Why I left the program: An explanation

My name is Patrick Seitz. I’m a 27-year-old graduate student at UCR—or was, rather, up until this past June, when I completed my MFA studies. I participated in three and a half days’ worth of the Fukuyama University culture program before leaving for Tokyo and spending the remainder of my time in Japan on an itinerary of my own creation. In thinking back on my time with the culture program and Fukuyama University, my feelings and motivations for leaving are clear, both emotionally and conceptually. However, my first efforts to write them down in the more usual essay form were unsuccessful. If I’m going to have any success at all conveying why I left the program one-third of the way through, I think I’m going to have to set down my experiences in some sort of sequential order, day by day and event by event.

Sunday, June 26: This was the first day of the program, and the first event on our itinerary was a Japanese cooking workshop with the Soroptimists. Eight or ten different dishes were being prepared simultaneously, and the students were encouraged to flit about from station to station. We all got to experience aspects of each dish’s preparation, but the frenetic pace and the simultaneity made it difficult (if not impossible) for any one person to come away having learned the recipes. They were provided for us in English for later use, anyway, so I’m guessing this even was meant more to be fun and culminate in a big lunch than anything else. So far, so good.

After the cooking demonstration, we were slated to go on a tour of Tomonoura. This is when the problems began, although I only realized in retrospect how emblematic of the program as a whole this event would be. Our tour, such as it was, consisted of being ferried over to the island and told to meet back at the rendezvous point in 45 minutes. No tour in the traditional sense. No explanation of what historical or modern significance Tomonoura might have. Nothing, really—just three-quarters of an hour to tromp around an island which has been included on the itinerary for reasons unknown. I took a pleasant walk and bought a tanuki figurine, but one had to wonder if that’s all Tomonoura had to offer.

Monday, June 27: Our morning started with an orientation of the program, and a general cultural orientation. The cultural orientation seemed particularly after-the-fact, as we’d all been with our respective host families for two or three days by that point. All of our mistakes had already been made, and they’d already explained to us anything that warranted explanation. We were given a stapled handout that would have done us much more good to receive prior to leaving the United States. In retrospect, I think an orientation shortly before they leave for Japan would do the participants much more good, perhaps followed up by a shorter, on-site orientation once they’ve actually arrived.

After the orientation, we had a brief meeting with the Chancellor of Fukuyama University and some of the school’s department heads and dignitaries. I didn’t feel one way or the other about this—it’s a new program, they wanted to meet us, end of story. I know at least one other participant was irked by the fact that the only women to be seen were those demurely setting down the tea cups, but that didn’t bother me much. America still has too much of a glass ceiling in place for me to be indignant if women haven’t broken more completely into the top ranks of one particular university in Japan.

The last event of the day was the Mazda plant tour. This even took up a goodly chunk of our day, requiring us to leave Fukuyama University at noon and having us back at the Matsunaga bus stop around five in the afternoon.

At this point, I’d like to break out of my chronological retelling and comment on the plant tours in general. There were a total of five plant tours on the culture program’s itinerary, making it—along with lectures given by the Fukuyama University professors—the most common activity during our stay. Indeed, on the last day of the program, two plant tours were scheduled. I’m not saying that a tour of a manufacturing plant automatically has no place on the itinerary of what’s been touted as a culture program, but the two plant tours I went on before leaving the program weren’t at all pertinent—or weren’t made pertinent, rather. How did the Mazda plant differ from any car manufacturing plant I might walk through in America? Or the JFE Steel Corporation plant? Or any of them? Was there something specifically, distinctly Japanese about them? I didn’t know as I went in, and I was none the wiser when I left. Plant tours monopolized the afternoons on no less than four days of our itinerary. Again, with no effort made (during the two I went on, at least) to contextualize the plants as something specifically Japanese, it felt like large chunks of time were being wasted on something one could just as easily see at home.

Tuesday, June 28: Our day started with a lecture on the science of the Japanese sword. It had nothing to do with the history of the swords, their social significance, or any other aspect one might consider “cultural”. The lecture focused on the universal laws of metallurgy—laws that we as a group were unable to fathom, none of us having the proper scientific background to make head or tails of it. The lecture was based—as were many of our events—around handouts, PowerPoint, and video. The language barrier was an obvious issue, which played itself out again and again, and often we were just being told what we’d already read for ourselves on the page or on the screen. This was a disappointment; frankly, I hadn’t come to Japan to be given papers and shown videos I could have just as easily read or watched at home.

