Meetings are lots of fun! No, seriously. Who would have ever thought anyone would make that comment. However, when you're treated as special as we have been you find them fun and interesting. I think the people that greet us are as excited for us to be in their town as we are to be in Japan. This morning started with a trip to Wakayama University. I was told that its sister school is in Connecticut. It's actually Eastern Connecticut State University where I graduated from. Wow, of all the universities in the world. How crazy is that. After being welcomed by the President of the University we shared a question and answer session with current students and alumni of the university. Japan faces many of the same problems in education as we do. The respect for teachers has greatly diminished over the past 15 years. Truancy his a huge problem for both teachers and students, while school violence and bullying are on the rise. Evidently truancy is due to the fact that many people have a school phobia. They have a name for it, but at the moment it eludes me. Many don't go to school or work at all. Instead they choose to stay at home, never leaving their house and play video games the better part of the day. The government is looking at ways to decrease truancy, but have no laws that are presently enforced. We were asked many questions as to how our society handles this problem. They seemed quite surprised to learn that parents could be fined or arrested if children do not attend school, as it is the parents responsibility to ensure their children attend school. Also, children could be taken from their home and put into foster care, as parents are considered neglectful. I guess that seems extreme to them. Japanese teachers are currently not required to take any professional development classes. Once they get their certification it is good for life. However, this is changing and the government is looking at what would be our equivalent of CEUs. I found it interesting that Japan has dropped its ranking in math from fourth in the world to sixth. The media made quite a big deal about this. However, they rank second in the world for science. The media also made quite a big deal about this asking why they did not rank first. Talk about pressure!
Next on the day's agenda, an hour or so bus ride to Tanabe, our host town for the remainder of the week. We arrived at town hall for a visit with the Mayor. After a warm welcoming and newspaper photos we learned a great deal about their town. The population of the town is about 83,000. Chief products are agriculture, oranges or yuzu (very sour in taste), forestry, tourism and service industry. We were taken on a tour or as our guide stated "inspection" of the city. It's not a huge town, but not small by any means. Tanabe is a Pacific Ocean, waterfront community with an abundance of shops, restaurants, houses and hotels, complete with train station in the middle.
Dinner was on our own. Although quite tired, the majority of our small group wanted to take in the city. Some brave soles soloed out, while others went exploring in groups of two or so. I hung with a group of six. We mostly walked the streets circulating in and out of small shops, checking out the local inventories. Similar to home, being Monday many restaurants were closed. Now don't laugh when I tell you this....we settled on an Italian restaurant and had beers and pizza. Ordering wasn't easy as the menu had no pictures, no English other than the word pizza and the waitresses spoke no English at all. Okay, she may have been able to say hello, but I don't think so. We ended up ordering four pizzas..they were small, but only got three. The waitress didn't quite get that we ordered four, we were only charged for three and left it at that. Needless to say, we didn't over eat last night. The funny part was that as we were leaving the restaurant we noticed a Chicago Pizza restaurant across the street. Maybe tomorrow night. At $38.00 for a large pizza we probably won't eat pizza too often there though.
By the way...did you know in Japan people drive on the opposite side of the street? Hmmm, and I thought that was only in England, Ireland, Scotland and Australia.
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