During one of our field trips for Japanese class, we all needed a coffee in the late afternoon and stumbled into what we presumed was a normal coffee shop.  Turns out it was a "Dog Cafe" - a coffee shop where you can take your pet to show off and socialize.  It's kind of like Starbucks meets upscale dog park.  We decided to stay and order drinks since we were short on time and didn't really know our way around in this part of the city.

The coffees were sub-par, not surprisingly, but the other clients and their four-legged accompaniments provided ample entertainment.  The cafe had a dress-up box for the dogs and we watched many a photo session taking place.  It definitely seemed like this wasn't the first time these particular canines had tolerated such shenanigans as they stood stock still on stools in front of cameras smiling with doggy grins and wagging tails.


My least favorite thing about the dog cafe was the faint smell of disinfectant used to clean up . . . well, you can imagine and also the occasional clump of fur that would waft by on a draft.   Since we were the only ones in the cafe without pets, it was a bit awkward but still interesting.  Maybe next time we'll try one of the feline variety.

These past few weeks I've been subletting a different fellow's apartment while she's been on her internship.  This Sunday, I can move into on-campus married housing where Sean and I will be staying for the next two years.  I'm excited to make the move and settle into our long-term place.

Ohno-san, our fantastic program coordinator (i.e. she solves all of our logistical problems here)

Playing with some of the kids at Mitaka Picture Book House

Our university has many clubs and groups, one of which named "Glocal" connects foreign students with different ways to contribute to and volunteer in the local community.  On Sunday, they arranged an entire day of fun for us and we had a great time.

Help at the grocery store, "Which of these lotions are non-whitening?"

Sushi-making class!

Me reading my book to the group (we had to make it interactive too - hilarious)

During our tour around the Mitaka neighborhood

Making my own sushi roll

We started off the day with a tour of the local neighborhood during which the group volunteers pointed out small, easy-to-miss treasures in the tiny lanes and labyrinths of streets that surround the university.  We saw pubs, family-owned restaurants, convenience stores and grocery stores.  We even got some time in the grocery store to ask for help with questions we've had such as "How do I tell the difference between all of the different milk and egg options?" and "Which of these lotions are non-whitening?" etc.  I wish I could have someone with me to help all the time.

The entire group for the day

After the local tour we went to the guide's house for a sushi-making class and lunch.  It was really neat to learn how to make sushi and I immediately thought of how much fun it will be to do at home in Holland with family and friends.  We each made our own roll and I put salmon, cream cheese and avocado in mine.  It was delicious.

Playing some games - learned some new ones and taught "rock paper scissors" which was a big hit

We spent the rest of the afternoon at a small event/community center for children called "Mitaka Picture Book House".  It is a beautiful old restored traditional Japanese house that has been turned into a museum of sorts with separate areas for games, reading and crafts.  Several times a month, the house hosts foreign students who read stories to local children and then interact with the kids and their families.  The center is packed at these times because the parents appreciate the opportunity for their kids to meet and speak with people from all over the world.

The story time group

We all had to read a children's book and mine was in Japanese which required a bit of practice.  It was something like, "Mr. Vegetable, Mr. Vegetable, Who are You?"  We spent the rest of the afternoon just hanging out and playing games.  One of the volunteer coordinators is a linguistics professor at ICU who did her graduate work at The Ohio State University.  We hit it off right away and she said, "When I heard your introduction and that you were from Michigan but studied at OSU I thought it must have been a joke!"  (For those of you who don't know, she's referring to the strong football rivalry between OSU and UofM) Seems like I can't go anywhere these days without running into a fellow Buckeye.  O-H !

Finished sushi products before consumption

Sunset on Lake Michigan from the State Park sent from my sister, Sue

I'm enjoying my time in Tokyo but that doesn't stop me from wistfully thinking of home especially when I think about summer weekends.  I see friends and family enjoying time together outdoors and I wish I could be there too.  This weekend, we only had one day off and to counteract a bit of the homesickness I spent the morning at Starbucks reading, went on a long bike ride and then finished the day with a Dominos pizza and a Coke.  Everything was delicious.  Japanese food is interesting, tasty and at times challenging, but American food eaten far from home tastes even better.

Baseball game with friends

We have one more week of Japanese class and then a week-long orientation at ICU before classes start. What am I most excited about (besides finding reasonably priced dark chocolate at a supermarket)?  The fact that The Bearded One has bought his ticket and arrives on September 10.  I can't wait!

Sunset on the lake sent by Mom and Dad

Jack, Ida and I

Each year, fifty total Rotary peace fellows start M.A. programs in Sweden, England, Australia, the U.S. and Japan (ten fellows are placed at each site).  Getting to know my class (Class XIV) has been really interesting since we're from a variety of different places and have many different experiences and backgrounds.  Let me introduce them:

Josh, me and Lily

Rash giving out special scarves to us as gifts (Lily has just accepted hers)

Lily, Shook, Jack and Ida

The ten Peace Fellows this year at ICU (more on them later)

Rotary both funds and designs a special Japanese course just for Peace Fellows.  Though we will have the option to take more academic Japanese classes during the academic year, this first month of intensive language study has the goal of being able to communicate and get around in daily life.  In other words, we're just focusing on speaking Japanese and not on writing or reading yet.  Personally, I am absolutely loving Japanese class every day not only because it's interesting to learn a new language but also because it's fascinating to witness a completely different teaching style.
We have class every day from 9:30-3:30 with a break in the middle for lunch and then are expected to do a bit of homework on our own every evening.  We have two teachers and they are all business.  On the first day, the first things they said to us (about five separate times) were "don't be late" and "study a lot because there is much to learn."

