Preparation for the trip

My GSE experience began with a phone call from a friend, who said he was calling to ask if I wanted to go to Japan for four weeks? At first I thought I had misheard, but my friend went on to explain a little about the trip, and then put me through to his father, a Rotarian from Birtley Rotary Club. He told me about the nature of GSE, and that this year’s trip was to Osaka, Japan. He explained that I would need to attend an interview with the Club, a regular Club meeting and then an interview before the selection panel. My initial reaction was that it all sounded too good to be true.

My interview with Birtley Club was informal and was very useful for me in that I found out a lot about Rotary generally and GSE in particular. The members from the Club were happy to put me forward, and all seemed convinced that I would be selected - I wished I shared their confidence! Following advice from the Club I found out as much as I could about Japan and Osaka, and information about commerce in the North East. After the selection interview I was convinced that I had not done very well - I had not talked about any of the information I had researched and to my mind I had struggled to answer some of the questions put to me. I was therefore surprised to receive a phone call from Howard that night asking me to join the trip. I had no hesitation in accepting.

The first time that all the team got together was a meeting at Howard’s house in October. Howard warned us about problems that can arise when teams do not get on, but at the end of the meeting I felt confident that I would like everyone on the team. This proved to be the case, as all the team got on well throughout the preparation and the trip itself.

From January 2000 until we left for Osaka in May, I felt as if the GSE trip was taking over my life as we had regular team meetings to plan our presentation, and we also took Japanese classes. We attended a course of 10 lessons at a local college which we organized ourselves, and we had four three-hour sessions on language and culture which were organized by Rotary. We all found the Japanese a struggle, and by the end of the course I felt I had only mastered basic greetings, and how to order items in a shop. However the lessons were invaluable not only for the language we learnt but also because we learnt a lot about cultural differences between Japan and England, and also because we got to know each other very well as we met up at least once a week.

The Presentation

While we were in Japan we gave 11 presentations about ourselves and the North East. Howard had some definite ideas about our presentation which included costumes, music and dance, as well as slides to accompany our speeches. I think these elements made our presentation memorable, especially because of the language barrier between ourselves and our audience. Our Rotary Foundation chairman was very keen for us to make our presentation in Japanese. However in emails from Japan the GSE Committee in Osaka indicated that we should give a couple of introductory sentences in Japanese, and then revert to English. We compromised by giving our personal introduction in Japanese, and the remainder of the presentation in English. However the level of language we had learnt in our classes was not sufficient for us to write our own presentations in Japanese, and so our scripts were translated and we were given a phonetic version to read out.

Our first presentation in Japan was given at our welcome banquet where all our host families were present. We had done three presentations at Rotary Clubs in England before we left, and they lasted for 30 minutes each. However we had not given proper consideration to the fact that our audience may not understand the English part of our presentation, and an interpreter was present to translate the parts we spoke in English into Japanese. This meant that it took much longer than we anticipated, and lasted for one hour. In addition, the audience were unable to understand the Japanese part of our presentation. As a result, we made our speeches shorter and only said one or two sentences in Japanese. We became adept at shortening our speeches if we were starting to over-run.

The club meetings where we made our presentations mostly followed a similar pattern. The meeting began with singing the British and Japanese national anthems, often followed by a Rotary song. Then lunch would be served, normally traditional Japanese style but sometimes Western style. We normally gave our presentation after lunch. Our average audience was about 50 people, and our largest over 200. A lot of the clubs had put a great deal of preparation into our visit, for example one club had prepared a welcoming banner for the team.

We stayed with four host families each during our trip, and spent a week with each family. I was grateful to spend this long with each family as it gave me a chance to get to know my hosts. All the families I stayed with were exceptionally kind and looked after me very well. On most days I was given time to myself which was much appreciated as the schedule for the trip was very tiring, and I needed to spend time writing my diary each day. I had to remember to take my shoes off and put slippers on when entering the house; to take my slippers off when going into a tatami room (a traditional Japanese room); and change slippers when going to the toilet.

