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It’s now February. The weather is starting to turn a little warmer and hay fever season is right around the corner.

For me, this is the dreaded time when I have to say goodbye to all of the Seniors at my school. This is especially difficult this year because these students are the first bunch that I have known since their first arrival at Koyo High School.

We’ve been through so much together. We traveled to Los Angeles for a week of science project presentations at LA high schools, visits to NASA’s JLP and CalTech, and sightseeing. I joined six of them for a trip to Seoul for more science presentations and cultural exchange with our sister school there. We even endured the death of one of the class members. RIP, Shizuku.

I’m going to miss them. They have taught me so much.

Take care, 301. Keep in touch.

Kento!

Today marks the first anniversary of the death of one of my students.

Shizuku was a bright shining star with a ready smile and an infectious laugh. She was barely 16 years old when she died. I still occasionally look out into my class and expect to see her there. She would have been graduating from high school in about 5 weeks. I’m not sure what else to write, except that I miss her and I know her classmates do, too.

Rest in peace, Shizuku.

It’s still January 1st in California, so I barely made it. I actually started to write this about 3 hours ago, but have been dealing with technical problems. My site hosting company, GoDaddy, was extremely helpful in getting me back up and running. Thanks, Theresa.

Anyway, I finally had my first blog reader acknowledgement. Someone has seen my blog! It’s so exciting! Thanks, Dad!

As we enter 2019 I recognize again that I’m not very good at blogging. I will get better. I have plenty to write about, it’s just difficult to sit down and start typing. At least I’ve started off the new year right.

If anyone else has visited here, please let me know as it will increase my motivation to write more.

I wish you a happy and fruitful 2019!

Kent

First of all, it’s important to know that my family is not rich. We never have been. At least by American standards.

My Dad saved his money for many years. A little bit from every paycheck. He didn’t tell anyone about it, but he had a plan.

About two years ago, Dad told me that instead of taking the kids to North Carolina (which we try to do once a year), we should start making plans to go to South Africa. I was shocked. He said that all we needed was to come up with airfare for our family to and from Johannesburg. He had arranged and paid for a ten-day private safari in South Africa for my family (four people), my sister’s family (four people) and my parents. Of course, we went.  At the beginning of August we were in South Africa.

It was amazing! The private reserve/lodge where we stayed has a maximum capacity of ten people. We had a beautiful private lodge and their staff all to ourselves for one week. We had four professional hunters to guide us every day. After seven days of hunting and photographing, they took us to Pilanesburg national park for another three-day (photography-only) safari.

It was such an unbelievable, charming, beautiful, unforgettable experience.

Thank you, Dad.

Obviously,  I have not posted once a week.  I’ll work on that.

In no particular order…

* Traffic laws are optional.  I would not want to drive there.  Every taxi ride was an adventure.  Every time I saw an ambulance, I figured it was going to or coming from a traffic accident.  Surprisingly, we didn’t see a single accident.

* People are friendly, but personal space is non-existent.  Especially on the subway.  Even if it’s not terribly crowded, it was not unusual to have people really close and for them to have body contact throughout the ride. Also, even more so than in Japan, the old ladies will not hesitate to shove you out of the way if you are in their path.

* Almost everything is cheap. (Maybe I’ve lived in urban Japan for too long.)
Everything from food to taxi rides is incredibly inexpensive.  Starbucks was the exception to this rule.  (I collect the travel mugs from different cities worldwide.)

* The written language, Hangul, is the most logical written language I have ever experienced.  Sejong the Great had it created in the mid 1440’s, but it wasn’t adopted officially until 1946, when Korea regained its independence from Japanese rule.  Sejong the Great ordered its creation in order to do away with illiteracy among the common people. The alphabet consists of 14 consonants and 10 vowels.  They fit together to make the sounds used in the spoken language.  We visited the Hangul Museum in Seoul.  It is conveniently located next to the National Museum.  They are both worth a visit if you go to Seoul.

I use quotation marks because I was actually working. The Nagoya Board of Ed. paid for the trip.

I accompanied 6 of my students on a trip to our sister school in Korea. While at the sister school, my students each gave a presentation about their current research — in English, of course. Their presentations were very well done and they made some new friends.  It was great to watch the groups from Korea and Japan getting to know each other using English as a cultural bridge.

The trip was only three days, but we also got to see a few sights. We went to an old part of Seoul and to Myeongbong the first afternoon/evening. After visiting the school on the second day, 13 of their students took our crew to see Gyeongbok Palace. That night, the students went to Seoul Tower to enjoy the night view of the city (I skipped that one). The next morning we visited the Korean National Museum before heading to the airport.

It took three days of my Spring vacation, but it was totally worth it. The plan is for the trip to be an annual event. I look forward to returning.   🙂

I realized that it has been almost a year since my first blog post and I hadn’t posted anything else.

My apologies.

It has been a very exciting year for me and I feel horrified that I neglected to share my experiences with you here. I have decided to post things from the last year, in no particular order, alongside any new happenings. I am also setting a goal of at least one post per week. That seems achievable and realistic. (I’m not gonna set a goal of one per day. That would be completely unrealistic because, well, see the last year’s posts.)

Okay, that’s that.

Have a nice day.

Tuesday, April 18th: I got to briefly meet and shake hands with Dr. Toshihide Masukawa.

He shared the Nobel Prize in Physics in 2008 “for the discovery of the origin of the broken symmetry which predicts the existence of at least three families of quarks in nature”.

He is also an alumnus of Koyo High School, where I am currently teaching.

He spoke and answered questions at the school which was hosting 100 students from India and Vietnam as part of the Sakura Project. (More on that later.)