Miyagi Prefecture

(June 26, 2011) This week’s article is about Miyagi Prefecture which is part of an area that has been has been in the news a lot since March. Sendai and the cities nearest it that were devastated by the March 11 earthquake and tsunami are in Miyagi Prefecture. Sendai, the nearest major city to the epicenter, is the capital of Miyagi Prefecture and is one of two cities north of Tokyo, along with Sapporo on the northern island of Hokkaido, with a population greater than one million. Miyagi Prefecture with its 36 towns and cities offered a rich history and cultural experience to visitors prior to the earthquake and tsunami.  Matsushima which is located on Sendai Bay a half hour by train northeast of Sendai was noted for its scenic beauty and was designated as one of the three most scenic coastal places in Japan.  The bay at Matsushima was dotted with hundreds of pine clad islands. My wife, Kayo, and I took a sightseeing boat tour through the bay some twenty years ago with Tamami Saito who had attended Stillwater High School as a Rotary Exchange Student a few years earlier. There was great concern for Tamami and her family for several weeks after the tragedy but she and her family were eventually found to be okay.  No doubt Matsushima suffered heavy damage as did the entire coastline of Miyagi Prefecture.  Sendai was home to three professional sports teams, the Rakuten Golden Eagles baseball team, the Vegalta Sendai soccer team and the Sendai 89ers basketball team. One of the two Rotary International exchange students from Sendai we hosted in March 2010 was a involved with the Rakuten Golden Eagles is some capacity, maybe as a bat girl, and she loved it.

Japan's Rainy Season

(June 19, 2011) Word from Kameoka is that the rainy season is right on schedule. The rainy season, or “tsuyu” which means plum rain because it coincides with the ripening of the plums across Japan, starts in early June in the Kameoka and Kyoto area and lasts about forty days. To the south it begins earlier and to the north a bit later, but over all of Japan except the northern island of Hokkaido, it lasts about forty days.  Hokkaido gets most of its moisture from heavy winter snows and is affected very little by the rainy season. For some the rainy season is a gloomy time, but for others it’s a good time to visit Japanese gardens which are very pretty during a gentle rain. Many varieties of flowers bloom profusely during “tsuyu” , especially hydrangea which has become sort of a symbol of the rainy season. Quite a number of places have planted large numbers of hydrangea to brighten people’s spirits during the gloomy days of the rainy season. One such place is Mimurotoji Temple in the city of Uji about an hour by train southeast of Kameoka. While most Japanese gardens incorporate a very limited number of blooming plants into their design Mimurotoji Temple has included 20,000 azalea and 10,000 hydrangea shrubs in their garden that attract thousands of visitors. One’s spirits are bound to be lifted with such a dazzling display of color, even on a rainy day.

OSU-K Reunion

(June 12, 2011) Around 11 pm one evening in late May 1990 a very tired group of 151 young people from Japan arrived on the OSU campus. They were welcomed to Wentz Hall by several  members of the university staff,  several members of the Sister Cities Council and others.  After studying English for a year many of the group went back to Japan and enrolled in general education classes at Oklahoma State University-Kyoto     (OSU-K).  This pattern of coming to OSU for a year of English language instruction, going back to Japan and enrolling at OSU-K for their general education classes before coming back to OSU for their upper division classes continued for several years until OSU-K was forced to close its doors due primarily to the downturn in Japan’s economy. Through the six years or so that OSU-K existed some 450 to 500 students from throughout Japan studied on the OSU-K  and OSU campuses and many are proud OSU alumni. On June 25^th many of them will go back to the former OSU-K campus in Kameoka for a 20^th anniversary reunion of the first classes offered at OSU-K and they’re bound to have a great time as they share time together and renew friendships.

Sports in Japan

(June 5, 2011) Sports has been in the news in Stillwater this past week with the Cowgirls playing in the College Softball World Series, the Cowboys playing in a regional tournament trying to earn a spot in the College Baseball World Series and the NCAA Golf Championship Tournament being played at Karsten Creek with the Cowboys as the host team. Sports are also very popular throughout Japan but not so much so at the collegiate level as in this country. Sumo has been Japan’s national sport for well over a century but since the end of WW II baseball has been extremely popular from elementary school to professional baseball with several players from Japan playing professional baseball in this country. Girls play softball from an early age through college but volleyball is more popular with them. Golf is very popular with adults but is very expensive and is therefore something of an affluent person’s sport. Land is very expensive, therefore few universities can afford to have their own golf course for practice and tee times at public courses often must be made weeks in advance and this would not be practical for university golf teams. With a large percentage of the country being mountainous with heavy snowfall, skiing is very popular. Our friends in Kameoka can be on the slopes in the southern areas of the Japan Alps a couple hours after leaving home.  Gymnastics and ice skating are popular with a smaller segment of the population and Japan usually does well in these sports in the Winter Olympics. But for the foreseeable future, sumo and baseball will probably continue as Japan’s most popular sports.

