.  The students were all fashionable young Japanese women, who turned to look at this big group of American kids as we hung out in their common room.

Dr. Mazzarelli took us on a tour around the Kwassui University campus, a beautiful place with the highlight a lovely wooden chapel with an organ from Europe and an elegant, dark-wood lecturn carved by students a hundred years ago.

Our tour ended in Dr. Mazzarelli's classroom, where his college-level English students had set out some hospitable refreshments and were playing soft, lively pop music from a small stereo.

We spent some time speaking with these students, whose English was quite good, talking about the Nagasaki area and getting recommendations for restaurants and site-seeing locations.



You can view Kwassui University's news page about our meeting here.  Around 6:00, we said goodbye to our new friends and headed across town to Kwassui High School, where we would meet our homestay families.  When we arrived, Hirao Sensei, the Kwassui High School teacher managing the homestays on the Japanese side, called out lists of paired names.  With some squeals of delight, the students excitedly introduced themselves to their homestay families, and headed off for the evening.

Feb. 18: Kyoto and Teramachi

Another day of early rising again saw us rushing to the train station to catch a JR line to Kyoto.  We stopped in the Kyoto train station to admire the arching architecture and the endless flights of escalators which ran all the way to the top.

Our first stop was Sanjusan Gendo, an old wooden temple housing a thousand statues of bodhisatva, or beings who had nearly reached enlightenment but who chose to remain just short of it in order to teach their fellow beings.  These bodhisatva were carved from wood and painted in gold, and although they seemed identical, closer inspection revealed that each one had an individual face and drape of clothing.  The central bodhisatva was Kannon, and the thousand golden statues stood alongside several large, dark wooden statues of characters in Hindu-Japanese mythology, such as the gods of thunder and the wind.

Sanjusan Gendo temple is also the site of the national archery contests, and Hurley Sensei described how archers would shoot down the length of the building, the arrows arching beneath the eaves of the temple porches to hit the target on the far side.  One archery event was seeing how many hits an archer could achieve in the space of 24 hours, and the reigning champion of this event, an unknown commoner in the sixteenth century, shot a total of 13,000 arrows in that amount of time (8,000 of which hit the target).

After buying some trinkets and fortunes at the Sanjusan Gendo temple gift shop, we headed for Kiyomizudera, the "Pure Water" temple in Kyoto.  The temple sits on the top of a large hill, on which sits many traditional wooden Japanese-style buildings; we passed these small, busy, beautiful buildings with delight and headed towards the temple.

Kiyomizudera is actually several buildings large with pathways connecting them together.  In the first building, we gawked at the fashionable Japanese young people with their super-hip J-Pop outfits and hair, standing around a giant bowl of incense.

Then we noticed that other Japanese young women were in full kimono dress, beautiful vibrantly colored floral prints with their hair elegantly styled, walking on the traditional Japanese wooden tori.  Mrs. Shiokawa, a friend of Hurley Sensei's who accompanied us on our tour of Kyoto, explained that Kyoto is a kimono fabric manufacturing district, and young women can rent kimono to feel lovely and advertise wares.

In the Buddhist temple was also a Shinto shrine, which Hurley Sensei said is fairly common.  This shrine was dedicated to love, so many young people -- including our students -- entered enthusiastically.

Stands lining the walkways sold charms to bring good luck in finding love or strengthening a relationship.  One of our students bowed and shook a long red banner to ring a golden bell in front of a shrine to bring luck in love.  Other students walked, eyes closed, from one "love rock" to the other, with some help and directions from their friends.  When they managed to reach the other rock, the crowd of people around them clapped.

Sitting near the temple's central attraction, a structure where the "pure waters" spouted from the mountain over the roof of the structure and into a pond.  We ate steaming bowls of udon with sweet fried tofu and watched as the Japanese people collected this water in cups, washed their fingertips, and drank a sip to bring the granting of a wish.

Leaving the temple, we walked through the curving streets of old Kyoto, through the old-style Japanese buildings.  Busy shops lined the streets selling ice cream, crepes, mochi, or souveniers.

Reaching the bottom of the hill was like walking out of a time warp: the old fashioned wooden buildings again became a modern Japanese city bus stop.  Worried about spending too much money, we decided to forego bus fare and instead walk to the manga museum, our next stop.  About three miles of brisk walking and sightseeing through Kyoto's modern streets brought us panting and tired to the steps of the manga museum, but we were disappointed to see that it was closed on Wednesdays.  We hopped on a subway and headed for Teramachi, the shopping district.

