I’ve already mentioned that I have had a long interest in Japan. One of my minor fields in college was Asian studies, but even before that I started studying Japan. I remember two of the most memorable books I read in high school, Musashi, by Eiji Yoshikawa and Shogun, by James Clavell were set in Early Modern Japan. But beyond that, I also enjoyed listening to some of the bands of the early 2000s visual-kei music movement.
When I studied abroad in Korea I had an opportunity to travel to Japan, but chose Taiwan instead because of the greater distance my little money could go in Taiwan. The situation was similar when I taught in China.
After I returned to teaching from a short break in academia, I enrolled in a number of different professional development opportunities. Two that stood out were Hiking Japan and Walking the Tokaido, both offered by the NCTA, National Consortium for Teaching About Asia. I’ve written about those more elsewhere, but those courses connected my interests to the reality of travel in Japan and possibilities of bringing such experiences to the classroom. The pandemic hindered any opportunity to travel to Japan during those courses so I vowed to travel there the next possible opportunity, which is now only 106 days away.
Phrase of the day: ________ はどこですか? ______ wa doko desu ka? Where is the _______?