June 5 - The U.S. Embassy's Japanese language school in Yamate-cho Yokohama invited me to their annual garden party last week. Our language school held this party to thank the many people who have helped the school over the year and to mark the graduation of eight American diplomats. For 50 years our school in Yokohama has trained diplomats to acquire professional level proficiency in Japanese and to understand Japanese society and its culture and history.

The Yokohama school is unique in that it encourages students to leave the comfortable confines of the classroom and experience Japanese society first-hand. This year's students interned at the Kanagawa Prefectural government, taught a class (in Japanese) at Yokohama City University, participated in an exchange with the Ground Self Defense Forces, and stayed overnight at the Matsushita Institute of Government and Management (松下政経塾) for an intensive exchange program with the associates there. One student even spent the night at Mt. Koya to experience Buddhist religious training.

At this year's party, our school was honored to host Kanagawa Governor Matsuzawa. Governor Matsuzawa had earlier lectured our students on the viewpoint of Japanese base-hosting communities. He even assigned our students to read his recent article in Chuo Koron magazine.

The students organized the entire party themselves. The Master of Ceremonies and the Student Representative each spoke in eloquent Japanese to over 100 guests. Other students conversed with guests in Japanese. I noticed that our six Japanese language teachers seemed quite proud that their American protégés, who had arrived at the school 10 months earlier with only an elementary knowledge of Japanese, were now able to converse comfortably in Japanese.

I congratulated the teachers for successfully training another generation of American diplomats. I felt extremely grateful that the American Embassy has employed such dedicated and experienced Japanese teachers. Without these teachers' efforts each year, the Americans of the U.S. Embassy and the five constituent posts in Sapporo, Nagoya, Osaka, Fukuoka, and Naha would not be able to represent American interests in the language of this country.

Until next time,

Jim