Konichiwa, Masako

You remember a few months ago when I visited Tokyo and got to spend time with my dear student Tamami's mother, Masako.

This week Masako has repaid the favor.  She is visiting Conway on the occasion of Tamami's graduation.  And she brought gifts for my children.  I'can't describe how kind and generous she's been to them, even having never met them.

On Tuesday she did get a chance to become acquainted with Cady Gray. Tamami urged me to bring CG to Knitwise, our crafting club.  Masako had a surprise for her.



It's this beautiful kimono, complete with a matching bag containing a tiny bunny doll which is itself wearing a kimono and carrying a bag ... I'm not sure how far down it goes.

Aren't they beautiful? Am I not lucky to have a student who loves my daughter, who shares that love with her mother, who works so hard to bring special things from halfway around the world?

Japan: The Food

I tried to remember to take a picture of every meal I ate in Japan.  Skipped a bunch of breakfasts since they were similar, and most of the snacks too, but here's a sampling.


Minced tuna roll, prawn and avocado spring rolls.


Pork noodle bowl at the Sophia University cafeteria.


Fish roe, octopus, jellyfish.


Cuttlefish with egg sauce.


Assorted sushi.


Champagne mouse and mussel soup.


Sushi lunch purchased on street outside of university, a bit the worse for being carried around.


Sweet and sour chicken and egg drop soup at a Chinese place.


Seafood salad, tofu two ways, duck, fugu at the onsen.


Salmon sushi and tuna roll at Narita airport sushi bar.

Japan: Day 4

500 year old bonsai

I'm waiting in Atlanta for my last flight of this trip -- my flight home. Well, to Little Rock, which is a half hour in the car away from home. These travel days seem to stretch on endlessly through stage after stage. Bus to the airport. Wait for the plane. Fly backwards in time across the international date line, from Friday afternoon into early Friday morning and back again, twelve hours in all, food and sleep arriving at arbitrary intervals. Land. Go through the multiple levels of immigration and customs, ending with security screening again as you go back into the airport. Wait for your next flight. Then there's the flying, the landing, the walking, the paying, the driving -- all before I can finally get home.


Tea at Happo-En

I'm looking forward to being home for so many reasons. Seeing my family, of course. Sleeping in my own bed. But also getting my pictures off my camera so I can put together epic blog posts about my trip, and giving the gifts I picked out for Noel and the kids. I'm lucky to have two days to decompress and reconnect with the central time zone before heading back to work on Monday. Then it will be time to hit the ground running on preparations for my next conference, for which I have a half-written presentation and a completely unplanned workshop.


View from teahouse

What I've got in my rear-view mirror, though, is the trip of a lifetime. I know how lucky I am to have been to four international conferences in the last decade, not to mention yearly national and regional meetings all over the country. With travel costs rising and department budgets shrinking, none of that can be taken for granted into the future. It's up to me to make sure the investment pays dividends for the program, and to squeeze every drop of value from the places I go and the people I meet.

Japan: Day 3

It's ten minutes until the start of day 3, session 1, and I just got myself settled in the seminar room. Moments ago I was washing my hands, looked at myself in the mirror, and realized: this morning was the perfect example of freedom, as I define it.



I went to bed late last night after spending the evening shopping and eating with Masako, my new friend and my student Tamami's mother. Even so, I awoke with the sun at 5:30 am. After I decided I was awake for good, I checked to see if the rogue unsecured wifi network I had found the previous night (part of the reason I stayed up too late) was still operative; finding it was, I decided to get one of the day's tasks out of the way. My teaching assistant had alerted me via email that I had failed to post an assignment listed on the syllabus as due during my absence. So I went back into last year's online classroom, found the parallel assignment, pulled up the reading schedule and notes for this year in Google Docs to find an appropriate quotation to substitute for a reading we haven't had yet, and posted to our current classroom site.



By the time I completed that procedure, it was breakfast time. Even though the host or hostess warns me every day that the spot I've chosen serves continental breakfast, no meat or eggs, I go back each morning for the fruit, the chocolate croissants, and the most expansive view of the Japanese garden below through an enormous picture window wall. Today I had both the time and the determination to find my way into the garden; my searches on previous mornings had been constrained by my schedule, and fruitless.



