Back in One Piece

First, let me start by saying that Oklahoma is a pretty sweet place. There, I said it. Whatever preconceptions I might have had before going there have been replaced by good memories. Sure it's a bit flat (Don't dare tell anyone there that you think Oklahoma is flat; they will flip. But seriously, did you see the picture above? I rest my case.), and sure there are twice as many cows as people (6 million to 3 million), and trying to find a vegetable at dinner is a lost cause, but Oklahoma seems to be a pretty up-and-coming state. It's almost as though Oklahoma still hasn't grown into itself yet. Oklahoma City recently spent a ton of money making a river out of the ditch that runs through downtown, there is a great looking baseball stadium right downtown that is used by the minor-league team, and in all directions there is space to grow. One day, when we were receiving a tour of an Oklahoma City skyscraper, the guide told us that for as far as we could see in all directions was Oklahoma City limits. Even though there aren't any buildings or people out there, it is still technically Oklahoma City and they are planning on filling out that space. (I think we were supposed to be impressed by the notion of city in all directions, but I had just been to Tokyo where I looked out the 65th floor of the Tokyo Tower, and there, too, it was city in all directions, but it was actually full of buildings and what-not).

I am getting ahead of myself, I think. If you recall, the reason we went to Oklahoma is the sister region agreement between the prefecture of Kyoto and the state of Oklahoma. Because of this, every year Oklahoma was sending university students to see Kyoto, who by all accounts had a first-class experience. (By the way, you can just tell Oklahoma is STOKED to have Kyoto as a sister region; I just spent ten minutes trying to come up with a good analogy before giving up. Suffice it to say that Kyoto became the capital of Japan in around 800 AD, more than 1100 years before Oklahoma became a state.) This year was Oklahoma's turn to show its hospitality, and they came through with flying colors. There were eight Kyoto university students, the assistant director of the International Affairs Division, and little old me. In ten days we changed place of residence every day except one, for a total of six different hotels. For about 10-12 hours every day it was my job to "interpret," but because everyone seemed to be able to get along pretty well in English, I just jumped in the trouble spots. They soon realized my incompetence, however, and in the important situations got more qualified translators. Other than that, I tried to keep track of the students so we didn't leave any behind and generally acted as a liaison. For example, if someone asked my boss a question that wasn't important in English that was too fast, I would jump in and answer. "Did you guys get a chance to hop on over to the museum?" Instead of translating, which I found made the person who spoke immediately lose interest in the conversation, I would simply say "Yeah, we had a great time." The other important function I served was to teach the students stuff like "Don't eat the apples put out for breakfast by the hotel; they will be gross," or how to make waffles on the hotel waffle maker, or how to eat oatmeal, or how to check out of a hotel, or any of a hundred things that requires cultural fluency to navigate.

The highlight of the trip was probably the football game where Oklahoma University trounced Utah State 54-3. There were 84,000 people at the game; a number I can't even contemplate. It took place in the height of the afternoon for like three hours. The left side of my face, unaccustomed to such brutal treatment, began to hurt at halftime. The rest of the trip saw the top layer of skin from my face and nose peeling off; it's cool, I didn't need that layer anyway.

Oh! I almost forgot. I am an honorary mayor of Oklahoma City. Bet you didn't think I had a future in politics, did you?

I became an honorary mayor of Oklahoma City last week, what did you do?

The wide scope of the stuff we did was pretty mind-boggling. Breakfast with the Secretary of State of Oklahoma, a meeting with the Lieutenant Governor, tours of four universities (OSU, OU, NSU, and UCO), lunch with the Honorary Consul-General of Japan, a tour of the national weather center, cowboy hall of fame, Oklahoma City bombing memorial, and a tour of Sonic headquarters (the fast-food chain popular in gas-guzzling meat-loving middle America). It was funny because despite all the money the state was shoveling to pay for our visits to all these places, they couldn't hire a driver for our van. The passenger van was driven by the chief protocol officer for the secretary of state while the baggage van was piloted by the personal assistant to the Lieutenant Governor. (Both of whom were instrumental to our great experience).

