LEARNING ABOUT THE LAND OF THE RISING SUN

Jeshua Tullias painted artwork to be folded into a Japanese fan during Saundra Fiddler's art class.

Jo Peukert taught Japanese greetings to her social studies class. Peukert visited Japan for three weeks last summer on a educational trip.

It's 2:28 in the afternoon the other day, a couple minutes before the bell will announce the close of another school day, and a few students in Jo Peukert's Period 8 social studies class are getting anxious.

As 12-year-old boys are sometimes wont to do, across the room one lad is acting goofy: He's either showing off or flirting with the girl sitting next to him -- it's hard to tell which. And as Peukert is wont to do, she observes and throws a look his way.

"Sumimasen," she demands, and the boy suppresses his gesticulations for a few moments. He knows what she wants: On the wall is a poster titled "Japanese Greetings," and next to "sumimasen" is the translation "excuse me."

Another poster, called "Japan Facts," notes that Japan is the size of California, yet only one-sixth of the island nation is inhabitable, and that small portion houses a population equal to half that of the United States.

Earlier in the period, students took turns standing, bowing and offering "ohayo gozaimasu," "good morning," to a gaggle of giggles. Then they folded origami samurai.

In other rooms in Louis J. Schultz School, seventh-graders are composing haiku, drawing Japanese characters, reviewing Japanese words for spelling tests, singing Japanese songs, reading stories about the bombings in the Second World War, fingering chopsticks, pounding taiko drums, converting yen to dollars and making lanterns. This is all in preparation for today: Japan Day.

While the last few days have included lessons about the country with the world's second largest economy behind our own, today will be devoted entirely to all things Japanese -- shoes won't be filled with feet, and stomachs will be filled with Japanese treats.

Under the auspices of the Missouri Japan Project, Peukert and Mark Ellison, a band instructor at Schultz, spent 16 days in Japan last summer with about 20 teachers from St. Louis County, St. Charles, Springfield, Columbia and Sullivan, and two interpreters. The group visited Tokyo, Kamakura, Yokohama, Hiroshima, Kiroski City, Kyoto and Osaka.

The trip was organized by Dennis Lubec of the International Education Consortium in St. Louis and was funded by the Center for Global Partnership in an effort to expand Japanese education in American schools.

"When you look at our textbooks, there's not a great deal about Japanese history," Peukert said. "The objective was to take teachers to Japan to make them more aware of the Japanese culture and Japanese schools, and at the same time bring that back to our schools."

Peukert and Ellison coordinated with other teachers at Schultz in preparation for today's Japan Day.

"What's great about the Schultz unit," Ellison said, "is that all the teachers are so great about participating and using their knowledge and their research, that we're hitting these kids across all the disciplines at one time."

And a lot of what they're learning in class is reinforced by the television coverage of the Winter Olympics in Nagano, Japan.

"I have students who will come to me and say, `Mr. Ellison, I saw a little clip where they had all theses drummers in the street playing what we're learning how to play, taiko," he said.

Peukert said that her students were surprised about such things as Japan's mass transportation system, the vastly different schools, the geography and the people's reputation as being quiet and courteous.

One student, Chris Daniel, 12, said he has noticed "their sportsmanship. A lot of Americans, if they lose ... they'll like get really mad and start throwing things. I've never seen any athletes from Japan do that."

Lauren Parrent, 13, said, "Mrs. Peukert was talking about their telephones, and how small they are, and that some of them have watches that are telephones, and I thought that was really neat because I like to talk on the phone."

While students are fascinated by differences in the two cultures, Peukert is also trying to highlight similarities.

"Introducing it in social studies," she said, "it was a good time to say, `How are we connected to Japan?' And we talked about when the kids walk in the door many of them turn on a Japanese TV or some kind of Japanese appliance.

"We've talked about teen-agers there, and that teen-agers rebel there somewhat like kids do here: they dye their hair red and yellow and green sometimes, and they love music and they hang out just like our kids here do.

"I think they're going to have a better appreciation and understanding of what it is to learn about another culture and to be accepting of that other culture, that we don't all have to be alike. And that you can really enjoy something that is very different than how you do it.