January 21, 1995
Kyoto, Japan
Global Semester
Dear Families & Friends,
By now you have heard about the rollicking end of our trip
that leaves us "quaking in our boots", so to speak! Although the
earth has fractured near us, we are unharmed, only shaken and
concerned about the people whose families and homes have suddenly been
shattered.
As you may know, we sleep on the floor, so when the rumble
started, we just rode it up and down and sideways, then lay very still
for a moment to make certain it had stopped. Jackie and I are in a
room just below the students so we were getting dressed to go see how
they were doing when some of them knocked on our door. We were
relieved to hear that everyone was safe, then began looking around the
Kaikan for evidence of damage. Walls were cracked and windows broken
but the monks assured us that everything was okay. We have no verbal
communication, just hand gestures, but we understood the worst was
over. Neither local nor long distance phone calls went through, so we
turned on the tv to discover how serious the quake had been in
Kobe/Osaka.
The fissure has done terrible damage to that area with
horrible loss of lives and tremendous property damage. The estimate is
4 years to rebuild transportation and major utilities, not to mention
homes. Our flat out language barrier makes us quite useless in most
situations, so the Japanese have politely but with gratitude, refused
our offers so far. Students have been gathering clothing and
toiletries to send to victims. Trained rescue and medical personnel
are urgently needed and if we could not leave, we would volunteer some
way! Since our bus cannot travel the expressway to the airport,
Professor Tada has negotiated a train trip to Kansai and we will leave
on schedule tomorrow.
As global winds down, we are grateful for what feels like our
deepest cultural immersion. Lecturers seemed to drop straight out of a
Zen novel, pilgrimages to the colorful temples and shrines became a
way of life during the new year and the art forms and gardens seem to
spring from the creative genius of Japanese eccentrics who are revered
by society even though they feel like light years away from today's
high tech style of living.
You might say Global is ending with a bang! We all look
forward to landing in Hawaii soon. Of course, it will be sad to see
our journey end, but the time has come. We will enjoy seeing our
families again and getting a taste of home.
See you all soon! Love, Mac & Jackie
STUDENT LETTER
Global Semester
January 21, 1995
Kyoto, Japan
A final greeting to all from Global! Our time in Japan - and
on the trip - is almost over. It's been three weeks since we arrived
in Japan December 28 and settled into the guest house of the
Kosho-Kaikan, a Buddhist monastery in Kyoto. All 28 of us students
live in one room partitioned into a men's half and a women's half. The
walls are made of rice paper screens, while the floor is tightly-woven
straw tatami mats which provide a good base for the futon beds we
spread directly on the floor. It's pretty cozy. Breakfast is inch
thick toast--YUM! We're well cared for by Professor Tada, our program
coordinator, who draws maps daily to show us where we're going and
tells us to wear warm stuff.
Kyoto celebrated its 1-200.h anniversary in 1954, and it is
full of beautiful Shinto shrines and Buddhist temples. We've seen
many of them, from the famous Phoenix Hall to the glittery Golden
Pavilion, both of which face pools which reflect the structures and
double the impact. A day trip to nearby Nara let us explore some of
the most famous temples in Japan, the Takushi-ji and Todaiji. Todaiji
was the head temple of the area when the capital was located at Nara
in the 700s, and it houses a giant seated Buddha whose peaceful smile
is almost four feet long. There is also a pillar with a hole
supposedly the size of the Buddha's nostril in the bottom -- anyone
who can slither through is a candidate for enlightenment. We all
tried; most of us are eligible for enlightenment, provided someone
takes our arms and pulls us through!
