The New York Sophist

Another fantastic stop! The city was amazing and I took many pictures. We were met by a most enthusiastic group of University students from the English Speaking Society. They took us to the hotel, then it was off to lunch!

Looks delicious no? I forget what it is called but it translates to “fried favorite.” This dish is prepared on a grill, and consists of noodles and some egg I think, with your favorite items inside of it. It’s like a Japanese noodle-fried pizza. I chose garlic and squid for mine, but there were many options. You can get whatever you wish.

After this, it was time for sightseeing where I nearly died, but I did get some great photos of an ancient Japanese castle.

Here’s my video showing the danger we were in:

And here is my nice video of the great city view you get from the chair lift. It does seem to be a postmodern art project though with the weird people floating by in the chairs going the other way. I wasn’t able to record the other direction since we left so late the chair lift had shut down. We took the gondola back, which you can see near the end of this video:

The debate was fantastic, and the most American style debate so far. There was a Topicality debate and some off-case theory debate that was pretty good. I have a tape of it that will be processed after I return to the U.S. I wish I had that macbook up and running at full capacity. I could process videos while I sleep!

After the debate, the students were kind enough to take us out for more sightseeing. This time it was to a hot-spring bath house, one of the oldest (if not the oldest) in Japan. This bathhouse was the inspiration for the one in the film “Spirited Away,” a famous animated film in both America and Japan.

After trying some salt-flavored ice cream, it was time to head all too soon to the airport and back to Tokyo. It was a very fast, but very fun time here!

Thanks to the students of Ehime University for a fantastic time!

Well, it might be more than the halfway point, but here are some reflections from the participants in the 2009 Japan-U.S. debate exchange so far. More to come!

Our debate against Tokai University was very good, and it was one of the few in a pure parliamentary style. The motion was to ban the ownership of cellphones by minors in Japan. The debaters were very skilled, one being from Taiwan and able to speak several languages, and the other a very brilliant law student who had quite a nice WUDC style to his speech. The speech times were shortened, so there was not a lot of time for vigorous POIs, but that was ok as the arguments were of high quality. It was a very good debate and I think thee students who were watching learned a good deal about the format and the issue.

Parliamentary debate, it was explained to me, is growing in popularity, but it is not a part of JDA (The Japanese Debate Association). Since it is purely up to students to arrange practice, team logistics, and tournaments, the growth of parliamentary debate in Japan does not match its popularity. I was happy to see points of information and more typical parliamentary structure in the debate.

Tokai University debate is under the direction of one of the most dedicated, organized and on-top-of-it guys I know – Isao Ayabe. He is amazing. Not only does he happily teach more classes than anyone I know, he also works long hours trying to promote debate in Japan. He hosts club meetings, and other events (tonight we are going to his Toastmaster’s event to help teach debate there) and travels quite a bit doing the hard work of debate promotion. He is always happy, never tired, and is always genuinely glad to discuss debate with anyone. He’s pictured above on the right, two down from where I am (I’m the blonde in case you don’t know).

Tokai took us out to a fantastic Japanese dinner with wonderful drinks. One or two of the students chatted with me about the U.S., including one student who wanted to know all about jazz bars, what they are like, who goes to them, and how many they are. He thought they sounded “romantic” and wanted to go.

It was a great night, followed by a too early flight to Fukoka. So yes, I’m posting out of order. Oops!

Getting back to my roots here – just read a good, if older, post about academic blogging. Some of the concerns in that article mirror the great concerns raised by Gordon Mitchell in his fantastic recent post on the 3NR blog.

Why do I blog? It’s clearly for me to think through questions, but often times it is for me to imagine an audience and write for them, like a journal or diary I guess. It also, hopefully, will spur some conversation or thought among those who happen across it. But mostly it’s for me to share my recent thoughts with those who read this. Hopefully they might make a comment.

But recently it has been historical in nature, documenting the American debate exchange, which is super-fun!

Our stop at Kitakyushu University was amazing for a couple of reasons. Of course we had amazing hosts, food, drink and an interesting debate, but additionally this was one of the most organized, punctual and well planned student run debate clubs that I have encountered. In this photo, the American debaters Chris and Tony are given a tour of the club room at Kitakyushu by one of our hosts, and our opponent for the debate, who goes by the name “Pan.” We were treated to a nice suprise when we were shown the debate room, which brought nice continuity to the tour:

No it’s not the sexy man picture. Look again. It’s an American flag, signed by members of the 2007 Debate Exchange Tour. It was cool to see it displayed so proudly by the debate club.

After this tour, we were treated to some snacks and preparation time, then the debate started. Some of Pan’s family came to watch the debate, which I thought was really nice. They drove nearly 5 hours to come see the debate, which shows how much they care about his endeavors. Here is a photo we took just before the debate of Pan, his partner who went by the name “Jimmy,” (a nickname he picked up in Australia while studying there) and the Americans:

We look so happy to be about to debate!

After the debate, we went to a fantastic party (nomehotai? I hope I spelled that right, but I have some trouble learning this great language). Here is the collected team having a great time, and enjoying what was definitely a successful debate well planned and excecuted by these great students.

Thanks to everyone who made this fantastic day possible! Such a blast.