One of our teachers, Shimoyama-sensei

The language teaching style is quite unlike anything I've ever seen before.  Don't be fooled in thinking that the class consists of five hours of games and interactive activities, rather it's five hours of intense memorization, dictation, question and answer and choral repetition.  We don't do hardly any partner or group work and rarely get out of our chairs unless we're reciting something individually or bowing. There is a lot of pressure and stress in the class especially because there is never any real context for the lessons which teach very different grammar and vocabulary and follow one right after another.  Everyone panics when the teacher enters into rapid-fire question mode in which she shoots individual questions at us which could range from anything like "Why did you come to Japan?" to "What did you have for dinner last week Sunday?" and "What are you going to buy at the supermarket tomorrow?"  You get the idea.  Words that come to mind are: focus, rigid, discipline, intense, serious, respect etc.  There's absolutely no room for "why" questions, creative interpretation or critical thinking.  Alternative learning styles and needs be damned.

The first day was exhausting because of trying to absorb the new type of teaching style along with the huge amount of Japanese thrown at us including a lot of the politeness rules.  We learned right away the extensive respectful dialogues involved in asking the teaching to repeat something or write something on the board and then thanking her etc.  It goes on and on.

My Rotary host counselor

Our first task was to learn how to write our names in Hiragana, one of the types of Japanese script.  We had to do this because the next few days we would have to write it on our own in bank and registration forms.  My teacher took one look at my attempts and said that I needed a lot more practice.  At this point I looked at the clock and realized it had only been about fifteen minutes.  Four and a half more hours to go.

The rest of the day was spent memorizing a short introduction speech.  The fact that we didn't really know what we were saying didn't much matter, only that we got it right.  We went over this again and again, each time standing up and trying to recite it from memory.  Honestly, to me, it felt like memorizing line after line of nonsensical phrases since I didn't understand the specific vocabulary or the function of the particles. The speech went something like this:

Polite phrase to make an introduction
My name is Sarah
I'm from Michigan in the States
I'm a graduate student at ICU
My major is Peace Studies
I enjoy traveling and reading
I hope to climb Mount Fuji while I'm in Japan
Polite closing phrase

Little did we know that at the end of the day we were to have a fancy cocktail reception and give this speech in a microphone in front of many men in suits.  Suddenly the exhaustive repetition didn't seem so ridiculous anymore.  After making our first speech in Japanese after Day 1, we all shuddered in anticipation of what Day 2 would bring.

Giving my first speech in Japanese

Being wide awake in the middle of the night gave me plenty of time to figure out the bathtub and toilet situation.  I wouldn't say I really "figured out" anything but rather failed miserably several times before accepting basic needs being met.  The temple didn't have showers, but rather tiny bathtubs the size of half a barrel.  Unfortunately, the tub was self-filling which meant that I couldn't just turn water on and off and decide on a temperature, but that I had to use a complicated remote to program the depth, temperature and time of the bath.  Naturally, the remote was entirely in Japanese. I just kept pressing buttons until water started pouring out, quickly took a sorry excuse for a bath and then pressed buttons frantically until the water stopped.  Being that it was so small, I basically had to do backward somersaults in the tub to rinse out my hair. Five a.m. and already doing gymnastics in cold water? Not exactly what I had in mind for my first day in the city.

After enjoying a night in a hotel, my host Rotarian picked me up at 10 a.m. the next morning.  The plan was to take me to the apartment near the university that I was going to sublet for the next few months.  The apartment belongs to another peace fellow from the year before who is currently doing her internship in South Africa.  She had also sublet her apartment to a different fellow in my class who came early and stayed for the month of July.  When we arrived, the apartment was kind of a mess because the fellow was still in the process of cleaning and moving out and my host was horrified.


He wouldn't let me stay there because of the chaos and instead, took me to the Buddhist temple where he works and is the head priest and overseer.  The temple always has visiting priests so they had many separate tiny condos, one of which was available for me to use for awhile.  I appreciated the generosity but was also a bit nervous because the Buddhist temple was almost two hours outside the center of Tokyo.  Being that I don't speak Japanese and had zero concept of the layout of the city or how the transport system worked, I was more than a little nervous about getting to my Japanese class on my own the next day.



My host, Nobuyuki Okamoto has been a Buddhist priest at temples in New York, Los Angeles and Hawaii.  His English is amazing and he was good at explaining things that he knew would be strange for me since he'd spent so much time in the U.S.