After the lecture, it was time for a Japanese flower arrangement workshop. The flower-arrangement teacher told us (via our translator) that there were different styles and schools of flower arrangement, but that we were going to do it freestyle. We were each given flowers and a pot, and we complied with her request that we arrange them however we felt. It seemed that we were just playing with flowers willy-nilly for want of any official explanation of flower arrangement, but I was enjoying the opportunity to be proactive. I was enjoying myself much less when the teacher went from pot to pot and “fixed” the arrangements without the participation or permission of each student. If it’s freestyle, fine—we’ll arrange them according to our whim. If there’s a set way to do it, fine—tell us and we’ll try our best. But having the teacher go through and claim ownership of our arrangements? I felt patronized, and I wasn’t the only one.

The last event of the day—and the straw that broke the camel’s back, personally—was our trip to the Noh theater in Fukuyama. It started consistently enough, with a PowerPoint presentation in English that was painstakingly and superfluously read to us (English speakers, all) in English. When the PowerPoint was done, we were shown a short video of a Noh actor on stage. At this point, one of the other culture program participants figured it all out a little quicker than I did and wrote me a note, saying that she had this horrible hunch that the video was all the Noh we were going to see that day. We were brought into the theater proper. The question came up as to whether we were going to see a Noh play. No, we were told, but we were going to get dressed up in Noh costumes.

At that point, I snapped. While the others were trying on the costumes and padding onto the stage to have their pictures taken, I was unburdening myself to Tina (for whom I have nothing but respect and gratitude for her patience and help—Fukuyama University could stand to have more people like her in the culture program’s employ). I was through with the program, which I told her in no uncertain terms. At that moment, I was ready to leave Japan immediately. I had bought tickets to see Kabuki in Los Angeles before hearing about the culture program, and my going to Japan required me to miss that performance. Thus, the prospect of seeing a Noh play was one of the program’s big selling points for me. To have that rug pulled out from underneath me so blithely was more than I could handle—more than I felt I should have to handle, at any rate.

I had decided to leave, and why not? Looking at the rest of our itinerary, I saw a week of culturally-tangential lectures I didn’t care about and plant tours I’d be just as happy to miss. And after the Noh disappointment, and the petty, legalistic way those in charge tried to explain it away to deny any sort of culpability, what hope was I supposed to pin on the remaining events that did look interesting to me? After those conversations, I could just as easily imagine having one later in the week along the lines of, “Hey, we never explicitly stated you’d get to walk around the Peace Park,” or perhaps “The itinerary just said ‘Ropeway to Senkoji temple’—we were perfectly justified in turning right around once we got to the top of the ropeway, according to how this is worded.” I had changed my work schedule around completely to go on the trip, and was missing a work-related convention to be in Japan. I might as well go home and get cracking where I’d left off, or so I reasoned. I went to an internet café and researched next-day flights back to America, all of which would have been prohibitively expensive had I not been so frustrated.

Wednesday, June 29: The next day, the Noh debacle only got worse. I spoke with Carol in the morning, who went through the motions of trying to convince me to stay. I told her in no uncertain terms that I was leaving the program. She brought up the Noh “misunderstanding,” taking the petty and legalistic stance that nothing ever actually said that we were going to get to see Noh theater being performed—merely that we’d get to see the theater. That excuse didn’t fly with me, and I told her so. In Japan, and afterwards in the United States, there have been two types of people with regards to the Noh situation: those who were surprised to hear that we weren’t seeing Noh theater being performed, based on what they’d heard or read, and those who tried to explain it all away by jumping through semantic hoops. So far, only those involved with the culture program (except for Tina) are in the latter group.

I told Carol that my one big concern was how to tell my host family that I was leaving, and that it had absolutely nothing to do with them. I asked if she’d help me tell them, as I don’t speak Japanese, she speaks it fluently, and my host family’s English was on the rudimentary side, at best. She agreed.

After I was done with Carol, I made a variety of phone calls back to the United States. My bosses (both of whom visit Japan regularly, and one of whom is a Japanese native) convinced me not to leave the country—instead, they said, I should go on my own and explore Japan until it was time to fly back on my original ticket. They convinced me, and I’m glad they did, as I had a wonderful time after I left the program. I was in the midst of getting a train schedule in Tina’s office when Carol came in. I had to go tell Okubo-sensei why I was leaving. Our conversation was an echo of the conversation I’d had with Carol earlier that day—“Nothing ever explicitly said you’d see Noh theater being performed.” He also tried, “Well, there’s no Noh theater taking place while you’re here,” and “You get what you pay for—obviously, Noh tickets wouldn’t be covered by a program that cost so little.” I told him that, as an American, how was I supposed to arrive armed with the Noh schedule or prices? Finally, I convinced Okubo-sensei that I was leaving the program, and that it was non-negotiable.