One of the students pointed out that all of the streets in Teramachi were labeled "Shopping Street," and we were not disappointed.  Wide pedestrian walkways were crowded on both sides with shops and cafe's selling everything and anything.  Hurley Sensei gave us a few hours to walk around, so we set off in different directions.  Some of us sat in a coffee or donut shop, resting after our long, brisk walk through Kyoto.  Some of us headed for karaoke singing and were thrilled to find musical theater selections.  Others of us shopped for clothing yet again.

Once again tired from our adventures, we met at our appointed place and time and headed from Teramachi back to the Kyoto station.  We spent some time eating and exploring the architecture once more, then hopped on a train back to the Shin-Osaka Youth Hostel.  Once again exhausted, we all quickly fell asleep.

Feb. 17: Mt. Koyasan Area, Umeda, and Namba

We awoke early the next morning in order to attend the chanting ceremony of the monks.  Rushing to wash our faces in the freezing morning, we stopped short when we reached the outer corridors and found snow on the ground.  The temperature had dropped overnight to below freezing, so we were all grateful that we had packed our long underwear and scarves.

The monks chanted in a small, dimly lit room with crimson walls; tall, ornate lanterns; and huge figures of Buddhist saints painted on the walls.  We sat on the floor in front of the raised dais where the monks sat, breathing in the heavy incense in the air and shivering a bit from the cold.  The ceremony was amazing -- the monks chanted for about 45 minutes without stop, and most of them did not have any books or references beyond their own memory.  At one point in the chanting, the one native Japanese man watching the ceremony knelt before the pot of incense burning in front of the dais, bowed, added a pinch of incense to the pot, and bowed again.  He then motioned for one of our students to follow his lead.  Proudly we watched as our Wilcox student followed his lead, and eventually almost every student participated in the ceremony.

Upon leaving the ceremonial room, we were greeted with one of the most beautiful sights on the trip: a courtyard where the trees, sand patterns, rock sculptures, and rooftops were covered with snow.  The sun had risen while we were in the ceremonial room, so the new light reflected brightly off of the flakes of white falling softly from the sky.

We ate a quick breakfast again on two rows of trays in the eating hall, packed our bags, and said good-bye to our gracious host.  Then we were off to explore the town on top of Koyasan.  Our first stop was a square with several old wooden Japanese temples.  Our students splashed the cold temple water on their fingers in a ritual cleansing -- water so cold that it hung in icicles on the cup utensils.

Then we visited the largest temple, a huge orange structure.  A television camera met us at this temple, taping our rounds of the sites and occasionally asking our students to say a few words in Japanese, which they accomplished admirably well.  We entered the huge orange temple, looked around at the large statues of Buddha, and then rubbed spices on our hands as we left.

Our next stop was a tour of the cemetery at Koya, the largest in Japan with an estimated 200,000-500,000 graves.  This is a sacred site because it is nearby the cave where Kobo Daishi is said to be still sitting in a cave in meditation, praying for the world.  We spent a long time meandering through these graves, seeing such dignitaries as Toyotomi Hideoshi and Oda Nobunaga, two major figures in the civil war period before the Tokugawa shogunate.

We saw a well about which our tour guide said, "If you look in this well and do not see your face, you will die within three years;" luckily we could all see our faces.

We also saw a wishing-box: a large, sturdy wooden box with a hole big enough for one arm to enter.  In the box was a higher platform, a lower platform, and a large rock; if you could lift the rock with one hand from the lower platform to the higher one, your wish would come true (one of our young ladies was able to lift the rock, much to the chagrin of the rest of the group who was not able to lift it).

Finally we reached the shrine at the gates of the pathway leading to the cave in which Kobo Daishi sits.  We stopped for a few moments in contemplation, then started back the long walk to the cemetery entrance.  As we were walking back, snow began falling again, drifting onto our jackets and hair.

Coming out of the cold snow and long walk of the cemetery, we found a nearby ramen noodle shop, a real godsend out of the damp cold.  These noodles were probably the best we had ever tasted right after walking through the icy cemetery paths.  After warming up for a bit, we again hopped on a series of trains that took us back to Osaka.

After a little time settling down in our beautiful, clean youth hostel rooms, we again headed out for Umeda.  The main attraction at Umeda was a giant shopping mall with a huge red Ferris wheel at the top of the building.

Some of us spent some time quietly taking in the sights of busy, crowded, neon Umeda from this great height.



Others immediately began shopping in the six stories of stores.  A third group headed out towards the huge Pokemon store nearby.  When we met again a couple of hours later, everyone was happy, especially the Pokemon group, who arrived carrying huge bags of Pokemon plush toys.

Then we were off to Namba, another part of Osaka crowded with neon letters and brightly lit signs.

Although we were given free time to choose our dinner, most of us followed Will and Hurley Sensei to eat okonomiyaki, a kind of Japanese pizza made of a fried noodle pattie with delicious toppings on a hot plate.

Happy and full, we returned to the hostel and went to sleep.