Because Kyoto is the birthplace of the Kyoto Protocol (a phrase that I have to translate ad nauseum), at each of the three universities where we were received, there was a round table discussion regarding global-warming. I don't know who decided this was a good idea, but if I was running the show, we wouldn't do this again. Just because these students are from Kyoto doesn't mean they are experts on global warming; they didn't even seem to have a particular interest in it. Most of them were western-literature majors. The students at the round table discussions were interested in global-warming, but there was nary a earth science major to be found. Also, in discussing ways of combating global-warming, it was like the Americans and Japanese were speaking different languages. It's hard to explain, but because I know a little about Japanese culture and a lot about American culture I could see the misunderstandings that were taking place. There was a lack of cultural context on both sides. For example, one Japanese student tried to explain cool-biz, a policy I mentioned in a previous post wherein dress codes are relaxed during summer as a matter of policy. She explained it well enough, but didn't get across the point that it was a government mandated measure and not just a comfort thing. The American students, for their part, didn't get that it was a big deal in Japan. The discussions were full of these little misunderstandings.

Worst moment of the round table discussions for me. After the discussion was over at NSU, the floor was opened up for questions. Of course the global-warming unbeliever of the audience had to ask a "question" of the Kyoto students.

"To what extent does the Kyoto Protocol take into account the cyclical nature of climate change?"

Frantic looks and uncomprehending faces among the students, my boss looks to me for a translation. I stammer a response along the lines of "over long periods of time global climate goes up and down..." but before I could finish, my boss looked away, convinced of my disutility.

I could have killed whoever asked that question. It wasn't even a question. Nor was it meaningful. It was simply a polemic not in the spirit of the discussion. There is a general scientific consensus that recent global temperature changes are largely due to greenhouse gas emissions, but that wasn't the nature of our discussion. I spent the rest of the question and answer session translating that question into Japanese. Later, I put the question to the students; they thought it was a stupid question too.

Luckily for all involved, the discussions were few and far between.

After all of the formal tours we weren't prepared for the strangest visit we made. We drove like 45 minutes from the city into the wrong side of a small town in order to see a local science magnet high school. After going through the school's metal detectors, we went to the shop to see what the Aerospace Science class was working on (it turned out to be a far cry from the Physical Science classroom in EHS where I Elmer's glued sheets of tissue paper together to make hot-air balloons when I was 16.) The students (though I have the feeling that the teacher was doing all the heavy lifting) were making a solar powered car. After a brief talk, and a not so brief trouble-shooting session, the teacher took some of the Japanese students for a ride. It was surprisingly exhilarating that this backwater high school in rural Oklahoma had put together a car that could run for like 50 miles on solar power. At first we were a little impatient, but in the end, everyone was cheering this portly high school science teacher and his silent, ugly, but very driveable Honda Civic.

All in all, it was a whirlwind tour. It was unlike any trip I had ever been on. It was like an enormous, very sincere, PR voyage. Everywhere we went we gave gifts to the hosts (which I had to lug around everywhere. That was my other job: souvenir Sherpa.) and we received gifts in return. I thought I would come back with less stuff than I came with considering that my suitcase going there was about 30-40% gifts, but I returned even more heavily laden. Rosemary jam, mango salsa, brochures, music cd's, calendars, certificates, t-shirts, a dvd, pancake mix, a backpack, tote bags, etc. The only thing I have used so far has been the rosemary jam; it makes excellent PB&J sandwiches.

Well, I think I will round this blog out with some random photographs from the trip.

P.S. I have a cellphone now. Number and address available upon request.

The state capital government building. The inside and outside were both very lovely. I became very distressed, though, when I realized that while this building is the equivalent to where I work in Kyoto, the Kyoto building is more akin to a Costco warehouses than it is to this. Nor does the Kyoto government complex have an oil derrick on its grounds.

Here's my loot from the trip. I couldn't get it all in one picture. After I finally took the picture and repacked everything i realized I still had another bag full of stuff I forgot to lay out.