Yoshiko and I started our international school teaching careers in Japan many years ago. We have been involved in outdoor education activities and organizing bicycle adventures in Japan since 1977. Most recently, Yoshiko has been teaching fourth grade at St. Mary’s International School and I have taught upper elementary grade science at Nishimachi International School.

Our first cycling trip was in the summer of 1977 as we explored the countryside surrounding the Inland Sea. We quickly found that cycling was a wonderful way to meet people and to learn about the life and culture of Japan. It also made the actual traveling so much more important than the destination. Yoshiko and I began bringing our students on bicycle trips in 1978. Our first trip was across the Chiba Peninsula to Kamogawa where we camped for two nights before cycling back to Tokyo.

This trip opened the way for the ninth grade cycling trip. From 1979, for ten years, the ninth graders at Nishimachi culminated their Nishimachi experience with a pre-graduation bicycle trip around the Minami Boso Peninsula. This three-day optional adventure tested the students physical abilities, opened their eyes to a new way of travel and allowed the students to come together one last time in a very special way before they went their separate ways after graduation. Since then we have used our bicycles to see much of Japan and have brought hundreds of children and adults around the Boso Peninsula on bicycle. We have also led trips to many of the islands of Kyushu, the Noto Peninsula, Sado Island and regions in between.

In 1984 , at the request of the parent organization at Nishimachi, we started organizing our “family” ski adventure to Shiga Kogen in Nagano prefecture. Over the years we have brought groups ranging from 55 member to 176 members to the mountains to ski, to snowboard, to see the beautiful countryside that is Nagano, and to get to know each other better. In this, our 22nd year of ski adventures, we brought two groups to the mountains in February.

We started running our elementary student and parent cycling trips to the Minami Boso area in the late ‘80’s and can count many hundreds of students, moms and dads as members of our “hundred” kilometer club. Seeing the elementary students glow and grow in confidence as they realize that they have cycled 50 - 70 kilometers by the end of a cycling weekend is such a reward to those of us who run the trips.

In 1991, we opened our lodge, Hakkakuso, in Tateyama, Chiba, where we continue to run cycling trips. We also welcome families and groups to Hakkakuso for those special “getaway” weekends, for team-building activities, for summer camp, etc.

In 1999, we started our residential summer camping program for elementary students, Nanbo Discover Camp. Since that time we have organized and run week-long adventures emphasizing adventure and discovery. In the summer of 2006, we will offer three weeks of academic residential summer school in addition to the three weeks of Nanbo Discovery Camp.

During those years of full time teaching at our respective schools, we continued to offer our outdoor programs because we felt they were valuable and educational activities for the children and for the families who participated in them. We have had such positive feedback from our participants over the years. We have seen such positive growth in our students as they discover Japan from the seat of a bicycle or study marine organisms in a tide pool during summer camp. Families have learned to cycle together, change flat tires and ski during winter break. Our summer camps filled the need for an English language residential camp in Japan. The camp allowed students to experience the activities and adventures of overnight camp while staying “close to home.”

In July of 2005, after 27 years of teaching at Nishimachi International School, I left to devote myself to our “outside” activities. I am still very much a teacher and still very much involved in “education”. My philosophy of education and of teaching has always included the ideas that important learning doesn’t always take place in the classroom and shouldn’t be left solely up to the schools. Education is certainly a lifelong pursuit and some of most notable “shining” moments that we have experienced with children have been when children and adults have been involved in the learning process together in more natural environments outside of the classroom/school setting.

In the summer of 2006, we began construction on our “outdoor education” facility near the seashore in Minami Boso City, 15 kilometers from Hakkakuso. This facility will be called Nanbo Kokusai Mura. We hope that it will be a place where members of the international community, Japanese and non-Japanese alike, of all ages, will come together to learn more about each other and the culture and the countryside of Japan through participation in our indoor and outdoor activities.

Please learn more about the programs and activities described above by looking through this website and/or by contacting me at <info@discoverjapan.co.jp>.

David Green