A major difference between living in Japan and England is the food - I was particularly worried that I wouldn’t enjoy eating raw fish. In fact I enjoyed nearly all of the food I was given, especially sashimi (raw fish), which is always very fresh so the taste is very mild. Sometimes, the fish was a little too fresh for my liking - on one occasion I was given freshly killed squid which was still wriggling, which was a totally new experience for me. We also tried traditional Osaka food which was excellent, for example yakisoba - noodles with squid, takoyaki - octopus balls, and okonomiyaki - a kind of pancake with squid, cabbage and bacon, served with tonkatsu sauce, rather like English Brown Sauce. Okonomiyaki is often served in restaurants where the customers sit around a hot plate, and the chef prepares the food in front of them. The food is then eaten straight from the hot plate. Both the method of cooking and the food itself were totally different to anything I had experienced before. Japanese food is much healthier than English food, it does not contain much fat and the desserts are not as sweet as Western desserts.

One aspect of home stay I particularly enjoyed was taking a bath! Japanese bathrooms have both a shower and a bath, and after the bath is filled the same water is used by all the members of the family. First you have shower, and after you are clean you get in the bath to soak. I found this much more relaxing than just taking a shower as I normally do.

On some occasions my hosts organized nights out at Karaoke bars or restaurants, or held parties for me, which were very enjoyable. On other occasions we would eat a family meal at home, which gave me a chance to find out more about my hosts and Japanese culture generally. On one occasion I was taken to see the Hanshin Tigers Baseball team, a very popular team in Osaka. The stadium was full of noise and the atmosphere was far more friendly than at football matches in England where opposing supporters need to be separated from each other by fences in case violence breaks out. There were a number of families attending the baseball match, and the crowd sang their chants in unison, led by drums to keep everyone together. A Tigers tradition is that at the start of the seventh innings, all the crowd blow up long balloons while a piece of music is played. At the end of the music, all the balloons are released and shoot up into the sky. It was very memorable to look up and see hundreds of balloons of all different colours floating down against the black sky.

Every Saturday night we stayed in a hotel rather than with families, and we appreciated the chance to spend time on our own discussing the events of the week. Although we enjoyed Japanese food, we found that we did have a craving for chips which we indulged at weekends!

I am a solicitor, and I visited three law firms during my stay, and learnt a great deal about the Japanese legal system. There are very few lawyers in Japan compared to the UK. This is partly because the Japanese traditionally are conciliatory and like to avoid conflicts, which means there is less work for lawyers to do! However the numbers of new lawyers have increased recently, and there are plans to increase the numbers still further. I was told that this is partly because the fees lawyers charge are very high, and if there were more lawyers there would be more competition, and so fees would come down. As an example, to draw up a simple will in North Shields where I practice costs about £60 plus VAT. I was told that in Japan, the minimum charge for a will would be the equivalent of £600. It was difficult to compare rates for other kinds of work as UK lawyers charge by the hour for time spent, but this is not generally the case in Japan.

I had always had the impression that Japan was a modern, technologically advanced country, and this impression was confirmed by our visits to Sanyo and other similar companies. I was surprised therefore by how old-fashioned some of the working methods of Japanese law firms were. For example, if an English lawyer needs to do a company search he or she would contact Companies House by post, telephone or fax to obtain the result. Companies House covers all companies in England and Wales. In Japan, to obtain the same information, a visit must be made in person to the relevant Company Registry, of which there are several in Osaka. Once there a paper form must be filled in, and a payment stamp purchased and attached. This form is then handed in to the staff who will prepare the result. If a lawyer in Osaka wishes to search a company in Tokyo, he or she must either go to Tokyo or ask a Tokyo-based lawyer to carry out the search on their behalf.