After dropping off my bags at the temple and having tea with the other priests, we had lunch at a really fancy traditional Japanese restaurant in our own private room surrounded by ridiculously manicured gardens, decorative bridges and koi ponds.  The lunch consisted of nine courses and everything revolved around presentation.  Before each course, our own private waitress elaborately explained what the food was, where it came from and what it meant.



Tired, sweaty and a bit jet-lagged, I devoured everything, even several dishes with strange creatures full of eyes that even Nobuyuki couldn't identify.  It was a really cool experience and I wish Sean could have been there to share it with me as I know he would have loved all the sushi.  But here, I'm assured, there's plenty more where that came from.

After lunch, I headed back to my condo on the temple grounds and Nobuyuki promised to research public transportation options for me for the next day.  I tried to stay awake as long as I could but ended up crashing at about 5pm.  Fortunately, being wide awake at three a.m. the next morning gave me ample time to figure out how to use the crazy and indecipherable self-filling mini bath tub and fancy toilet.

My parents dropped me off at the airport in Grand Rapids on Friday, July 31 and while we waited in the concourse we enjoyed a little picnic that Mom had prepared.  I only had to do a little bit of maneuvering to get both bags to weigh in at 50 lbs and after asking about the possibility, was lucky enough to be moved up to "Economy Plus" seating on the long haul flight which afforded a significant amount of extra leg room.  How much is a one-way ticket to Japan in the summer? Too much.  The total came to about $1,300 booked through Rotary International's own travel agent service.

HND airport

Inside HND

"What are you going to do in Japan?" was one of the most common questions I answered in the weeks before my flight.  I'll be in Japan for two years doing a Rotary Peace Fellowship.  Rotary is an international organization made up of community leaders devoted to "service above self."  Among other goals such as ridding the world of polio, improving health and sanitation and raising literacy rates the organization focuses on peace building.  One of their efforts to further world peace is providing 100 fellowships a year to do research in peace studies.  Fifty fellowships are awarded to complete a master's degree and the remaining fifty are given to senior professionals to complete a three-month certificate program in Thailand.


Many types of people can apply to become a peace fellow.  The eligibility requirements state that one must have a bachelor's degree and three years of work experience.  You must also be able to speak English and have proficiency in a second language along with strong leadership skills.  Rotary seeks to form a diverse group of fellows and they come from NGOs, government agencies, education, law, United Nations agencies and journalism, to name the most popular fields.  There are five peace centers around the world and ten fellows are placed at each one every year.  They include: International Christian University in Japan, University of Queensland in Australia, University of Bradford in England, Uppsala University in Sweden and Duke University in North Carolina.



Each program is a little different, but my program in Tokyo includes a month of language training (August) followed by two ten-month academic years with an internship in the middle during the summer break.  This internship is called an "Applied Field Experience" and can be anything from an internship with an NGO or a government agency or an independent research project.  It can't be done in our home country or in the country where we are studying.  I'm not sure what I want to do yet but I'm excited about the chance to do something different.



What's exceptional about the Rotary Peace Fellowship is that it's fully funded and fully supported.  Every expense is covered from transportation, tuition, books, housing and includes extra money for travel and research.  The experience is fully supported in that we not only have a Peace Center coordinator at our university that helps us with all the logistics of moving abroad but are also assigned a local host Rotarian as well.  So far, I've been very impressed with the organization and efficiency of the program and Rotary International in general.

The few days I was at home, I had several people comment on how calm I seemed before leaving for Tokyo.  "Don't buy it," I told them.  It's just an act and my parents know the truth.  Days before leaving I had everything spread out on the ping pong table in the basement along with my suitcases, a scale, and various sizes of sturdy ziploc bags.

Packing cubes

Money belt

Different ways to wear a sarong

I was thankful that my boss at camp let me head for home a little early because there was a lot to do and a lot of people I wanted to see.  I spent ten days in Holland and soaked up every minute.  I was able to attend a friend's wedding, hang out with Sean's friends to catch up, have lunch with Catherine from Ohio State, go on walks and Captain Sundae visits with Emily, spend time with my sister-in-law before she returns to Saudi Arabia, go to a final Rotary Club meeting and get in some quality beach time with my sister.  It was so nice to spend days at home with Mom and Dad and they spoiled me by making special dinners eaten in the screen porch and baking a cake (what I wouldn't give for a piece of cake right now).  One of my favorite nights was a pizza picnic at the State Park with Dole Whip cones afterward.



In a way, traveling and living abroad is pretty selfish.  We think only about our own upcoming adventures and not about the absences we've left behind in our communities and our families.  While we view the repeated processes of hugging and good-bye saying as the final, required steps before leaving, others staying behind can see it as breaking away.


It would be simply impossible for me and Sean to live this lifestyle without the support and understanding of our family and friends.  My parents handle all of the paperwork logistics and problems that invariably pop up as well as house everything else that I own.  They also put up with virtual communication via Skype, letters that take weeks to arrive and missed holidays.  Friends show their love with care packages, emails, post cards and are able to accept the fact that we're not around to share experiences in person.


Sean and I are grateful for everyone in our lives who make how we live a reality.  Know that we obsessively follow the goings-on of life in Holland and are always hopeful and excited to receive visitors!