With more than an hour before I needed to be anywhere, I threaded through the delivery trucks and ubiquitous workmen to the entrance and took my time exploring each path and taking picture after picture in the ever-changing morning light. Even when I finally left and set out for the university, I had the leisure to climb one of the many narrow staircases onto the massive berm that once fortified the Edo-era estate this area was and stroll along the wide top, looking down at students at early practice on the sports fields where the moat ran centuries ago.



I tend to think of freedom as requiring hours, days, or weeks of no responsibility. But even a brief early morning gave me this transcendent sense of contentment with my choices. To be master of those responsibilities rather than enduring their mastery of you; to exit the chatter in your head in the search for vantage points on external beauty, moving from perfection to perfection; to have a goal without a concomitant burden; to step sideways out of one's life and into a time apart -- that is what freedom has always meant to me.

Japan: Day Two

Finishing my presentation, preparing to take questions, with the conference scarf on display as a visual aid


The rhythm of a conference is the same everywhere you go, but at international conferences, even more so. Plenary sessions feature lengthy presentations by the most distinguished invited scholars, printed in full in the conference proceedings so that attendees can follow along. Sessions last two and a half hours, or three forty-five minute talks. Today parallel sessions start, with three rooms on the same schedule, each presenting three papers in each session.


A few of the Chinese scholars at my presentation, impressed by the conference scarf


The thinking process of a conference is always the same, too. As you listen to the presentations and make notes -- and make no mistake, I derived unusual benefit from yesterday's six papers -- you tend at the same time to be strategizing about your activities during the next break: where you can grab a drink or a bite, where the nearest restrooms are located, whether you will make it to the optional activities after the day's sessions or whether you are too tired or hungry to contemplate another room with chairs and speakers.


The presenters and audience at my parallel session, one of the most congenial of the week


Chances to break free and be a tourist are few but precious. Last night after being horrified by the price of food at my hotel's restaurants, I walked back to the main road and ducked into the first little restaurant I saw on the first alley I walked down. It was dark by the time we got out of the day's work, and the beautiful gardens and grounds that I glimpsed as I hurried by that morning on my way to the conference were already obscured by darkness.


University students at lacrosse practice as evening falls


Today my paper is scheduled to be presented at the last of the day's three sessions, an unenviable position. But once it is done, the celebration of the evening begins. The mother of one of my dear students is taking me to dinner tonight, and I look forward to my first guided experience into Tokyo proper.

Japan: Day 1

I wrote a few blog essays during early mornings and other spare moments over the last week, while I was in Japan.  I'll post those accompanied by contemporaneous photos over the next few days, followed by a catch-up post if need be.



View from my hotel window

And so, just like that, I'm on the other side of the world. Well, not "just like that"; it's fully two days later, however you slice it, and there were two planes, a bis, and a 10-hour sleep in between. 


Sophia University welcomes the Eco-Sophia Symposium

I've never suffered much from the classic symptoms of jet lag, as I've heard them reported. Although I didn't sleep on the 14-hour transpacific flight, and thus was awake almost 24 hours during my trio -- and this for a person who hasn't stayed up all night since she was a teenager -- and couldn’t quite figure out why I was hungry last night at 8:30 Japan time after eating three meals in the preceding 12 hours, I slept soundly, woke refreshed, and enjoyed the hotel's continental breakfast.

 
The conference opening plenary, with the start of my conference scarf

In other words, I feel like it's Monday morning and I'm ready to get to work at the conference, although I missed a weekend day somewhere in there. We'll see how I'm holding up at dinnertime after a full day of speeches and sessions.

 
Kids from private school cross the street

Last night I was recalling some of the other international travel I've done over the last few years. The walks I took in Salzburg, the sites we visited in Seoul, the tiny hotel room on the canal in Aarhus. Compared to some of those trips, this one is logistically simple and stress-free. My well-appointed hotel is a short stroll from the conference site, which is an urban university campus. Student walk from class to class checking their cellphones, carrying their satchels, earbuds on, wearing their athletic gear. Just like home. Only the impeccably attired campus security and work crews, along with the unsettlingly ubiquitous medical masks, stand out. Otherwise it's like university life everywhere: hanging out at the student center, taking a morning jog, grabbing a drink at the vending machine, watching the celebratory centennial banners dance on every light post.