{"id":245,"date":"2010-03-04T21:07:08","date_gmt":"2010-03-04T12:07:08","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.seanmisen.com\/?p=245"},"modified":"2010-03-04T21:07:08","modified_gmt":"2010-03-04T12:07:08","slug":"saromas-long-life-university","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/seanholland.net\/seanmisen\/alaska\/saromas-long-life-university\/","title":{"rendered":"Saroma’s Long Life University"},"content":{"rendered":"

A version of this article appears in the current Palmer-Saroma Sister City newsletter.<\/em><\/p>\n

As in most of Japan, Saroma\u2019s population includes a large number of senior citizens.\u00a0 The town Social Education Department organizes a continuing education seminar for these seniors.\u00a0 This meets twice a month and each session lasts an entire day.\u00a0 It\u2019s called Kotobuki Daigaku, meaning \u201cLong Life University.\u201d\u00a0 One daylong session features a morning speaker who addresses the entire group of about 250 members.\u00a0 After lunch the members break into small groups and focus on more specific topics such as dancing, calligraphy, park golf, personal computing and even karaoke.<\/p>\n

For the first session of 2010, I was asked to be the morning speaker, which involved giving a 90 minute lecture entirely in Japanese.\u00a0 Mr. Abe of the Social Ed. Dept. suggested I talk about Palmer and Saroma as sister cities.\u00a0 I decided to focus on differences between the history and daily life of the two towns, as well as emphasize some of their similarities and the strong history of the sister city relationship. I also included some personal anecdotes about my impressions of life here in Saroma and how it differs from life back in Alaska.\u00a0 I also tried to focus on what life is like for senior citizens in Palmer, showcasing some of the options for retirement homes in the Palmer area, and explaining the traditional arrangement between children and their parents regarding aging and caregiving.<\/p>\n

\"kotobukipres1.jpg\"<\/p>\n

Title Screen “Sister Cities: Palmer and Saroma”<\/em><\/p>\n

\"kotobuki2.jpg\"<\/p>\n

Explaining my job (Assistant English Teacher) to the attendees.<\/em><\/p>\n

I found it rather difficult to imagine what would pique the interests of 250 elderly Saromans.\u00a0 When comparing Saroma and Palmer, things like population, geographic size and role of government are important but dull and difficult to explain.\u00a0 Accordingly, I only touched briefly on these areas and instead focused on showing photos and telling a few stories.\u00a0 I showed photos of Hatcher Pass, prize pumpkins and cabbages, and of my grandparents, Ray and Tiny DePriest.\u00a0 My description of their 70 year history in Palmer running a dairy and hay farm really captured the audience\u2019s attention.\u00a0 No doubt many of those listening hold similar experiences of homesteading and rural farming here in Saroma over the past half century.<\/p>\n

Thanks to a few anecdotes and personal observations about daily life in Japan and America, a few times the room was full of laughter.\u00a0 The audience found it very interesting that in Alaska there is no requirement for senior citizens to place special magnets on their cars showing that they are a new or elderly driver.\u00a0 That the legal driving limit for blood alcohol content is 0.08% also astonished; In Japan, the legal limit is 0.00%.\u00a0 That we customarily tip at restaurants, have elections on Tuesdays and not Sundays, and build gasoline stations and convenience stores together as part of the same business were also surprising to them.\u00a0 The fact that it is the students in American schools who move from classroom to classroom, not the teachers as it is in Japan, elicited \u201coohh\u201d and \u201ceehhh!\u201d from the attendees.\u00a0 I also had to show them a map and quote some distance figures to convince them that Saroma really is closer to Palmer than Palmer is to New York City or Washington D.C.<\/p>\n

\"kotobukipres21.jpg\"<\/p>\n

“Scenery of Palmer.” Photo taken on Lazy Mountain, Summer 2003. <\/em><\/p>\n

After running through some photos and basic information about Palmer\u2019s retirement homes and the services of the Palmer Senior Center, I concluded the presentation with a five question quiz, on which the audience scored full marks.\u00a0 Questions included \u201cWhich is the rarest color of aurora?\u201d (red), \u201cUp to how many kilograms can a moose weigh?\u201d (about 800), and \u201cWhich of the following are NOT in Palmer: airport, golf course, tennis courts, or hot spring?\u201d (there is no hot spring, unfortunately; this seemed to disappoint the audience as hot springs surround Saroma and are one of the great cultural bounties of Japan).<\/p>\n

Hopefully, my presentation made sense. By the good quiz score, I think it did.\u00a0 The elderly community in Saroma should now be able to talk authoritatively about many aspects of Palmer history and daily life.\u00a0 It was a good experience to be able to introduce my own town and culture from my peculiar perspective as a resident of Saroma and the Japanese culture.\u00a0 And I was lucky to have an interested audience, who rarely have the chance to consider things like Alaskan history, American gas stations or the weight of a moose.<\/p>\n

\"kotobuki1.jpg\"<\/p>\n

Who’s this guy? <\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A version of this article appears in the current Palmer-Saroma Sister City newsletter. As in most of Japan, Saroma\u2019s population includes a large number of senior citizens.\u00a0 The town Social Education Department organizes a continuing education seminar for these seniors.\u00a0 This meets twice a month and each session lasts an entire day.\u00a0 It\u2019s called Kotobuki […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3,15,16,20,22],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-245","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-alaska","category-japan","category-japanese","category-palmer","category-saroma"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/seanholland.net\/seanmisen\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/245","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/seanholland.net\/seanmisen\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/seanholland.net\/seanmisen\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/seanholland.net\/seanmisen\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/seanholland.net\/seanmisen\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=245"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/seanholland.net\/seanmisen\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/245\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/seanholland.net\/seanmisen\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=245"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/seanholland.net\/seanmisen\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=245"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/seanholland.net\/seanmisen\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=245"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}