On Tuesdays, I teach a small seminar-type class about migration. This is an elective English class at Keisen University for third year students. We have been studying people leaving leaving their home country (emigrating) and going to live in another (immigrating).
In the spring term, we did some research about Chinatown in Yokohama. We also studied a bit about Chinatowns in other cities and countries for comparison. Finally, we had a one day field trip to take photos, interview people, and try to observe the area carefully. It was a lot of fun, and we learned a lot.
This term we decided to study Korean population movement. There are so many Korean people living in other countries around the world. We studied a timeline of Korean, US, and Japanese history for the last 150 years. We also studied the background of the Shin-Okubo area. We did some video interviews of all the class members to get there impressions before visiting.
Yesterday, we finally visited Shin-Okubo. It was the first time for all of the students. This really surprised me. They almost all grew up in Tokyo, but none of them had ever visited Shin-Okubo. The women in the class were very interested in Korean food and culture. One woman even watched Korean soap operas. Another woman had some friends from Korea she met in Canada. They all wanted to visit Korea someday. Shin-Okubo is so close and convenient, but nobody had ever gone there! It's the cheap and easy way to get a small taste of Korean culture.
We ate lunch at a great restaurant called "Inakaya". I had been there before, so I knew the food was good and cheap. The lunch menu is excellent- all the food is delicious and authentic. Then, we walked around and took a lot of photos. We went to the Namdaemun Market. This supermarket is really interesting to see and a great place to shop. The girls talked to some of the staff and got permission to take photos. They also asked about Shin-Okubo and connections to Seoul, especially the name of the market.
Unfortunately, the weather was so bad that people started to feel very cold, so we went home around 4:30. Still, it was a very successful day. We learned a few words of Korean. The students really started to understand more about the Korean community in Tokyo. They were quite surprised that Shin-Okubo was different than what they had expected. We definitely got enough material to make a bulletin-board display for the college entrance area. That's next week's project.
