There are quite a few things I have learned from my most recent trip to Japan.

One, just because a soft ice cream is green does not mean it is the regular green tea flavored one. I was too eager to get one and so I skipped reading the ad. The salesman was kind enough to point out its flavor: wasabi. It was so good.

Wasabi ice cream in Japan

Trains can have nice looking flooring such as this Sonic.

Sonic train in Japan

There was once gold mining in Japan. We visited the Taio Gold Mine near Hita in Northern Kyushu.

Taio Gold Mine in Japan

I know now the taste of Vegemite. I had to come all the way to Japan as a tourist to taste this at breakfast time at a Japanese friend’s home.

Another new taste was yokan (not to be confused with the Japanese sweet bean jelly). Yokan, the Japanese term for this vegetable, seems like a cross between potato and radish. I was told this is a fairly new vegetable from South America.

Nine-tenths of education is encouragement.

- Anatole France -

The Bedouins; Mary Garden, Debussy, Chopin or the Circus, Botticelli, Poe, Brahmsody, Anatole France, Mirbeau, Caruso on Wheels, Calico Cats from Amazon.de

A palindrome is a word, phrase, verse, or sentence that reads the same backward or forward.

Here is a list of words:

3 letters : dad, did, ewe

4 letters: Anna, deed, kook, noon, Otto, peep, sees,

5 letters: civic, kayak, level, put up, radar, refer, rotor, sagas, sexes, shahs, solos, stats, tenet;

6 letters: Hannah, redder

7 letters: deified, race car, repaper, reviver, rotator

It is the supreme art of the teacher to awaken joy in creative expression and knowledge.

- Albert Einstein -

For our forthcoming trip to Korea and Japan, I’ve gotten a lot us useful advice from my Korean students in regards to our two-day stay in Seoul.

1) Do not take the subway. So I have asked some of my former students to have our reunion at the hotel we are staying. Seoul has many eating and drinking places everywhere, so we plan on doing everything from there in walking distance.

2) Take sunglasses. As of now, the Yellow Dust (HwangSa) from China is sweeping over the peninsula, so we need to protect our eyes and we might have to buy some surgical masks as well.

3) Beware of pickpockets. Sounds like any big city in Europe, where we also need to travel with caution.

4) Beware of counterfeit. In order to learn to recognize counterfeit, I was given a lesson by a fourth-grader. He brought all kinds of Korean bills with him, pointing out the watermarks, the silver stripe in some of them, raised textures on some, and more details almost too tiny to see with one’s eyes.

Last, but not least, my local bank had told me I could not buy Korean currency in Germany. This I will have to do with euro cash at the Incheon Airport bank.

That same fourth-grader was also concerned I might go hungry, when I arrive in Seoul without Korean money in my wallet. So he gave me this bill below, so I could buy myself two lunches in Seoul.

Korean Won currency

His concern for me was the nicest present I have ever been given by a student. I offered him euro in exchange, but he wouldn’t have it. All I had to do in return was my promise to him to have a good time.