One more blog

By now your children are likely still asleep from jetlag, so here is one last blog entry to read while you wait for them to come back to consciousness:

Our final day in Japan held one more surprise - we didn't tell the kids until we were at the very doorstep that we had one last special stop in mind, the one and only Studio Ghibli! For the uninitiated, this is the "Graceland" of anime, the exclusive headquarters of worldwide anime legend Hayao Miyazaki and his team. Security here was tighter than at the Hokkaido Governor's office, and tickets were tough to obtain - with tight limits on how many one could purchase, and a necessary lead time and hard and fast entrance and exit time slots, pulling off this coup took the efforts of sister-city personnel on both continents, a visit months in the making...and the squeals of the kids made it all worth it.

Photography inside the grounds was forbidden, but rest assured the layout was as magical as you would expect from the Studio that brought you Spirited Away, Princess Mononoke, Howl's Moving Castle, My Neighbor Totoro and others...it was a portal into another universe, one which we had all come to know and love through Ghibli films. It was "Disneyland with a soul", someone said. Would that we had time to stay longer, but with the heavy Tokyo traffic, we barely made our plane flight as is!

Daring last-minute rushes to airport gates seem par for the course for the scifi club, however, just as it seemed somehow weirdly fitting that we held our emotional final meeting, as detailed in the last blog entry, in a random skyscraper stairwell when no other locations proved feasible. Our trip was full of so many weird-yet-meaningful moments, like when Kyle gave up his seat on a subway to an older woman in a kimono, who was so moved she made him a little origami samurai hat on the spot...or the older gentleman who approached our group, asked about us, and declared, "Now you can say you've met a weird old Japanese man!", or the fast friends our students made with their Japanese counterparts united by their common love of animation and art. Watching these kinds of interactions, one would be hard-pressed to believe any enmity had ever existed between Japanese and Americans....and it is the work of exchanges like these that built, and continue to build, that peace.

I told the students that the challenges our world faces today, particularly in terms of the environment, aren't challenges that one nation can tackle alone...we have to work together, and that requires building bridges across cultures. These kids proved that was not only possible, but that THEY could be the ones to do it. The "homework" I assigned them from this trip is to try and carry this forward to the next step, whatever that step may be. If they choose to continue an involvement with Japan in particular, they now know that they are now a part of a whole larger community, in both nations, of sister-city and sister-state supporters.

Scifi Club and World Lit were both "underdog" groups that have come a long way at CC, and it gave me so much pride to see these kids shine, and be honored for their abilities, their enthusiasm, and their good nature. I will not forget the experiences we've had, as they have been some of the best in my career. Thank you so much for your part in making this trip happen.

Our first meal back in the States? Burger King, of course. With much grousing about why there were no recycling bins in the airport, like there were in Japan, and why their houses back home didn't have motion-sensitive dimmers on the lights. Perhaps a beginning....

Domo Arrigato Gozaimashta,

- David Nurenberg


PS: It's not "over" just yet! Sometime in mid-May we will have a reunion dinner at the CCHS cafeteria, wherein we'll be using the last of the trip funds to treat everyone to pizza and (I hope) a completed slideshow of the movie footage I've been taking all trip long (yes, there is a reason Mr. N. had a camera in everyone's face all the time!) Students and their families alike are invited. Stay posted as I'll propose a date shortly.

PPS: More photos to post shortly.