Kansas continues, "It was the shaven-headed Ojii-san, the most senior member of the Tomie household and my first kendo instructor, who made me feel especially comfortable during my home-stay with the Tomie family. Often, after returning from one of my three high schools, where I worked with various English faculty each week, I found myself sitting across from the ancient Japanese man on the tatami-mat floor in the front room playing shogi with him. Shogi is the traditional Japanese form of chess. Ojii-san would, of course, always defeat me in that Japanese board game."
"Due to my limited Japanese language skills, we often spent the time mostly focused on the task at hand: that is, playing shogi." Kansas adds, "Occasionally, however, we tried to communicate in Japanese. In other words, occasionally, Ojii-san would try out a word or phrase in English. I was frustrated at times but enjoyed the effort. We laughed as we stumbled on-and-on in our labored communications. The ambience created in that small room, with its traditional white-sliding Japanese shoji-entrance screen, still provides me with many pleasant memories."
"During these late afternoon shogi matches, I sipped coffee or drank Japanese tea offered to me graciously by Ojii-san. Sometimes our conversation drifted from strategies of winning at shogi to kendo-Ojii-san's favorite topic-or to sumo wrestling-or even on to other mundane household matters," Kansas related,
"Before sharing more about Ojii-san," Kansas felt compelled to add. "I need to explain to you that this particular spring the high school where I primarily taught at was busy introducing the new 'aural/oral English language syllabi". This meant that the students would have to finally become used to hearing and listening to normal spoken English."
Kansas continued, "In early May, upon my return from Guilin area of China, northwest of Canton -which is famous for its many hills rise gnome-like from the rice fields and along the riverbeds-, I began sharing those photographic scenes of my excursion to China with both teachers and students in the high school classes. For this same reason, I found myself often writing monologues or dialogues for an aural portion of those semester's mid-term exams based upon my authentic photos and experiences on that trip of mine to China. Therefore, those year's listening exams included a recorded monologue--whereby I shared how in rural China I had been astounded to see so many oxen or water buffalo--and virtually no modern technology-being employed in the rice fields of China in the region of moutains, hills and rivers between Guilin and Canton."
"To my surprise, some older colleagues at Itoigawa High School who saw these very same photos of mine of the water buffalo pulling the implements in Guilin's field during rice planting season that spring, remarked that when they were growing up in Itoigawa (not more than 30-some-years earlier), they too had seen many such large beasts of burden working the fields. I was surprised because they were referring to the very fields located next to my apartment--and other fields between the sea and mountains--where I bicycled to school every day. Modern Japan had left no obvious trace of this rapid transformation to mechanization in the post-WWII era."
"Wakarimashitaka?"
Returning to his primary tale, Kansas continues, "One evening Ojii-san, Takatoshi, and I were chatting before dinner about the high school exams I had just written and recorded. I then told them about the pictures I was using in the aural exams. I then presented both of them with some keepsakes or souvenirs from the area in China I had been in. I had bought these objects in southwest of Guilin with my-soon-to-be-home-stay-family, especially in mind." Kansas shared, "As I explained the meaning of the gifts for me to them, Takatoshi interjected that his father, this same Ojii-san whom I had come to know as my eldest Japanese friend, had himself been to China. As I asked Ojii-san about this, we were interrupted by the serving of dinner by Takatoshi's wife calling us to eat at the kitchen table."
Kansas went on, "The following day, after observing kendo practice at Itoigawa High School, I decided to bring my pictures from China to Ojii-san, so we could try and communicate about something different than kendo or shogi. I came in the genkan or front door of the home and as usual shouted the properly polite Japanese phrase 'Tadaima' in the direction of Ojii-san's room as I began to slip off my shoes. He quickly replied 'Irashai' and got up from the tatami-mat floor,where he had been watching TV. Next, Ojii-san motioned to me to sit down and take some tea. I nodded my head and asked him if he would like to see some of my photos from China. He nodded that he certainly would."
Kansas nodded, too, as he spoke, "I then quickly sat down next to Ojii-san with a packet of photos in my hand and politely turned to him in my stumbling Japanese and asked ever-so-indirectly, 'Takatoshishi said that you were in China.' With this indirect statement, I was implying, 'Where in China? Did you go as a soldier?' I soon began to take the small photo album and showed Ojii-san my views of 1994 rural China and the water buffaloes I'd photographed in the fields there."
Soon Ojii-san began to speak with strong feeling
Immediately, Kansas sensed that Ojii-san had a terribly lot to say, so he tried with all of his energy to follow the ancient gentleman's words in Japanese. Kansas tried as best as he could to interpret what was being shared. However, eventually, Kansas began to slip the photos back into the albums as he came to become fairly frustrated by the long narration that was obviously so important to both him and the elder man.
"Ojii-san proceeded to tell a very long tale and provided many details and insights which were to forever remain beyond my ability to comprehend-that is because my Japanese was too poor," Kansas explained, "This frailty in my comprehension of Ojii-san's Japanese was because I had come to Japan with virtually no previous Japanese language experience. Even after 20 months living in a rural area of Japan, my ability in the native language of most local people living here remained very, very limited. I should add that I was living in an area of Japan where there were absolutely no 'Japanese for foreigner' courses available within 100 kilometers in any direction."
At this juncture, Kansas also felt compelled to explain, "I am trained as a historian as well as a teacher of foreign languages. That is why since my earliest college days I had begun to learn the methodology of recording oral histories from often elderly citizens, i.e. such as the tales from a 1950s-era civil rights worker in my college town. However, after graduating from college, I had become even more interested in global education. That is why I have focused especially much on the role of cross-cultural education & communication within foreign language education over recent years. Nonetheless, I have maintained my interest in history and personal narrations as the decades have passed."
"For example, after completing my undergraduate studies, I conducted oral histories in both German and English on two continents. During this period, I also completed home-stays of two or more weeks in durations in Mexico, France, Spain, Germany, and England. In each of these home-stay situations, I had generally far more opportunity to communicate with the members of the host family, i.e. in a more intimate way, than I experienced while living two years in Japan. Only after living in Itoigawa over a year-and-a-half had I begun to develop the trust necessary to organize my own home-stay. More importantly, only the improvement of my Japanese language skills had given me enough courage to approach friends and ask that they help me find a traditional three-generation Japanese household which would be willing to share it's life with me."
Kansas noted, "Nonetheless, despite all my prior preparation, I now found myself in an all-too-familiar situation. Ojii-san was talking away in a 30-minute long monologue-saying things I would very much like to understand. Therefore, I was becoming very deeply frustrated by my inability to do so. Nevertheless, gambarimashita-I continued to try my best to comprehend."
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