Peace Education, October 6 Continued

Hello Fernwood students and loyal blog readers. I hope that you are enjoying reading about my trip to Japan on behalf of Fernwood. Please write to me and let me know if you have questions or comments. Your teacher has my yahoo email address. I would be happy to write you back at the end of my day. Night for me is morning for you. If you write me today, you will get an answer tomorrow morning. Don't forget to look at the blogs of all of the previous days. They can be found in the side bar. You can also click to find out about the weather in Tokyo. You may have to scroll way down to the bottom of the page.

Can you see the raindrops on the picture of the Koi Pond?

The rain and wind continued steadily all day, but that is not the only reason why I was happy to remain indoors and attend programs today. This morning we had an important program on Peace Education. I learned a lot and am excited to come back and share this with Fernwood.

We had three excellent speakers. All three are connected in some way to Hiroshima or Nagasaki. Their home cities were destroyed by atomic bombs 60 years ago. Mr. Koji Ikeda was a young married man with a baby son when his city was destroyed. He spoke about what it was like on the day of the bombing and afterward.

Tomoko Yanagi is a teacher at Hiroshima Misuzugaoka High School. She is a child of a Hiroshima survivor who now teaches about peace.


The third presenter was Migiwa Ishitani, the daughter of an atomic bomb survivor. Her father was a dedicated and courageous peace activist in Japan who died from cancer as a result of the radiation from the bombing.

I thought that they would be very angry at Americans for the bombing and for all of the pain, death and destruction. The message of the day was certainly not about hatred or blame.

Each of these speakers knows a lot about war and they don't want wars to continue. They acknowledged that their country had been aggressive in the past, and had caused pain to innocent people in other countries. They believe that we all can and should play a role in making our world more peaceful.

Their voices were quiet and gentle, but their stories were powerful. I have a lot to think about.

After my early morning at the Tsukiji Fish Market, I was glad that we had another interesting speaker in the afternoon. Mr. Chihiro Tada spoke to us, but he also had things for us to do so that we could stay awake. Tada San is a director of the Art Education Institute Toy Museum. He showed us how to make some old fashioned Japanese Toys. I hope that I will remember how to make these when I get back to Fernwood.



After our classes for the day were over, I went out with a group of other JFMF teachers. The weather was TERRIBLE! It was so windy that my umbrella turned inside out! We visited a pearl store where we learned about Japanese Cultured Pearls. That was enjoyable and interesting. The pearls are very beautiful and very expensive.

I was happy to go back to the hotel after this long wet day and climb into my nice warm bed.