Note from Mr. Wilson | Student Essays | Video (New!) | Photos

A Note from Mr. Wilson, Honors Program Coordinator:

Over the most recent spring break--from March 24 to March 31, 2007--six Harper College Honors Program students accompanied me, Mr. Wilson, to Japan. We (happily) endured a tiresome, two-parts flight: first to California and then to Osaka, where we landed on Sunday, March 25. Through our first three days in Japan, we toured Miyajima, Hiroshima (the Peace Park and Peace Memorial), Kyoto, and Fushimi (a suburb of Kyoto)--in that order. We did a lot of walking; we ate innumerable specimens of unique food and enjoyed first-class hospitality, for which the Japanese are legendary. We then took train after train (after train), and finally a cable car, to a Buddhist colony in Japan's mountainous Southeastern region: this was a place called Koyasan, where we spent the night in a temple (Sekisho-In). On March 30, we woke (pretty early) in the cool, serene, mist-filled air surrounding Mt. Koya, but later that same day, after another epic journey on several trains, we found ourselves smack in the middle of the ultra-electric Shibuya district of Tokyo, where we spent one final night in Japan. On March 31, we left the Narita Airport on a non-stop flight to Chicago, Illinois.

A super-quick glance at our itinerary:

March 25: Arrived at the Kansai Airport and (with our Japan Rail Passes); took a very speedy train to Kyoto, our "home base."

March 26: Visited Miyajima and Hiroshima (the Peace Park and Peace Museum).

March 27: Toured Kyoto, including the famous Kiyomizu Temple and the Gion district.

March 28: Toured Kyoto and Fushimi, including the Fushimi-Inari Shrine, with its thousands of neon-orange torii gates; spent the night at the Yoshi Ima Ryokan (a traditional Japanese inn in Kyoto's Gion district).

March 29: Took numerous trains and, finally, a (steep!) cable-car ride (which offered a spectacular view of the Japanese landscape) to Mt. Koya; ate a strictly/exceedingly vegetarian supper at a Buddhist temple/guest house; took an unforgettable night-time walked through a truly mystical cemetery, winding along pathways lit by what seemed like a million stone lanterns, dimly golden, and above us loomed hundreds and hundreds (thousands and thousands?) of immense, centuries-old trees.

March 30: Went to Tokyo, specifically to a "maid café" in Tokyo, to a kyogen performance in Tokyo, and more.

March 31: Returned to Chicago.

The Harper College Honors Program very keenly believes in the value of travel-abroad and study-abroad opportunities for students, and I am proud to say that our program was able to defray the cost(s) for each Japan-bound student. (Toward flight, housing, and tour costs, each student was asked to contribute only $1,000, and the Honors Program made up the difference.) Each student participating in the trip was required to enroll in a spring, 2007 section of Japanese 101 at Harper, and I, too, was enrolled in a JPN 101 class in the spring of '07. By participating, each student also earned two Honors credits of Humanities 115. Before departing for Japan, each student was required to read two books: Hiroshima, by John Hersey, and After the Quake, by Haruki Murakami.

Of course each student was, upon returning to the United States, asked to submit a written response to his/her experience in Japan; in their essays, the students were also welcome to offer thoughts on what it was like to take Japanese 101 and/or what it was like to read the above-mentioned books (Hersey's Hiroshima is an especially painful book). The students have graciously granted me permission to re-print their responses here, on Harper's Honors Program website (see the links below).

If you, my reader, have any question(s) about our spring, 2007 Honors trip to Japan, or any question(s) about the Harper College Honors Program, you are more than welcome to contact me at awilson@harpercollege.edu. Actually, thank you very much for visiting our site, and I hope enjoy the students' essays. None of us is an expert on Japan, of course, but I believe these essays provide some very fresh and even meaningful insights on the Japanese landscape (urban and otherwise), Japanese history (versus contemporary Japan), Japanese architecture, Japanese food, Japanese dress, Japanese spirituality, and (most of all) the strangeness, the familiarity, and the resilience of the remarkable people of Japan.

Student Essays

Japan Trip Video

Click here, or on the image above, to see a video of the Honors Program trip to Japan. Once the video loads in a new window, simply press play. If you have popups turned off on your browser, you can also access the video here. Finally, for a captioned (subtitled) version of the video, please click here.

Photos