New Year's is an exciting time of year around here since it's
a religious holiday when people dress up in kimonos and visit
shrines. We had our own New Year's Eve celebration here at the Kaikan
and enjoyed the chocolate and fruit Tada-Sensei provided (remember, an
apple can cost as much as seven dollars!). We also had a little sake,
a little music, and a spoof by some of the women on the personality
quirks that would turn up at the "Men's Breakfast". By midnight,
though, we had literally rung in 1995 by contributing to the 108 times
each temple bell is rung to cancel the sins of the old year. Then many
of us went to a shrine to mix with the New Year's food, games, prayers
and crowds. The next few days were perfect for "temple hopping" since
the first days of the year are also part of the holiday. The temples
and shrines were full of kimonos in rich colors and celebrating crowds
Any city where a walk down the street leads past half a dozen
temples and shrines is the perfect place to study religion and
architecture, and we've had a fair dose of both. Our most personal
encounter with religion was our experiences at the Zen Monastery
Tofuku-ji. The abbot met with us to tell us about Zen (through an
interpreter) and Instruct us in zazen, the practice of sitting in
meditation. For fifteen minutes we tried to sit motionless and clear
our minds of busy thoughts - and we found out how difficult that can
be, even for such a short time. Our bare toes got cold, our backs
hurt, our noses itched, our thoughts strayed. Zen monks, on the other
hand, do zazen for an hour at a time, starting at three a.m. (THANKS
TO BETH TRUESDALE, Amy)
The first portion of our Kyoto stay passed quickly with our
enjoyment of Professor Tada's arranged lectures and field
trips. Before we could mumble "arigato," (Japanese for "thank you" -
our token word of survival in Japan) we were packing for our week's
travels to Hiroshima and Tokyo.
We boarded the train early on the 1Oth; Professor Tada
appeared just slightly relieved to safely send us off and resume his
normal schedule. A few hours of speedy, bullet train service and we
arrived in Hiroshima. Simon Capper, director of the YMCA Business
School - English division and organizer of our homestay, greeted us at
the train station. Simon's cheery "hello" in his crisp, British accent
foreshadowed the excitement of the following days.
We city-trammed it to the YMCA Business College and received a
brief orientation to our homestay program. And then, the moment of
reckoning: we met our student guides. The students had organized a
welcome party which included polite, get-to-know-you conversation,
yummy bars and cookies (baked by the students themselves) and lessons
in origami. Most appeared to hit it off quite well! as questions of
age, hobbies and girl/boyfriend status floated around the room.
We met our homestay families later in the evening. Some
Globalites stayed with their student's family and so returned home
with them. Most, however, would return to the YMCA every night to be
picked up on the parents' drive home from work.
The first night in our new Japanese home varied with each
Globalite and so you'll have to seek details from that person whose
return you anxiously await! Most enjoyed a delicious Japanese dinner,
perhaps even at the traditional low-level table, ranging from Skiyaki,
a sort of stir-fry, to Okonomiyaki, a delightful egg, noodle-fried
specialty of Hiroshima. Conversation revolved around family (including
pictures), country impressions, and details of our Global adventures
thus far. We experienced a night without our 27 dear bed mates and
then reunited the next morning at the YMCA.
The remaining days in Hiroshima contained more homestay and
student adventures, but as mentioned before, the stories must be
personally related. The group consensus is that this personal contact
with people of the culture was invaluable: a true highlight of our
Global trip!
We encountered the terrible details of the World War II
Hiroshima reality in our brief stay in this city. Our second morning's
activities included a film on the aftermath of the Atomic Bomb. The
film portrayed the immediate and eventual victims in their unedited
pain and suffering. As shocking as the film appeared, our talk by
Ms. Miyoko Matsubara evoked our strongest impressions of the horror of
a "hibakusha" Hiroshima survivor. Ms. Matsubara was only 12 years
old whcr, her school project was interrupted by a bomb whose boom and
brightness she simultaneously heard and saw. Thrown yards from her
school, she awoke from her unconsciousness hours later and began her
quest for family and security. Like most hibakusha, Ms. Matsubara
survived and yet suffered: she lost a best friend whom she saw lying
in agony but couldn't help in her own plight, her father to cancer,
and her brother and his wife. Ms. Matsubara herself has undergone 12
surgeries to help alleviate her persistent pain and restore some of
her natural appearance. No amount of textbook learning prepared us for
the vividness of Ms. Matsubara's tale, the emotion of which was
magnified in her own retelling: words of sadness, facial expressions
of pain and haunting memories and a kind voice undeserving of so
terrible a nightmare.
