Fish Market, Peace Studies and Art

Today I woke up a bit before 4:00am. That’s even earlier than yesterday! I got dressed and traveled the long quiet way to the main lobby of the New Otani hotel in search of a pay phone. If it is 4:00am Tokyo time it’s 3:00pm the day before Eastern Standard Time. I’ve learned this trick to tell the time back home: first, change the am to pm (or the other way around) and then subtract an hour. If you are going am to pm, it’s a day later in Tokyo. If you are going from pm to am, it’s the same day in both places. Got it? Anyway, I had purchased a phone card yesterday and was eager to make a call home. It was really good to talk to my other half, Bobby Lee.

The call was cut short because a group of teachers was gathering in the lobby for a trip to the fish market and auction and I wanted to join them. We broke ourselves down into groups of four and squeezed in into small cabs. Colored lights reflected off the wet pavement as we drove away from the hotel into the darkness of the predawn morning. Ten minutes later we poured out of the taxis and proceeded into a hustling and bustling whirl of activity. There were hundreds of stalls, tons of trucks, carts, people and umbrellas- not to mention the fish, so much, so many types, so big, so small. After touring the fish market, I left the group and started exploring the city on my own eventually making my way back to the hotel via the subway- an adventure in its self.

After breakfast, I attended a workshop on peace studies. In 1945, Japan and the United States were at war and the U.S. dropped two nuclear bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Today, we were privileged to listen to the stories of an eighty-nine year old “hibakusha” or atomic bomb survivor and two-second generation children of survivors. I’m going to purchase the video of this talk. I’d love to share the profoundly tragic and yet, potentially redemptive first hand account presented by this very gentle man, Koji Ikeda.

Later in the day, I joined one hundred and twenty teachers for a presentation by Chihiro Tada on art education. Mr. Tada is the director of the Art Education Institute and Toy Museum. He thinks kids should have more opportunities for creative play in school. He led us in a couple of hands on activities that I plan to use when I get back to my own classroom.

We’ve been going nonstop since this trip has started, jumping from planes to planes; planes to busses and busses to cabs and cabs to metro and always the walking, walking and more walking. We’ve been doing so much (I haven’t even talked about yesterday’s temple visit; my tour of the Diet building and the host of other speakers we’ve listened to), it’s hard to believe there is more yet to come, but tomorrow I have my one “free” day to do as I choose and then, Sunday we leave for the heart of the program, our regional stays and school visits. I guess I better get some sleep.