Kobe, Japan!

I am writing this blog with a bit of sadness- I am not ready to leave Japan tonight! I have so enjoyed my time here and am so grateful for the opportunity to visit this amazing country.

Yesterday I spent the majority of the day visiting Momoyama (or St. Andrew’s) school in Osaka, Japan. My father knew our host, Machiko Goda, from his visit to Japan a few years ago, and set up a connection for us. I visited Momoyama with my faculty advisor and professor from Kenyon- Professor Lopez, who is on the Semester at Sea program as well! We took a tour of the school with Machiko, who tailored our visit after she learned that I am interested in self-identity. PE classes (and lots others, such as “standard,” or honors classes) are divided by sex. We also saw the counseling room- apparently they use sand therapy. Sand therapy is literally a sandbox, where students can choose different figurines to place in it and the counselor interprets the archetypes represented by the figurines. What is odd to me is only ten students of the 1,700 at the school use the free counseling. We also talked to some exchange students from the United States. One interesting thing I learned is how Koreans in Japan have a rough time with their identity. Apparently, Japan doesn’t let citizens have dual-citizenship. Individuals have to choose one nationality at the age of 20! So, if one’s mother is Korean and one’s father is Japanese, one could only choose one nationality to declare and choose one citizenship. There aren’t many mixed couples for this reason; as a daughter of a mixed-race couple, I found this particularly interesting. Many Korean students also change their names to Japanese so they don’t get made fun of in school. Later, Professor Lopez and I met with the headmaster, who was a very humble and funny man! He said, “I am proud of two things in this school, the facilities and the teachers. I am not proud of one thing: myself.” We then went to his office, and he showed us his special coffee maker, one that very few people in Japan can have, so he is proud of his ownership. Professor Lopez and I found this also very interesting, that a headmaster would show us a coffee maker. Machiko then took Professor Lopez and I to a classic Japanese restaurant where I had a cabbage pancake filled with veggies, shrimp, and cheese and then I decided I would try the octopus in a dough ball! It was actually good, and apparently a specialty to Osaka. On the way back to Kobe, we took a women’s only train car. Apparently, due to reported sexual harassment, Japan has made women only train cars; what I found ironic, however, is the fact that these train cars reinforce gender stereotypes. They are pink and have advertisements attracting female passengers. We also did notice that there was a couple of men on the train.

I have been overwhelmed by Japanese hospitality and am very grateful for Machiko’s kindness and willingness to share Momoyama with us. Last night my friend Caitlin and I explored downtown Kobe on our own and were searching for some Japanese items we had not been able to buy. I was on the search for a Totoro item; My Neighbor Totoro is Japanese anime film directed by Miyazaki and has been one of my favorite films since the age of five. We were lucky enough to find a Totoro book in Japanese in a bookstore, which I am very excited about!

Today I went on a field program for my Sociology of Race class to downtown Kobe to explore what a young person would do on a day off. Because it is near Valentine’s day, we learned that Valentine’s day historically was when a woman would give chocolate to a man who she admired. Nowadays, women could either do that, or buy chocolate for herself! Downtown Kobe was very busy today with chocolate stores filled with customers! We also went to department stores, a Japanese 100 yen store (similar to our dollar stores), and a hat shop. My friends Dana and David and I had a wonderful time together.

I have enjoyed so many aspects of Japan (including the delicious food- who knew they’d have amazing pastries?) and am eager to return one day. I cannot believe that we only have two days on the ship until we reach Shanghai, China!

I hope all of you are doing well, keeping warm (I heard about the snow!), and have a wonderful Valentine’s Day!