今まで行った京都の写真もついでに載せます。
京都は何度行っても楽しい街です。
一年に４回、四季が変わるごとに訪れたい街ですね。
京都祇園祭
Kyoto 2
Kyoto
日帰りで京都に行ってきました。
今回はあまり観光客がいなさそうな場所を狙って観光しました。
街を散歩するだけでも楽しいです。
京都を観光するなら、自転車！小回りがきいてとても便利ですよ。
京都サイクリングツアープロジェクト → https://www.kctp.net/index.html
Field Day in Japan vs America
The boys’ Field Day (運動会) will be held this Sunday and the kids have been practicing—dancing, running, marching, etc.—for hours each day since the beginning of May. They were so exhausted this morning, they couldn’t get out of bed.
I’ve been asking everyone what the purpose of the undōkai is, but still haven’t got any good answers. My suspicion is that it’s training for how to be a good Japanese citizen—namely, how to suppress the ego, how to endure, how to cooperate, how to be a team player, and so on. I suspect that if you can’t hack the undōkai, you probably won’t be able to manage in other areas of Japanese life.
People often ask me if there are field days in America and the answer is yes, there are. But field days in America are very different from those in Japan. For one, the kids normally don’t rehearse or practice for it. And, more importantly, the event is for the kids not for the parents, so mothers and fathers, grandmothers and grandfathers normally do not attend. Moreover, the children are free to take part in whatever “events” they like. The purpose seems to be to have fun. And it is fun.
Here are some examples of field days in America:
Chapman Kindergarten
Three-thirty in the morning and I’m wide awake. I thought I had this jetlag licked, but apparently not.
So, . . .
My older son Yuk-kun kicked and screamed yesterday morning: he did NOT want to go to kindergarten. He was adamant and couldn’t be coaxed or forced out the front door no matter what I tried. After a while, my wife gave in and told him to go back to bed and rest.
“But no books! No toys! No TV!”
Rather than try to deal with it further, I went out with his younger brother to a park that is located just outside the school grounds.
When we arrived at the park, everything—the swings, the slides, the tire, the lawn—was covered with dew. Living as long as I have in the southwest of Japan where it’s seldom foggy, I had forgotten all about dew. I had even forgotten the word “dew” and wouldn’t have remembered it if it weren’t for a young girl of about three or four who called out to her mother and told what the swings were covered with.
“You don’t want to sit down on the swing,” I told my son. “They’re covered with dew, with water. If you sit down on it, you’ll end up with a soggy bottom.”
About forty minutes later, my wife showed up with Yuk-kun. The boy looked genuinely happy to be there.
“What happened?” I asked.
“He had to poo.”
“Aah.”
Yu, standing at the edge of the playground, was about to step in when he stopped himself and suddenly remember: “Oh, I gotta go to school!”
He then ran off towards the school’s doors, my wife chasing after him.
Now the funny thing about kindergarten here—and I don’t know if it just Chapman, or all the kindergartens in the Portland Public School system, or all of them in the States—but the daily routine is highly regimented. There are, for starters, quite a few musts: You MUST drop your child off at school between 7:55 and 8:00. If you are ten minutes late, you MUST report to the school office and bring a note to the teacher! You MUST pick your child up at exactly 2:15! And so on.
My son’s kindergarten back in Japan is, by comparison, in a state of virtual anarchy. Arrival and dismissal times are not clearly defined: you may drop your child off between 8:30 and 9:30. And there is no need to notify the school if you’re late. You can alternate between commuting by school bus and bringing your child on foot or by bicycle, as you please. You may even change the bus stop at which your child gets off as my son often requests. And once at school, the kids spend most of their time playing in the schoolyard and roaming about in the classroom, rather than engaged in structured lessons.
Another big difference, though, is the rituals that mark the day. The kids at my son’s Buddhist school go to school in their formal school attire. Once at school, they remove their street shoes, place them in a cubbyhole, and change into their indoor shoes. Then, they progress to their classrooms where they put their bags into another cubbyhole, hang their water bottles on the appropriate rack and change into their play clothes. For the next hour or so they are allowed to run around, play in the mud, get unbelievably filthy, catch insects, and so on. They are, for the most part, free to do as they like, though there are some controlled activities, such as practice for the school summer festival and the autumn field day.
When lunchtime comes around, they spread their furoshiki out, pray to the Buddha, and then eat. School lunch is served about two or three times a week. On the other days, the children bring their own bentō.
Later that night when Yuk-kun and I were lying in bed, I asked him how his day had been. Unfortunately, I didn’t get many answers. He had fun, that much was clear.
While he didn’t have many answers for me, he certainly had a lot of questions: What does this mean? What does that mean? What is this? What is that? Whenever I explained something it was like a powerful light coming on in his brain: “Ah! So that’s what that was all about!!!”
Tomorrow, er, today will be his third day at Chapman. This weekend we’ll have three days off, thanks to the Labor Day weekend, which will provide all of us a much-needed rest.
But for now, it’s back to sleep!
End of an Era
The Japan Times had an interesting article about kōshitsu yōgo (皇室用語) the other day that is worth sharing. Some of the words featured in the article include:
退位 (taii,) abdication
即位 (sokui) enthronement; accede to the throne
戴冠 (taikan) coronation
皇室用語 (kōshitsu yōgo) or 最高敬語 (saikō keigo), terminology and language used exclusively for the Imperial family
陛下 (heika, lit. “at the bottom of the stairs”) is an honorific used with both 天皇 (tennō, Emperor) and 皇后 (kōgō, Empress) and is similar to saying “your majesty” in English.
皇太子殿下 (kōtaishi-denka) His Highness the Crown Prince
皇太子妃殿下 (kōtaishihi-denka) Her Highness the Crown Princess
行幸 (gyōkō) a visit by the Emperor only
行幸啓 (gyōkōkei) a visit carried out by the Imperial couple together
上皇 (jōkō) the Emperor Emeritus
上皇后 (jōkōgō) the Empress Emerita