Luncheon at CITD

(May 29, 2011) A week ago this past Wednesday the Sister Cities Council enjoyed a very special treat. We were luncheon guests of Dr. David Henneberry at the Wes Watkins Center for International Trade Development.   Dr. Henneberry, recently appointed Associate Vice President for International Studies and Outreach, and his family have been strong supporters of our sister cities program for a number of years and we are very appreciative. The purpose of the luncheon was to acquaint members of the council with programs offered at the Center for International Trade Development for international students at OSU or for OSU students desiring an international experience and to discuss ways in which the sister cities program might be of some assistance in international outreach.  During the luncheon we heard presentations by Kay Keys, Director of the English Language Institute, Gerry Auel,  Coordinator for OSU’s Study Abroad Program, Maria Fabregas Janeiro, Manager of International Programs and Liaison with a university in Puebla, Mexico with which OSU has collaborated on projects for nearly twenty years, and Joel Jenswold, Program Director for the School of International Studies Graduate . Dr. Henneberry, thank you for the invitation to lunch and for the information about the programs offered  at CITD. The Council hopes there are ways in which we can be of assistance to any of these programs.  In closing, the thoughts and prayers of each Council member goes out to every family across Oklahoma that experienced tragedy, either the loss of their homes or more tragically, the loss of family members last Tuesday.

Japanese Homes

(May 22, 2011) We saw after the recent earthquake and tsunami in Japan that the damage done by the 9.0 earthquake was relatively small, even on homes that were decades ago so this seemed like a good time to write about homes in Japan, primarily older homes in rural Japan and in smaller communities. In the 1970 it was still fairly common in Japan to construct homes of wood in those areas. For many years wooden structures have been built with the ability to move and shift a little during earthquakes that occur very regularly throughout Japan. Wooden houses such as the house my wife grew up in and which was built well over a hundred years ago have withstood many earthquakes with little damage. Remodeling on the interior is done periodically but the exterior remains pretty much the same for decades, unpainted and made of dark wood, either cypress or wood much like cypress. Very few homes built before the 1970s, and not many built since, have central heating or air conditioning.  It’s very common to heat or cool one or two rooms and the other rooms go to whatever temperature the weather takes them to.  The bathrooms are rarely heated during the winter therefore almost all homes throughout Japan have heated toilet seats which are pretty nice. Because of the very high humidity almost year around, buildings that are closed to outside air during the winter have a serious problem with condensate, especially on windows, but to a somewhat lesser degree on exterior walls, so mold and mildew may become a problem. To deal with this it’s very common to open windows even during the winter to keep most of the house about the same as the outside temperature to reduce problems with condensate. For decades, probably even for centuries, houses in Japan have been built with sliding panels that can serve as interior walls. They can be used to divide larger areas into smaller rooms or slid aside to provide a large area when needed when one has several guests.  The simplicity and clean lines make the home very attractive.

Kiyomi Kojima

(May 15, 2011) During the summer of 1987 my wife Kayo and I and longtime friends Mary and Ken McKinley visited Kameoka during a trip to China and Japan. While in Kameoka we met a woman named Kiyomi Kojima who was a translator for Mayor Taniguchi. Kiyomi had recently moved back to Kameoka after she and her husband had lived for a period of time in Brazil where a fairly large number of Japanese live. A few years later when the OSU-K campus opened in Kameoka  Kiyomi was a member of the staff there and during our two years with the OSU-K program Kayo and I became friends with her and that friendship has lasted  through the years. After OSU-K closed its doors the facilities were used by the Kameoka International Center where Kiyomi was the director for a number of years. She was a real asset to Kameoka since she is fluent in Portuguese, Chinese, English as well as Japanese. Since our time at OSU-K in the early 1990s we have stayed in touch with Kiyomi and have seen her during several visits to Kameoka. She was very helpful when the 9-member citizen delegation from Stillwater that went to Japan in 2007 and started and ended our tour of the country in Kameoka and she was again very helpful when Kayo and I visited Japan last fall. Kiyomi retired at the end of March but we hope she continues to be involved in sister cities activities between Kameoka and Stillwater.  

The Big Event

(May 8, 2011) Through the more than twenty five year sister cities relation with Kameoka the people in both communities have shared a great deal about their culture and customs with people in their sister city. One area where we in Stillwater have excelled has been in volunteering.  Japanese culture encourages giving back when someone does something for someone else. During the years OSU-K existed in Kameoka the OSU faculty teaching there offered to present lectures, teach conversational English and other things without receiving anything in return but there was almost always something given back, either a gift or money. But through the years our friends in Kameoka have seen the spirit of volunteering so prevalent in our culture. Recently many senior citizens in Stillwater were the recipients of hours of volunteer help by hundreds of OSU students. The Big Event which was held on April 16 and is a time when many students from across campus go out into the community and give of their time and energy to help in whatever they’re ask. On that day five young women came to our home and did a great job in raking and bagging leaves, cutting and bagging trimmings from shrubs and bamboo, cleaning flower beds and cleaning rain gutters. All five are freshman, four of the five are engineering students, and three of the five are out of state students so they had no real reason to go out on that day other that the fact they are young people with a lot of class and a giving spirit. The five were Heidi Stair and Chelsea Cantrell  from Claremore, Rebecca Purvis from Houston, Stephanie Wegener from McKinney, Texas and Justyne  McMath from Fort Sumner, New Mexico.  They are but five of hundreds of kind and caring OSU students but they are the five that came to our home and touched our lives that day and we thank them very much.