Whenever I told a Japanese person my occupation, they always seemed to be very impressed. I discovered that this is because in Japan the exams that prospective lawyers must pass are incredibly difficult. In order to become a lawyer it is not necessary to do a law degree, but to pass a national examination held once a year. Pupils prepare for this examination at private schools or colleges. The pass rate is 3%. The successful candidates then study a vocational-type course before they commence work. This course includes work experience in firms and in the courts. After completing this course, candidates can choose to become a Public prosecutor, a lawyer in private practice, or a Judge. This system is very different to our own, where Judges are appointed from senior lawyers experienced in court work. Of the 2,486 new lawyers in Japan last year, 237 were women, approximately 9.5%. (In England and Wales last year, there were 5,436 new lawyers. Of these over 50% were women.)

Most lawyers in Japan contribute to a system whereby they spend three hours twice a month at the local Bar Association giving legal advice to those unable to pay for their own lawyer. They receive a nominal fee for providing this service. The majority of lawyers feel it is their public duty to support this scheme. This is in contrast to England where some larger firms will not become involved in Legal Aid work because the remuneration rates are not sufficiently high.

Our program was very well organized, and involved a large number of Rotary Clubs and Rotarians in looking after us. Generally a different club was in charge of us each day, and it was clear that a great deal of thought had gone into the preparations, both by the GSE Committee and the clubs themselves. We were normally accompanied by one or more interpreters which was a great help. The program provided us with a good mix of company visits and more relaxed activities such as sightseeing and shopping.

We made several visits to temples and shrines. There are two main religions in Japan - Shinto and Bhuddism. However a lot of people will follow both religions, and think nothing of having a Shinto wedding and then a Bhuddist funeral. A lot of the houses we visited had small Shinto shrines or altars, even if the families living there were not particularly religious. Approximately 2% of the population are Christian, and on one occasion I attended a service at an Anglican church. I felt very at home in the service as it followed exactly the same pattern as an Anglican Service in England.

I was particularly impressed by the visits we made to technological companies such as Sanyo. At Sanyo’s Research and Design Headquarters, we were told about Sanyo’s GENESIS project (Global Energy Network Equipped with Solar cells and International Superconductor grids). This project has calculated that if solar power cells were placed on 4% of the world’s desert areas, enough energy to satisfy the world’s power needs could be produced. Superconductive cables could carry the energy all over the world, and we were shown a globe marked with the prospective routes for the cables.

Another visit I will never forget is the day we spent in Hiroshima. We traveled there by Shinkansen (Bullet train), which was very impressive. We spent the day visiting the town’s Peace Memorial. This exhibition set out impartially and factually the events leading up to the dropping of the Atomic bomb and the immediate and long-term consequences of it. The exhibition conveyed the full horror caused by the dropping of the bomb, but the over-riding message was one of peace - we must never forget what happened, but we must work to ensure that such a war never occurs again. I had been slightly surprised to see in our program that we would be visiting Hiroshima, as I thought it may cause awkwardness between ourselves and our hosts. In fact this was not the case at all. I found that in general the people we met were more open in talking about the war than is the case in England. The town was full of Japanese schoolchildren visiting the Peace Memorial, and while we were having lunch some of them came over to speak to us. They handed us cards on which they had written “Peace Messages” in English and Japanese. There was space at the bottom of the card for us to write a message in return, and then the card was torn in two and each took the other’s message. These messages are a touching reminder of the day we spent.

There were also a number of social events organized for us, including a GSE party for past GSE team members from District 2660 which was very enjoyable. Throughout the trip we met up with former GSE team members on an informal basis, and we appreciated the opportunity to spend time with people near our own ages.

As we neared the end of our trip, Helen Brown said to me that she was sure she was going to cry when we said goodbye at the airport. I assured her that I would not cry, as I never do! However when we came to leave Kansai airport, I was very tearful, as I was suddenly overwhelmed by the kindness that had been shown to us throughout our trip by our hosts and everyone involved with our stay, and I realized again how lucky I was to have taken part in a GSE exchange. So, I would like to conclude by saying thank you to the Dick family and Birtley Rotary Club who introduced me to Rotary, to the Rotary Foundation of Rotary International, and to my host families and everyone who looked after us during our stay for their consideration and generosity. It is an experience I will never forget.