Hokkaido program had boom year

by Sarah R. Buchholz, Chronicle staff

he semi-annual Hokkaido Summer Program grew this year, as Asian Languages and Literature lecturer Stephen Forrest added a course and attracted a full house - 15 students. In recent years, the program had been running at about half capacity, according to Laurel Foster-Moore the Asian Study Abroad Coordinator in the International Programs Office.

     The program is organized through Hokkaido University, UMass' sister school in Japan. Of the 40 slots available, 15 are for this campus. The remaining 25 are divided among a handful of other schools.

     "I believe that Steve has some special 'magic' that students are attracted to," Foster-Moore said.

     "It's meant to be an overall introduction to Japan, past and present," Forrest said. "All of the students were very interested in Japanese culture. We had a whole range: science majors, Japanese majors, undeclared. At least one, if not two had never spoken a word of Japanese.

     "They had a choice of zero, three, or six credits, depending on how much they wanted to do. Nearly everyone did at least three credits."

     During the four-week program, students stayed with Japanese host families. Weekday mornings were spent in class, where students received several hours of language instruction at their level of Japanese, followed by a lecture on Japanese culture. Lecture topics ranged from science in Japan to traditional theater. This course, "Introduction to Japanese Studies," allowed beginners, as well as advanced students to develop language skills. Some afternoons were reserved for excursions or events, such as lessons in traditional Japanese painting and flower arranging and trips to museums and gardens, and others were for practicing Japanese or exploring Sapporo, the city in which Hokkaido University is located.

     "Sapporo is a very large city," Forrest said, "but Hokkaido has 400-plus acres, so there's much more of a sense of open space than in other parts of the country. And it's in a different climatic zone that the rest of Japan; it doesn't have the rainy season."

     Half a dozen students opted for the full six credits by taking Forrest's new course in the program, "A New Island: Writing Hokkaido from Japan and the West."

     To squeeze another three credits into the program, Forrest met with the interested students four or five times before leaving for Japan, and then gave them the "guts of it" during their stay in Sapporo. Most students needed to complete their final paper after returning home, he said, because the experience can't be digested quickly.