Saturday evening, October 7, 2006 830 p.m.

Komban wa!

I need to catch up on all the events here.
We really did get hit here by lots of strong winds and torrential rain from the typhoon. Yesterday, Friday, it rained all day. Of course, when the day’s meetings were over, we all just went out into the rain with hats, coats and umbrellas. We were all pretty well soaked in just a few minutes. It was a wild weather day.

But let me begin with the beginning of the day. Friday morning I got up about 4:30 a.m. to go to the fish market. It is where the fish are brought in every morning and auctioned to restaurants, stores, canneries, etc. I saw the tuna auction. The fish are beheaded, gutted and flash frozen on the boats; they’re brought into the warehouse and laid out on the floor. The buyers walk around them, touch them, look at a slice of each fish to check the quality and sometimes even taste them, Then the bidding begins. It’s fast and sometimes wild.
Surrounding the warehouse are rows and rows of stalls filled with fresh fish, raw fish, cooked fish, and all kinds of seafood. And racing around the narrow aisles are motorized forklift type trucks moving all the seafood from place to place. The bigger trucks fill the streets surrounding the stalls. It’s a very busy place filled with commotion. But as always, everyone was friendly and happy to answer our questions. We stopped at one of the tiny restaurants there to have breakfast, fresh sushi, of course.

Our first meeting of the day was about peace education. We heard from a survivor of the nuclear attack on Hiroshima at the end of World War II. His story was vivid and moving. And his English was excellent. We also heard from the daughters of two other survivors. None of the speakers really talked about the need for peace or an end to atomic weapons. But at the same time their stories and messages were clearly about the need for peace.

Then I heard an art teacher talk about the need for the arts in schools. He talked about how the back-to-basics emphasis has left children without creative outlets. He believes that kids have lost the ability to communicate because of the amount of time they spend with computer games, TV and videos. He did not speak English so an interpreter translated everything. The best part was that he showed us how to make two paper toys. I’ll teach you when I get back to Tulsa.
(Activity – Keep a record of exactly how much time, (think hours and minutes ) you spend watching TV or playing electronic games each day. Write down all your time for one week.)

And my evening was spent out in the crazy rain, shopping at the 100-yen store and other places. By the end of the evening, the sidewalks were covered with broken umbrellas. The streets here are very narrow, many only have room for one car at a time, so walking in wild rain with umbrellas was a challenge.

Today, Saturday, was a day with no meetings so I went with a group to Kamakura. It’s a small, ancient city, about an hour south of Tokyo, filled with Buddhist temples and Shinto shrines. Some of the buildings are over 900 years old. I bought a special Japanese blank book (the pages open like a folded fan) at the first temple. An artist writes a blessing, a sort of good wish for your life, on a page with a bamboo brush and ink, then stamps the page with a personal signature stamp. Then at each temple you visit, another artist writes another blessing and stamps the next page. I’ll show you all the beautiful blessings when I get back. Right now I have no idea what they say, but I’ll find out before I leave Japan.
(Activity – Find Kamakura on a map. Look up Shinto and Buddhism.)

At one Shinto shrine we saw a traditional Shinto wedding ceremony. We couldn’t get too close, but I took lots of pictures. We also saw monks walking around in their robes, and lots of people worshipping and walking around. Each temple site is like a park with walkways, buildings, fountains, statues, trees and flowers. This area of Japan is very mountainous, so many of the sites had tall rock walls. People do talk and take photos, but no one runs around or makes loud noises.

At the first shrine there was a big sporting event for very young children, maybe 4 or 5 years old. They had a tug of war, sang songs and danced. It was great. We heard it was Sports Day in Japan, an official holiday, and so all the schools will be closed on Monday.

At one point we met an old Japanese man who befriended our group. He said he wanted to practice his English so he walked with us, gave us directions and told funny stories.

Our last stop in Kamakura was The Great Buddha. It was built in 1252.A.D. It weighs 121 tons. It’s over 13 meters high. (Activity - How high is that tin feet and inches?) It was pretty amazing. It seems like we walked miles up and down hills and all over this amazing city.

Tomorrow I travel to Joyo, Kyoto so I won’t write again until I’m settled into my new hotel.

Oyasumi nasai.