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About Spilyay tymoo. (Warm Springs, Or.) 1976-current | View Entire Issue (Aug. 11, 1978)
AUGUST 11, 1978 PAGE 9 A Few Words About Japan by Roger T. Stwyer million people (that’s over half of America’s population) which lives on an island no bigger than California, you get the feeling of being lost quite often. Especially when very few can speak En glish. Through the Council on In ternational Educational Ex change (CIEE) program, Tam my Brown, Cassie Caldera, Jeanette Cannon, and I were fortunate to be given the op portunity to travel to Japan for one month. Food WHAT IS CIEE? CIEE is a program set up to organize the exchange of from America to Japan and vice-versa. CIEE takes care of the business end of the deal for exchange students. CIEE re quired us to pay $1097 and fill out “toe little bit” papers before we were allowed to go. CIEE sends an average of 100 students to Japan every summer from various schools throughout the United States. Our “Sister” High School Our “sister” high school, is Onomichi Higashi (East Ono michi). Located about 1,000 miles south of Tokyo on the coast of the Inland Sea, Ono michi Higashi has around 700 students. Japanese students are very samrt. I found this to be sur prising because they didn’t seem to listen to the teacher. While the teacher was lecturing, stu dents would be talking and laughing among themselves. Ja panese students spend a large amount of their time at home studying and often study all night when finals are coming up. While we were going to school at Onomichi Higashi we wore the school uniform. Boys wore black pants with a white shirt and girls wore a sailor-type top and a blue skirt. Classes are 50 minutes long with a ten-minute break between each class. Six classes are held on weekdays and four classes are held on Saturday. Instead of the students going to different rooms for each class, the tea cher comes to the students’ homeroom to teach. School was often excused early if the weather got too hot. Most students belong to a club and go to it regularly. Boys clubs are guitar, baseball, Kendo, soccer, and basketball to name a few. Girls clubs are cooking, sewing, dancing, flower arranging, tea ceremony, and others that will enable them to become cultured and practical wives. T Our Role In School The major thing for us to do was teach English and speak in English classes. But we also attended regular classes such as calligraphy, Kendo (men), sew ing (girls), leathercraTt, Ja panese literature, Japanese'lan- guage, and music. Music is one class which none of us will ever forget. We all had to sing a solo in front of the class. Cassie sang “Oh Clementine,” Tammy crooned “Beautiful Dreamer,”-and I cut loose with “Cotton Fields.” (toe good). Teaching English was fun because we had to speak slowly and repeat what we said over and over at times. Japanese start learningJEnglish when they reach the seventh grade. Some Japanese can speak English well, but they are too shy to use it because they think they’ll make a mistake. Many Japanese are amazed at how fast we can speak English but that’s because they have never heard anybody speak it well and fast. Japanese People Japanese people are mostly short so this made us feel like we were giants. Tammy noticed this on our return when, as we were leaving the Los Angeles International Airport she re marked, “Goll, we’re short again.” When you’re in a country that has a population of over 113 FENCING - An attractive lodgepole fence encircles the playground in the mobile home park. The result of two weeks of sweat, muscle and good humor on the part of Dawn Squiemphen’s summer work crew. The poles and the plans were provided but the crew had to work out the details of construction. Other projects have included clearing fire hazardous brush away from Senior Citizen’s homes, painting the Warm Springs sign on the hill and sprucing up the longhouses. > CDS Photo The major food consumed by Japanese is by far rice. Rice is eaten at every meal. Fish runs a close second with tea not far behind. Every food is eaten with chopsticks, too. Some of the favorite foods of Japanese are shrimp, crab, oc topus, squid, mushrooms, nood les, eel, and many familiar vegetables. Japanese women especially favor sushi, which is raw fish. While we were in Tokyo, we snuck off to a MacDonald’s and forced down some burgers. And it wasn’t very hard to find a Dairy Queen, Kentucky Fried Chicken, or other familir Ameri can places. Along with every meaLtea is drunk. But we preferred soda pop with our meal. Beer, whis key, and wine were also avail able. Cola is a favorite drink in Japan. Both Coca-Cola and Pepsi-Cola have outlets in Ja pan. Beer is another favorite of Japanese. Slightly stronger than American beer, a couple bottles can make a person pretty well swacked. Some brand names are Kirin, Sapparo, Suntory, and Asahi. Beer can be purchased out of vending machines which can be found on every street corner in any town. Sake is the traditional drink. Because it is brewed from rice, it is often called rice wine. Sake is known to sneak up on Ameri cans. Transportation Japan’s means of travel is by train, bus, taxi, motorbike, bicycle, street car, car, or by foot. If you only need to go a short distance a bicyle can do the job. But if you want to go a long distance, the bullet train is the best way to go. The bullet train is the fastest train in the world and can travel up to 130 miles an hour. Taxis are expensive but numerous. This is obvious at night time because that’s when you can see the lights on the roofs of their cars. Few families own their own car because they have no place to keep it and the upkeep is too expensive. Recreation Some things that families do for fun include going camping, going to baseball games, swim ming, going to the theatre, or a number of other things. There are six working days in Japan so every Sunday is considered a time for vacation and fun. They travel to different cities to spend the day. One day the Tokyo Giants were in Hiroshima to play the local team. My host-father de cided to go so he told my host-brother to interpret for me. As it turned out, the home-run king of the world is a relative of my host family. So we went to Hiroshima to meet him in per son. Mrs. Cannon and I were lucky enough to meet that guy, and how proud I was and still am. Mr. Oh, as he is called, has set a goal of 800 home runs. When I left he was getting closer and closer with 788. Maybe he reached 800 by now. Anyway ... Speaking for us all, I’m sure, we all had a great time and lots of fun. It was extremely difficult for us to say “see you” because we’ll never see our friends for a long time. But next year we’ll see our friends when they come visit their “sister” school, and we all plan to return to Japan again, someday . . .
