My Interview with the Chunichi Shimbun

Almost right after I posted the blog post on Friday, I got a call from the Chunichi Shimbun, which now wants to do an article on the exchange with the Israeli class.

The Chunichi Shimbun is one of the newspapers for the greater Nagoya area. I’m no expert on Japanese newspaper circulation, but it’s probably the equivalent of “The Chicago Tribune” or “The Detroit Free Press”. I guess the town hall guy must have mentioned the exchange to the Chunichi reporter.

I’m somewhat embarrassed about how much attention this exchange is getting. Ordinarily I’m as vain as the next guy. I want my 15 minutes of fame and recognition for my achievements just as much as anybody else, but this pen-pal exchange is not one of my finer moments. I got it dropped into my lap by Monika. One of the main reasons I went ahead with it was because it saved me from having to plan out new lessons every week. And I’ve been real half-assed about it. Sometimes my students’ letters will sit on my desk for up to two weeks before I get around to typing them all out and e-mailing them to the Israeli teacher. And I worry that if people keep tugging at the strings, eventually all of this is going to be revealed.

Fortunately the reporter is younger than me, and seems more intimidated by me than I am of him. He is only 24 and told me he is only just getting out of the layout room. I imagine he’s somewhat desperate for ideas, which is why he’s interested in writing this article. And he told me his stuff often gets cut by the editor, so the article may never see the light of day.

But he still interviewed me for an hour and a half last Friday. I’m not sure if it was because of his inexperience, or because these Japanese are so thorough, but he wanted to know everything. And I struggled through the conversation in my poor, stuttering Japanese.

“Are there any cross-cultural issues that come up in this exchange?” he asked.

“Oh yeah. For instance in December the Japanese teacher wanted to write a Christmas greeting to the class in Israel, and I had to intervene and stop the idea. Also the Israeli students often write about all sorts of things like Bar Mitzvahs or Hanukkah, and they just assume my students will understand, but my students don’t. I always have to do a lot of explaining.”

And then of course I had to explain Bar Mitzvah and Hanukkah. Like most Japanese people, the reporter knew nothing about Israel, and so I have suddenly been transformed into the local Israel expert.

“B-A-R space M-I-T-Z-A-H. I think that’s right. Maybe you should double-check it before you print it. Anyway it’s the ceremony when a Jewish boy becomes a man. It’s at 12. Or is it 13….”

And “…In Israel they don’t have Christmas. They celebrate Hanukkah. It has something to do with independence from Greece, and there was also this lamp that burned for 12 days, even though they didn’t have any oil. So they celebrate the lamp. Actually you might want to double check that part as well before you print it.”

“Shall we just say it’s the Jewish version of Christmas?” he asked.

“Yeah, that’s good.”

On Monday he came back to interview me for another couple hours, and also talk to the students and take some pictures. (I voluntarily excused myself when he was talking to the students so that my presence wouldn’t influence their answers, but apparently they all said good things about me.)

Now I guess we’ll just see what happens. He’s easily collected enough information to write a book on this little e-mail exchange, but there’s a good possibility his editor will kill the piece and it won’t run at all.

Link of the Day
My performance not withstanding, the Israeli teacher on the other end of this exchange is really very impressive. You can check out her website here, and in particular the unit she put together on the Holocaust is worth spending a few minutes. Also my class and the pictures we sent over to Israel are posted here. (I'm made a point of not being in the picture though, so its just my students.)