I had dinner at my student’s house tonight.  Her husband is in China for the year (for work) so it’s just her and her seven year old daughter (the daughter is actually the student).  We got on the topic of the Americans here and I was telling her that D.J. and I were hoping to go to Hiroshima soon.  She said that she had never been and I asked her what she thought about the Washington (a carrier that’s nuclear and replacing the Kitty Hawk soon).  There have been protests outside the gates of the base – one in which I was on base and they shut down the gates for safety, trapping me inside for an hour or so – and I wondered her opinion on it.  She agreed with many of my students that even though she doesn’t necessarily like the fact that there will be a nuclear powered ship here, Japan needs America’s protection.  She said that when North Korea tested their missile over Japanese waters, her daughter cried while watching the news and informed her that she wasn’t going to go to school anymore.  She said that she wanted to die at home with her family and not alone at school.  Isn’t that just the saddest thing you’ve ever heard?  I almost died.  I just wanted to reassure her.  We’re not going anywhere anytime soon!

I went to the home of one of the teachers I work with yesterday for lunch. She had four other teachers over and we ate Japanese food and just socialized. It was a holiday (it was Golden week) and yesterday was Boy’s day. She’s leaving the school, which is a shame because I really love her. She’s like another Gramma to me. We get along really well and I enjoy her classes the most. I think she’s the most easy going and relaxed and it translates to the classroom. It puts the students at ease. She has some health problems and says that the stress of the job hasn’t been good for her health so she’s cutting out now (she’s in her late 50′s to early 60′s – I think). Another teacher is also leaving, but I’ve only met her once or twice before.

We talked a lot about politics and religion and it was really interesting to listen to them talk about where they thought Japan was headed. They were all very concerned about the increasing crime rates. When they were growing up in the 50′s, they could remember crimes that happened very well since there would only be one newsworthy crime every couple of years. Now, they say, there are way too many to remember – at least one per day. They said that while growing up (right after WWII), while they still had rules governing morality, they weren’t supposed to have any pride in Japan and instead of highlighting the lines in their books, they had to sit and cross out every sentence in their textbooks. While this was happening, they were watching TV shows from America (Patty Duke and I Love Lucy especially) and fell in love with American culture. They said that they thought the American idea of individualism was so great that they took some of those ideas and incorporated the bad parts of that view into their culture without incorporating the good. They felt that the sense of community that was so prevalent in Japanese culture is increasingly disappearing. They were saddened by the fact that the rules of morality that they had been brought up with (it was a government instituted code taught in schools) has gone by the wayside and they felt like Japan needed something to bring it back into a moral place. They didn’t feel that instituting religion was the answer, but that something needs to be done. They worry that the young people of Japan don’t have the upbringing or spiritual background to be good people anymore.

It made me wonder if America (with all the different religions and senses of right and wrong) will fare any better.