After Ms. Matsubara's talk we toured the Peace Memorial
Museum: documentaries of the war's events, culminating in the decision
to use the A-bomb, illustrations of the bomb's effect on people,
structures and city, and a plea for the destruction of these
weapons. This final point impressed us the most, perhaps especially as
Americans, the perpetrators of this one incident. Ms. Matsubara, even
in her life time of agony, relives her story in public appearances
with the hope that the world will realize the futility of the terror
of atomic weapons and destroy their present existence and future
production. Ms. Matsubara and the Peace Museum acknowledged not a
national enemy, but the enemy of war, only on war do they wish to seek
revenge. When asked how long it took her to realize that war, not
America was the enemy, Ms. Matsubara responded, "When I met the lovely
American people." Our Global experiences assist us in trying to
understand this incredible perspective; the Holocaust Museum in
Israel, the Peace Memorial in Hiroshima and soon the Pearl Harbor site
in Hawaii emphasize that the drama remains constant and only the
characters revolve. Obviously, Ms. Matsubara's and all of Hiroshima's
hope for peace, even after lives forever affected by one August day,
will remain one of our most powerful Global impressions.
The other group activity in Hiroshima was a visit to Miyajima,
a tourist highlight and scenic island. We approached the island and
famous Utsukushima Shrine via ferry, passing the sacred torii arch in
the middle of the bay. We toured our last Global Temple, received our
fortunes, checked out the pagodas, and boarded the ferry for our
return.
Our departure from Hiroshima rivaled that of one nearly 5
months ago. Families waved and bowed, we expressed our "arigotos," and
a few tears were even shed. Both the families and ourselves had
enjoyed a meaningful few days.
Five hours on the dependable Japanese railways (to the minute)
and we began our next Global chapter: Tokyo. Six Globalites visited
family or friends outside Tokyo while the rest of us stayed in the
relatively posh International Youth Hostel. As Tokyo was vacation, our
activities again varied, although we mostly adhered to a general plan
of tourism. Most visited Temples and Shrines, particularly the Meiji
Shrine on the Japanese Holiday - Coming of Age Day. The holiday
attracts 20 year-old women dressed in beautiful kimonos of red, blue,
green, and peach, escorted by stylish 20 year-old men to the local
shrines to register their adult status - a beautiful and colorful
spectacle.
Besides the temple and shrine visits, most explored the
excellent Tokyo art museums, some enjoyed a touch of Tokyo shopping,
others a walk down the brilliant, neon-lit streets of Ginza and some a
quiet rest at the Hostel with time to read our Japanese religion text
and journal for Mac's art class. A few whirlwind days of busy Tokyo
life and we again boarded the train for Kyoto and our final week in
Japan. (THANKS TO KARLA HULT, Amy)
We returned safely only to be greeted by an earthquake at 5:44
Tuesday morning. For twenty seconds the floor shimmied and the rice
paper walls rattled. We huddled under the door frames, hoping to stay
clear if the ceiling fell (of course, several of the guys
inadvertently sat just below a large, heavy heater that hung from the
ceiling just beside the door. Oops.) Nothing fell, the only damage the
Kaikan stained were a few cracks in windows. The city of Kobe, thirty
miles away, was less fortunate. Over four thousand died in the quake
and ensuing fires.
The next night was a long one - Minnesota Public Radio called
at midnight, and by six a.m. channels 4,5,9, and 11 had followed
suit. The Star Tribune and the Faribault paper were among the next
day's callers. We felt both famous and sleepless. Meanwhile, all of us
tried to contact parents to let everyone know we were fine.
Ten countries, five months, and a thousand stories - this has
been Global Semester. We're grateful for all the letters and phone
calls and support from home that makes this time both possible and
fun. It's been wonderful to learn first hand about places that once
seemed far away - and it will be wonderful to be home again. We'll see
you in a few days! (THANKS TO BETH T.) Much love, Global Semester
1994-1995
