October 16, 4:30 a.m. Tokyo time

Ohayo gozaimasu students,

Are you thinking that I can not sleep? That is not the case. I left the hotel early this morning to visit the Tokyo fish market. Everyone who has visited said that it was worth getting up early to have this experience.

The market is very, very large, and very, very busy. There is much noise from the traffic immediately outside and inside the building, but it is amazingly quiet amongst the workers. The operations were in full swing when I arrived, so these workers must have started work at 3 in the morning. Perhaps it is too early to talk at during this part of the day.

Not only does this market have fish, it almost has everything else you can find it the sea.
When we looked at Japan's geography in class, and I asked what you thought the Japan used as their main source of protein, some of you knew that it was fish. But besides the fish, there was squid, octopus, whelk, crab, clam, oyster, eel, and sea cucumbers. However there, was no Sponge Bob and Patrick the starfish.

The first picture shows a some workers, the next shows fish eggs, and the last picture is of whelk---you can clearly see one coming out of its shell. Click to enlarge.

Senso-ji Temple

Moshi, Moshi students,

Today we went sightseeing and saw much of Tokyo, but not all of Tokyo! Together with the rest of the Metropolitan Prefecture, there are 32 million people living in a rather small area. I learned from our guide, Iishii san, that Tok means east and yo means capital. Now I know why Edo was changed to Tokyo once the Emperor moved here. He still lives here, because where ever the Emperor is living is the capital. When Tokyo was still called Edo, the Emperor lived in Kyoto, which is west of Tokyo. You will have to look at your map again!

One of the places I enjoyed today was our visit to the Senso-ji Temple. It is a Buddhist Temple, and today was the first day of a celebration commemorating its restoration. Most people in Japan are practicing Buddhists. Buddhism came to China from India in the 5TH century, but Japan was converted to Buddhism when monks from China came here as missionaries in the 6Th century. Buddhists follow the teachings of Buddha, the Enlightened One, he is called. Buddhists are not too concerned with the material world of day to day living beacuse they view material things as being temporary compared to the real life of the soul.In these pictures you will see the T a prayer pole. It stands about 500 feet in front of the temple. The people hold one of the ribbons, or all of the ribbons, while praying. The colored ribbons are connected to white ribbons overhead leading all the way into the temple where they are fastened to the hands of the statue representing the Kannon Buddha. The other picture is only a part of Tokyo's office buildings.

First Meal in Japan

Konbanwa students,

I arriving in Tokyo, Japan on Tuesday, October 14Th after a 10 hr. and 20 minute flight. That was more than the 9 hours I thought it would take! And I lost a day by crossing the International Date Line in the Pacific Ocean. You must look at your world map, and you will see it marked as a mostly straight line. Narita Airport is in the rural part of the Tokyo Metropolitan Prefecture, so it took approximately 2 hours to reach our hotel through heavy traffic. It was raining, very overcast, and around 6:00p.m. so no one in the bus I traveled in was interested in taking any pictures at that point in our trip. When we reached the Hotel New Otani, we had been told that we should go out to dinner with one of the Japanese alumni (you will probably have to look this word up to know what it means) who were part of the original Fulbright Program and had therefore spent time in the United States. Some of the 160 teachers who are in my group decided not to do this, but to go to bed early. Since I want to make the most out of experiencing Japanese culture, I knew that I could sleep after I went out to dinner with the person I was chosen to share a meal and conversation with. I am very glad I did take advantage of this opportunity.
There were 4 of us who went out with Tabe san. Tabe san is a retired university professor who taught for 55 years, and was not only very interesting, but also gave us information about Japanese food and how to eat it. When he asked us what kind of food we would like to eat, we said "Japanese, of course!" Since Tokyo is an international city, many cuisines(that is French for different foods based on their country of origin), are available here---we could have had MacDonald's if we wanted too, but we didn't! This picture is just one of the dishes that we tried last night. I took a picture of it since it came on one plate, unlike the other dishes that we ate, and I thought it had the best "presentation". Presentation is a word that cooks and chefs (those are highly paid cooks)use to describe how food is made to look on a plate. Japanese chefs are very good at presentation because the way food looks on a plate is important. The eyes, the nose, the taste are the senses that the Japanese like to make sure are being used when they eat. Everything we ate I thought was very good, but I liked this dish the best. Can you tell what it is? Along with eating good and appealing food is having good conversation and a good time. So we ate and talked, and had a very good time.
Did you guess what this dish is? It is called Shashimi, and it is a variety of paper-thin raw fish atop finely a finely cut vegetable that we also ate. The leaves are good for digestion Tabe san told us, so we ate those too.