Today we left the comfortable confines of Tokyo and are in Fukushima. Tomorrow, I have been asked to represent our group in the introduction to the Dean at Fukushima University. Students and other faculty will also be present. I am honored to be the one doing this.
To get to Fukushima, we got to ride on the bullet train. It was fast, but we were continuously going through different cities, so I don't think it was at full throttle. Riding the bullet was one of the things that I wanted to do in Japan, so I can check that off of my list now!
We are now longer with the rest of the groups. We will meet up again in about a week. As of now, I am with only 15 other Americans, our translator, and group leader.
We knew that coming to Fukushima would be different than Tokyo, but I didn't have any idea it would be so vastly different. In Tokyo, nobody would give you a second glance. They saw Americans all the time. You could stop anybody in the street and ask directions and they likely spoke English. This is not the case in Fukushima.
When we walked down the street in Fukushima, it was obvious that they are not used to foreigners. There was a lot of staring and pointing today. It is certainly a change from Tokyo.
I will try and blog tomorrow about the trip to Fukushima University. Mrs. Wold, I believe that the University system is funded similarly to those in the United States. I believe that they are partially funded by large endowments and tuition, but that they are mostly funded by the government.
One item that I will touch on more later is the centralization of the Japanese educational system. We love our local control back in the United States, but there are surely pros and cons for both centralization and local control.
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