Last Day in the Office Today is my last day in the Institute for Language Experience,  Experiment , and Exchange office here in Tokyo. It has been an amazing year and something I truly will cherish for the rest of my life. I can't  believe  how quickly these last few months flew by. My major work this summer has been with the  monthlong  programs to and from America. It was great to have a chance to bring 4-H delegates to Japan and help them experience life with a Japanese family. Meeting these delegates and planning for they exchange was something I enjoyed so much during this year. I am so proud of everything they tried and how they challenged themselves. I'm sure it is an  experience  they won't easily forget. I also got a chance to help prepare the Japanese members for the  monthlong  programs in America. Whether it was participating in camps, clubs, or just reviewing their paperwork, it was a chance for me to help these delegates...

Life Since February Sorry it's been so long since I've posted! Time has been flying by! As we are at the cusp of Golden Week, I want to talk about what has been going on here lately. To me, it seems that Golden Week is quite a transition much like New Year's was. For one thing, it pretty much puts me into the last quarter of my time here, but it also is a definite shift into stably warm and summerish weather. About a month ago, I switched to my 2nd host family. It was hard for me to switch from my last host family, but at least for the time being I get to see them at different hippo events or when my host mother comes to the office. In a way it is like i am the older brother who just moved out on my own to a different part of the city. However, it is definitely different in the fact that I have to work to develop a relationship with another host family! My new host family has done a very good job of trying to integrate me in their family. If anything, times flies by...

Adventures in Kanji! Early last week, I gave a presentation at our Older Youth Workshop about my experience with kanji (the Chinese characters used in conjunction with the Japanese writing systems in everyday Japanese life). Everyone here has been really excited about it, and they have asked me to write articles for the newsletter and for the Transnational College of LEX reports about my examples. Compared to a Japanese person, my visualization of kanji is different and interesting to them. I decided that I would also include some of my examples here. One of the places i have focused on kanji the most has been the train. For about 2 hours everyday, I am stuck on a train with free time and signs with rom anji (the roman characters), hiragana (the Japanese syllables), and kanji. It gives a great opportunity to explore the new writing methods. One of the kanji I saw often was   駅. At first, it was very hard to distinguish, but I came up with a visual image to remember it. In...

One of my new challenges is overnight homestays with members of my Hippo Family. When I change host families in March or April, I will also be changing Hippo Families. So this is an opportunity for me to spend more time with them before I switch. I get a chance to learn more Japanese by interacting with more people and they get a chance to learn more about America. I have only completed two so far, but both of them were very different experiences. My first one was with a young couple who had 3-year-old and 1-year-old sons. We spent our time playing with toys, going to parks, and watching movies. One of the shows we watched, Shimajiro, was a program for young Japanese kids to learn English in a simple way like Sesame Street. I was surprised by how much the 3-year-old knew! He had never really shared English in any of our Hippo Clubs, but here he was reciting the colors, numbers, and vegetables when I quized him. He knew so many words in English, but couldn't really use them ...

Happy 2010! New Year's Holiday is a very exciting time in Japan. For many days before the New Year, people across Japan spend their days cleaning. In the office, we took a day to clean out old files, rearrange our desks, and wash common areas. At home, I helped my family by cleaning all the high areas of the house – there are some advantages to being 6'2". It is also important to prepare certain dishes for the New Year; tradition is not to cook during the first 3 days of the New Year. Now, however, people give in and do so. In my host family, we enjoyed these traditional foods only for lunch (the same food for 3 days!). One of the most famous of these foods is mochi (sticky rice cake) soup. It is definitely a different kind of soup, and I have to say I prefer the regular miso... Each of the foods is supposed to symbolize something. For example, the lotus root (because of its shape) symbolizes looking into the future. There is also a kind of fish eggs that symboliz...

Yearlong English Interviews Life in Japan has been progressing as usual. We are already starting to get ready for many of the exchanges next year. While for the short term programs it is as simple as accepting applications or preparing information sessions, the yearlong program requires a lot from the student. We already accepted the Hippo applications and provided an informational guidance session at the end of October. However, that is just the beginning. In order to be accepted into a foreign program, the student must work hard to complete many more pieces - a Japanese interview, a foreign language interview, a Second Language English Proficiency test, and then after passing all of those they must write applications and essays for the foreign program (many times requiring additional revisions to complete proper language). That is why we are so busy with the program already and why we have so many members on the yearlong team. For the most part, I serve two purposes on the te...

A Little Bit of LEXology One of the projects I have been working on a lot recently is assisting with the translation of the Yo Sakakibara's book into English (the working English title is Sing the Sounds, Children). Pretty much I serve as a native-English, university-educated reader who helps suggest the proper words, with proper connotations based on the LEX philosophy. The translator does an amazing job, but when there are such complex ideas written in a traditional Japanese matter (with added poetic or vague style), it can be hard to know exactly what the philosophy is. We work to make it applicaple to the potential U.S. reader. I also 'attempted' to assist the chairman, Kenshi Suzuki, with a speech at one of our older youth workshops. I say attempted because I don't think I was really much help. His voice was weak that day and we had many international guests so he wanted to whisper to me what he wanted to say and I would use my voice to tell the workshop. I...

