{"id":2488,"date":"2000-06-04T11:55:13","date_gmt":"2000-06-04T16:55:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.iwu.edu\/factrack\/?p=2488"},"modified":"2025-06-05T20:13:24","modified_gmt":"2025-06-06T01:13:24","slug":"technos-and-my-introduction-to-japan","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.iwu.edu\/factrack\/2000\/06\/04\/technos-and-my-introduction-to-japan\/","title":{"rendered":"Technos and my introduction to Japan"},"content":{"rendered":"

Reminiscences 2024<\/p>\n

\"\"
Tanaka san with IWU contingent<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
\"\"
Faculty who accompanied students<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

One of the strongest connections of IWU with Asia was with the Technos Institute of Tokyo.\u00a0 Minor Myers hit it off with the head of Technos, Kenji Tanaka, who founded a basically vocational college (mostly tourism), and shared some of Minor’s quirkiness.\u00a0 Tanaka originally had a downtown campus, which he sold before the real estate bubble burst, and rebuilt the campus elsewhere.\u00a0 As I understand it, the now -wealthier Tanaka funded five universities (one in New Zealand) to send faculty and students for a cultural exchange in Tokyo. Minor became part of it at Hobart and Smith, one of the other colleges, and brought that connection with him when he came to Illinois Wesleyan University. It was one of the best perks I had at IWU.<\/p>\n

As a member of, and sometimes head of,\u00a0 the Asian Studies Committee at IWU, I was qualified to lead a trip.\u00a0 I was also in a position to choose the candidates among the sophomore students, and my goal was to ensure that one of them would be from Business Administration.\u00a0 That had never happened before at IWU. One of the other faculty pushed a student who. when she saw fish, went, “Ew, fish.”\u00a0 She found being a vegetarian avoided that potential cultural conflict, and thus missed some of the best foods on the trip.<\/p>\n

\"\"The format was that we would be flown to Tokyo and all our expenses would be covered. Given how expensive Japan was, that was useful.\u00a0 We had a $50 voucher one night and it bought a hamburger and a coke.\u00a0 We stayed in different neighborhoods, which gave us a sense of the size if not diversity of Tokyo.\u00a0 As I recall, early on, we had a tremor, learning what the “rim of fire” was about.<\/p>\n

Technos was a school focusing mostly on tourism, and one of the real treats we enjoyed was at a resort maintained in the mountains, with a hot pool in the mornings where we could sit watching the sun come up.\u00a0 It provided training to the Technos students, and joy to the guests.<\/p>\n

Three other memories remain in my mind:\u00a0 the first was the Tuna market (I think it moved in 2018), where enormous Tuna were bought and sold.\u00a0 The\"\"\u00a0most expensive went for $3 million.\u00a0 \u00a0Charlie the Tuna would have been as astonished as I was to see the activity in the wee hours of the morning.<\/p>\n

The second was Japanese baseball.\u00a0 I did not realize the teams were corporately owned.\u00a0 That is, the Tokyo Giants were part of the Yomiuri newspaper and television empire.\u00a0 Equivalent to the Yankees, the Giants are the oldest professional team in Japan and one of the most successful (22 championships).\u00a0 Their games were in the Tokyo Dome, starting at 6 pm.\u00a0 That start time allowed the salarymen to come straight from work in their suits with briefcases.\u00a0 As you might expect from a Japanese crowd, the cheering was orchestrated and the audience followed the cheerleaders.\u00a0 Food was exceptional: bento instead of hot dog, with beer distributed via something like a fire extinguisher.\u00a0 It was great fun.<\/p>\n

\"\"The third was a stay in a small town that looked like (and probably was) a locale for pictures of early Japan.\u00a0 Small shops, small buildings.<\/p>\n

I should note that not only did faculty choose students, but many activities split faculty and students.\u00a0 It wasn’t like May Term–babysitting, guide, guardian, warden, whatever was required. It was a real reward!<\/p>\n

Mrs. Hoyt joined me afterwards for Kyoto and Nara to be reported later.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Reminiscences 2024 One of the strongest connections of IWU with Asia was with the Technos Institute of Tokyo.\u00a0 Minor Myers hit it off with the head of Technos, Kenji Tanaka, who founded a basically vocational college (mostly tourism), and shared some of Minor’s quirkiness.\u00a0 Tanaka originally had a downtown campus, which he sold before the … Continue reading “Technos and my introduction to Japan”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":36,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[53],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2488","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-technos-and-post-technos-japan-2000"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.iwu.edu\/factrack\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2488","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.iwu.edu\/factrack\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.iwu.edu\/factrack\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.iwu.edu\/factrack\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/36"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.iwu.edu\/factrack\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2488"}],"version-history":[{"count":10,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.iwu.edu\/factrack\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2488\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":9602,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.iwu.edu\/factrack\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2488\/revisions\/9602"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.iwu.edu\/factrack\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2488"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.iwu.edu\/factrack\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2488"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.iwu.edu\/factrack\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2488"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}