Hosting Japanese Students

       During the first two weeks of March, Oshkosh was visited by 32 Japanese students. This visit was arranged and sponsored by the University's VOICE program. All of the students were from Kwassui Women's Junior College in Nagasaki. During the week the women lived in the residence halls, went to class, and visited several area places of interest. On the weekends the students stayed with host families in the Fox Valley. My wife, Barbara, and I were privileged to host two of the students. Our guests were Rika Nakano and Tomoko Mizunoe, who are from the Nagasaki area. Neither had been out of Japan before - one had not even been to Tokyo - so their experiences here were all together new. Their command of English was similar to my command of Japanese. ("Fluent" is not the word that comes to mind.) Nevertheless, my wife and I had a delightful time with Rika and Tomoko; and I think they had a good time with us. Several days before the students left Nagasaki we exchanged letters and pictures with each of them. We told them a little about ourselves, and each told some things about herself. I first met our students at an orientation session held on February 28. Surprisingly, we had little trouble understanding each other. I was interested in what kind of meals we should have while they were at our house, so we spent most of that first meeting talking about what foods they liked and disliked (one vote against vegetables; one vote against milk).

        Barbara met Rika and Tomoko when she picked them up at Gruenhagen Hall on Friday, March 3. The night was spent in familiarizing the women with our house and their living areas, and using English (I used the dictionary about as much as they did). We had dinner at home, and we remembered about the veggies and the milk. On Saturday, we went to the Milwaukee Zoo. It was a beautiful day and most of the animals were out. We took lots of pictures and our guests clearly enjoyed themselves. They talked about the trip to the zoo throughout their stay with us. We finished the day with dinner at Tortilla Flats. On Sunday Barbara took the two shopping at the outlet mall and we visited some of the other sites around Oshkosh. By the second weekend Rika and Tomoko were a lot more relaxed, and it seemed that their English was better (probably all those classes during the week). My daughter visited us on Saturday and brought our 3-month-old granddaughter. That night we had dinner at Fratello's, and attended a "Cherish the Ladies" concert at the Grand Opera House. On Sunday we drove around Appleton, stopping at Woodman's Supermarket (they were impressed by the size of it) and at the Asian food market. At these two stores Rika and Tomoko purchased ingredients for the Sunday dinner that they volunteered to prepare for us. And prepare a meal they did. Rika cooked a dish called Okonomi Yaki, which was something like a pancake stuffed with lots of good things. Tomoko's dish was Nikujaga, sort of a Japanese beef stew. The recipe called for Konnyaku, which we could not find, even at the Asian food store; but Tomoko made some excellent substitutions, and the dish was delicious. Tomoko also made a dessert with sliced rice balls and sweet topping. Barbara and I definitely were impressed with our guests’ culinary skills. On Sunday evening all of us attended a final dinner and graduation exercises at Reeve Union. Many of the students, including ours, participated in a program of music, dance, games, and modeling. Barbara and I took great pride, and a lot of pictures, when our "daughters" graduated. All four of us were sad when we had to say goodbye at the end of the evening.

         We hope that our guests learned some things about American life and language while making weekend visits to our home. The Cook family certainly learned a lot from those visits, and in a most enjoyable way. We are very impressed with the VOICE program and the people running it. We enjoyed participating in the program, particularly the part about getting to know two wonderful young women from Japan. We will never forget them.

         Tetsuya Iseki is an Assistant Professor at Kwassui College in Nagasaki Japan. He recently accompanied approximately 30 Japanese college students to UWO through the VOICE program. However, this is not the first time Mr. Iseki has visited the United States.

        During his childhood, he moved around the Nagasaki prefecture frequently, because his father was a bank officer. He ended up majoring in English at Fukuoka University. He then went onto graduate school at Kumamoto University. During those six years, Mr. Iseki has visited the United States on many occasions. The most noted trip was when he earned a scholarship to participate in an intensive eight-week English language program at Harvard University. He started teaching at Kwassui in 1985 and has been teaching there since. He teaches English literature, specializingin18th century novels. Some of his favorite authors include Soseki, DeFoe, Kazuo, and Dickens. He devotes his spare time to playing the cello, an instrument that he has played for over 20 years. He has participated and played in various musical groups in Japan.

        Mr. Iseki and his students were in Oshkosh for two weeks in March and visited several places in the Fox Valley. They met many new people, made wonderful experiences, and had a great time in America.

         The Japanese language has three writing systems. One is called Hiragana, which is usually used for original Japanese words and particles. Another system, or alphabet, is called Katakana. This is used for words of foreign origin and a few sound words. The last system is Kanji. This alphabet was borrowed from China a long time ago. Each of these characters (from Kanji) has it’s own meaning. When we write, we use all three writing systems. There are 46 Hiragana and 46 Katakana, and thousands of Kanji symbols. Hiragana and Katakana are phonetic symbols, where each letter does not have a meaning and the pronunciation does not change like the American alphabet. The sounds are fixed and we have only one pronunciation per letter. On the other hand, Kanji characters can have an entirely different meaning and sound when combined with other Kanji. Even for Japanese, it is very hard to memorize all the Kanji! I think it is as difficult as to memorize spelling in English.

Visual Examples:

Katakana -

Hiragana -

Kanji - 

Recipe for Nikujaga

Contributed by Dr. Fukuta

Instructions:

1. Fry sliced beef in oil. After a few minutes, take out the beef.
2. Fry potatoes, carrots, and onions (sliced or cubed) in the same oil for about 5 minutes.
3. Place vegetables into a large pot and fill with enough water to cover all the ingredients. Boil until tender. Add cooked beef.
4. Season with sugar, salt, and soy sauce (if you like it stronger, season to taste after it has cooked a bit).
5. Simmer covered for about 15 minutes. Allow enough time for the flavors to fully soak into the ingredients.
6. Sprinkle green peas on top and enjoy!

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Movie Review Ð After Life

Taken from The New York Times film review by Stephen Holden.

If you could relive any memory in your life, what would it be? Would you choose a moment of glory and triumph? Would you go back to the big game when you hit the winning shot in overtime? Or how about something more personal and private? Would you remember the time when you were sitting on the beach on a cool summer night, watching the stars, and everything in the world just made sense? What would you choose? That is the question that Hirokazu Kore-eda explores in his film, After Life.

After Life is set in a large office building, which serves as a type of check-in station for the recently departed. Twenty-two recently departed clients arrive weekly at this spiritual social service center. The new arrivals are given instructions by their caseworkers they have three days to choose a particular memory to take with them into the next world. Once a memory is chosen, the staff will do its best to construct individual home movies of the memories for the clients to take into eternity.

There are no heroes or villains in After Life, just caseworkers and clients looking for greater truths. It is a film about exploring your dreams, and discovering meaning and value. For what are movies, after all, but dream images on celluloid?

Written, directed, and edited by Hirokazu Kore-eda; directors of photography, Yutaka Yamazaki and Masayoshi Sukita; music by Yasuhiro Kasamatsu; produced by Shiho Sato and Masayuki Akieda. In Japanese with English subtitles. Running time: 118 minutes. This film is not rated.

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