After lunch, as we left for the JFE plant tour (which I saw as my last chance to be with the group), I reiterated my concern to Carol that she would help me explain to my host family why I was leaving. The tour itself was a repeat of the Mazda tour in why it left me unfulfilled, and I’ve already discussed my problem with the plant tours as a whole. My last day with the program ended as we were dropped off at Matsunaga bus stop. As I left the bus, I asked Carol when we were going to figure out what to say to my host family about my leaving. “The university will take care of it,” she told me.

And maybe they did—I wouldn’t know. I got home to my host family late that afternoon, who obviously had no idea that I was fixing to leave the next morning. I waited and waited. The time grew later and later. Finally, around 10 p.m. I realized that Carol was not going to call, despite my having asked repeatedly for her help and her pledging said help. Thanks to Carol, I had to explain myself through English, what few words of Japanese I know, and charades. It was not how I wanted to tell four lovely, generous people that they were the highlight of my time in Fukuyama and that my departure had nothing to do with them.

Thursday, June 30: Carol called me the next morning. I’d told another program participant of Carol’s lack of help, and the participant had called her on it when they’d spoken. To hear Carol tell it, she’d only agreed to help explain to my host family after I’d left—you know, because it’s not like that was the sort of thing I would have liked them to understand before I departed. She wasn’t even playing the legalism or semantics card anymore—she was flat-out disregarding the conversation we’d had at least three times the previous day and inventing some new reality so she could feel at ease about leaving me high and dry when I needed her the most. I wanted to call on her cowardice, but I was too tired, and it wouldn’t have done any good.

Afterword: My remaining time in Japan was excellent. I explored Tokyo. I saw Himeji and Nijo Castles. I took in the shrines and hot springs in Nikko. I heard the Temple of the Golden Pavilion’s bell resound in the afternoon rain. I watched feral, bright-eyed cats slink through walkways of red Shinto torii. I got firsthand proof in Harajuku that the teen-Goth affectation is a worldwide phenomenon. I even got to see both a Noh and a Kabuki play, which left me feeling triumphant. I found the Japan I needed to find, the Japan I thought the cultural program would usher me through. It’s there for the experiencing.

I spoke with some of the other participants before I left the program, and again at the airport before we flew back home. While I don’t presume to speak for the group, and while it’s all apocryphal, it sounds like a person’s enjoyment of the Fukuyama University culture program ran inverse to their age, their knowledge of Japan prior to the trip, and their sense of passivity (both academic and general). As a 27-year-old graduate student who paid for his own airfare, I’m sure I had a wholly different set of expectations for the program than did a 19-year-old undergraduate whose parent(s) footed the bill. It’s conjecture on my part, but not illogical.

A culture program should focus on the aspects of a nation’s culture that are specific and unique to that nation. With globalization being so common nowadays, this is going to often involve focusing on times past, the places, people and events that made the country what it has become. This is obviously going to require a much longer and more in-depth look at the humanities—music, literature, theater, history, etc.—than Fukuyama University’s program had allowed for.

A culture program should involve lectures that are not rehashes of what’s in the PowerPoint presentation or what’s in the packet. These lectures should be given by professors whose English is good enough that the participants can ask questions and have them understood and answered. These professors should have some knowledge of the Socratic method of teaching, or at least be familiar enough with it to realize why a lecture of the “learning by passing of the handout baton” style isn’t going to keep American students engaged.

A culture program should be staffed with professionals who are receptive to the participants, and who don’t try to wash their hands of uncomfortable situations by quoting technicalities. If something goes wrong, leaders should be more concerned with conflict resolution than with being “right”. By pursuing the latter at the expense of the former, they only compound the original problem. And if they say they’re going to do something—such as, say, help somebody explain a touchy, complex situation in a language they don’t speak—they should do it.

A culture program should take place in a location that’s conducive to its titular goal. From what I’ve heard, Fukuyama University used to host a month-long language program for UCR students. That program was sent to Kyoto (for reasons unknown to me), and now Fukuyama University has the 10-day culture program. It felt from time to time as though they’d just whittled 20 days off of the old program and served it up, never addressing the differences between extracurricular events in a language program (which can be anything, basically, so long as there’s the desired language immersion) and the events that would serve as the spine for a culture program (which require a little more depth).

I hope these comments of mine can be of some use to the program. To my way of thinking, if the program can’t address some or all of these concerns, its overall quality might not warrant its existence. As much as I’d like to put Fukuyama University behind me completely, and strike its memory from the record, I’d like to help others avoid having as bad of a time as I had. If anybody involved with the U.S. side of the program has any further questions, or wants me to clarify or expound on anything I’ve said here, I would invite them to contact me at their convenience.