Ahn-young! For the last month, I have been trying to enjoy Korean as one of my iniatives to embrace the multilingual aspect of LEX. It also was helpful because I had the opportunity to travel to Korea. My host family had friends who had moved there for an assignment with work, but were moving back to Japan soon. Pretty much, it was their last chance to visit them while they lived in Korea and I was just lucky enough to be able to go with them. It was pretty exciting especially since I heard that I was the first intern to travel on a family vacation out of the country. One of the things I really enjoyed about Korea was its connection to the U.S. I kept thinking how Seoul had many more younger foreigners than Tokyo, but I understood why - Tokyo is really expensive! Also, I found a lot more American companies and products on the shelf. There were just as many Dunkin Dounuts as there were Starbucks. However, Seoul is a city with a double face. Many areas are freshly develope...

Koto-Ku Community Festival Wow! It seems like just yesterday that I was writing my last blog post, but yet it was really 2 weeks! I have been told it has gotten a lot colder in the U.S., so I should probably tell you I've only worn a light jacket once so far...And that was when the latest typhoon was offshore and pulling wind down from Russia. Otherwise, it has been amazing weather here. As always, I've been doing a lot, but I will talk about one thing I really enjoyed. I worked at a Hippo booth at my community festival. The festival was held over the weekend a week ago at Kiba Park near my home. The park is quite large and known for the Tokyo Museum of Contemporary Art, but mostly it's cool because it has a suspension bridge over a canal in the middle. The event was quite exciting for me as it was also my first Japanese festival. I want to say it was a mix between a flea market and a trade show. There were many tents set up in many different areas. Booths varied a...

One Month in Japan Today marks a month since I came to Japan. It really has gone quickly and some how I knew it would. I figured after I'd been here for awhile everything would start to settle down, but it hasn't quite happened yet. I feel like I always have a full calender and from what I've seen from people in Hippo this is a normal occurance. I'm partially excited because there is so much to experience and only a year to do it in, but also starting to feel the wear and tear. Sadly, the weekends are far to precious to catch my breath. This past weekend was once again an extended weekend due to a holiday on Monday- there tend to be quite a few. I personally think it's because people work so hard with so much overtime that the holidays are built in to help them survive. Personally, my weekend was jammed back with brass band concerts, sightseeing, and festival. Outside the Asakusa Shrine One Weekend On Saturday night, we attended one of our usual club...

Impressions Having never been to Japan before, many things were immediately new to me. While I've spent the last few days talking about the major changes I've been going through, there are many small ones that are what makes Japan so much fun. So today, I'm going to talk about some of those little things. Of course, Japan (and even Tokyo) is very diverse and I'm sure each thing I say will be somewhat contradictory. The first thing I have to mention because it is raining today - clear umbrellas are  soo  popular. I had seen maybe one before arriving in Japan and on my commute to work this morning I have already seen about 500. I would say they are more popular among young people with an alarmingly many among men. I saw some on sale at Don  Quiote  on my way in for ￥398, so I might have to pick one up on my way home... Another thing I was taken aback by was the amount of technology is cars. For the most part, the same vehicle could be found in the U.S. from t...

My Host Family During my year in Japan, I stay with at least 2 different  long term  hosts as well as the potential for many  short term  hosts when I take business trips to different locations or visit different cities or go on an exchange. However, for at least 2 of those families, I have the potential to become a more indepth family member. The family I am currently staying with is the Katsuki family in Koto-ku (near the bay on the Eastside of Tokyo). My family members include my dad, mom (hippo nickname, Jasmine), host brother (Hideyuki, hippo nickname Gamon), and host sister Sena (she does not live in the home and I have not yet met her). My host father works for the Asahi Beer Company (no, it does not mean free beer). He works a lot! Most nights he doesn't get home until after 10 pm. All of last week, he was on a business trip to Thailand and Vietnam. My host mother does not have a traditional job, but she does a lot! Not only does she take care of the ...

Food I made one rule for myself when coming to Japan. I would try everything at least once no matter how bad I thought it would be. However, I've already come to modify that rule to I'll try  almost  everything at least once (I'm not so brave when it comes to fish with their heads on). The largest problem was that I really hadn't had much Japanese food before arriving in Japan. So, when everyone asked me exactly what I liked or didn't like, I couldn't tell them anything. This meant that I told them I was willing to try, which led to almost a challenge to find things for me to eat. Within two hours from being off the plane, I had one of the members in my hippo club running to find something special. He bought natto, which is a fermented soybean product. I was already feeling a little nauseous from being on a plane for so long and here I was asked to eat something even Japanese have a hard time eating. In the end, I did not like it, but I did promise my fa...

Arrival In Japan What an experience! I'm Michael Gobin. I will be the 2009-2010 LEX Intern in the Tokyo Office. LEX America has been telling you a lot about me, so I won't take a lot of space on introductions. I will be contributing to this blog a couple times a month over the next year. However, my mentor here in the office is gone on a multi-country adventure for the next week, so I will be spending those days contributing more often. I'll try to paint a picture of what my first few days in Japan have been like. Even though I spent 14 hours on a plane headed to Japan. It wasn't until I took those first steps off the plane that it hit me like I walked through a curtain that I was in Japan. First of all, it was immediately warmer. Kana went from being an equal language in places where it mattered, to everywhere with English only as a back-up in the important areas. Most importantly though, I became completely illiterate and that's when I knew the adventure h...