Feb. 16: To Mt. Koya-san

Hurley Sensei was right -- the time shift woke us all up early, and by 5:30AM we were pretty much awake, showered, and ready for the day.  Some students went to the convenience store right on the corner nearby our hotel, and picked up some food for the day.  The great thing about convenience stores is that they all have great foods and interesting drinks, like sweet milk tea in cartons or neatly wrapped balls of rice onigiri.  Since everything is cheap and easy to pack, we all bought items for lunch or for snacks during the day.

At five to 6 everyone was impressively assembled, and at 6:00AM we headed towards the train station.  The train stations in Japan are clean and comfortable, with the added benefit of heated seats to warm you throughout your trip.

The first leg of our train trip took us from Nagoya station to Osaka station, where we briefly hopped out to drag our heavy bags to the Shin-Osaka Youth Hostel.  Depositing our suitcases all in one large room, we came back to the Osaka station and again boarded a train headed for Koya.  Leaving Osaka, the buildings started urban but eventually became more and more rural.

Eventually large patches of green farmland appeared, and when we began seeing mountainous forests, we knew we were near Koya.

Following the train to Koya, we had to take a cable car up the mountain to get to the temple community on the top.  This cable car was bright red, but sits horizontal along the incline of the mountain.  To access the seats, you have to climb stairs within the cable car, and a couple of seats appear to the sides of every few steps.

As the car began the climb up the mountain, we could see forests of beautiful trees with straight parallel trunks and a waterfall meandering through these woods.  At the top was a small station where we boarded the Wakayama Tourist Industry bus to take us to our friends at the Mt. Koya High School.  We squeezed in, and Mr. Hurley rushed to put on a tie before we got there.

Mt. Koya high school is one large white building with several floors, and contains about 200 high schoolers.  Upon arriving we were greeted by the principal and head priest of the school dressed in a traditional priest's kimono, as well as a student delegation in the navy blue school uniform and a gentleman in a suit.  They first asked us to remove our shoes and wear plastic house slippers:

then led us to a beautiful main assembly room with tatami mats and a bright red carpet for us to sit on.  The welcoming committee gave a few short speeches, then the head priest / headmaster gave a long explanation about Kobo Daishi, the founder, and the history of the school.  Then he led us in a session of meditation practice.  He asked us to put our legs in a half-lotus position, with one foot on the opposite thigh, and put our hands on top and close our eyes.  A few students (and chaperones, I have to admit) felt sleepy as we sat quietly with our eyes closed for half an hour, and all of our legs were aching by the end of the meditation exercise.

Following this opening ceremony, we all went to lunch, then off to some of the classrooms to meet with students.  Mt. Koya High School is special because half of its students are studying for priesthood, to work in the Buddhist temple community located at this unique place.  The first activity with the Mt. Koya High School students was a presentation of Kobo Daishi's life, how he travelled to China and brought back Esoteric Buddhism to Japan and specifically to Koyasan.

The next activity was calligraphy.  Our Wilcox students practiced their kanji with the Mt. Koya students, sitting one Wilcox student and one Mt. Koya student per desk.  We even got to take home small cards with our perfected kanji creation on it!

Finally, we played sports with our new friends.  Several of our students decided to play basketball, several played volleyball, and one group taught the Koya students how to play Zoomie, a game Hurley Sensei taught us.

At the end of the day, we just sat in a classroom and hung out with our newest friends.  We started off folding origami cranes, but eventually began talking about other things.  One of the Wilcox students performed magic tricks with cards for the Mt. Koya students -- suteki!

Bidding our new friends goodbye, we piled into the bus.  One of the Mt. Koya students had fallen in love with one of our Wilcox students within the space of our one day trip, and shouted her name from outside our bus as we drove away.

At the end of our day and tired from our adventures, we approached Renge Join, the temple at which we were staying.  The head priest at the temple was also the principal of Mt. Koya High School, so we were happy to see his familiar face again.

As we sat down to eat dinner, traditional-style on trays in two long rows, the head monk's mother came and explained her experiences living in this Koyasan community.  Because she had lived in Koyasan all her 88 years, she had a long and interesting story indeed!  She made our delicious vegetarian dinner even more wonderful.

Finally off to bed.  Our rooms were traditional Japanese style, with tatami mats on the floor and thin futons to sleep on.  The baths were also traditional, which was a bit strange at first because this meant group showers.  When we discovered that traditional baths also included an onsen, a big pool of hot water to relax and chat in, everything was just fine.  The best part of these rooms were kotatsu, heavy wooden tables with heaters underneath and a comforter coming out the sides.  In the coldness of this Mt. Koya temple, we snuggled under the comforter with our friends, warming our legs and feet beneath the kotatsu before going off to bed.