Letters, home (Re)constructing my place in language teaching

Where are you from? The question lies at the heart of the Japan-based practice in language teaching that has determined my profession to teach. My autoethnographic enquiry has (re)constructed a way of life in the furusato, the uchi where my practice finds its proper context. Having once left Canada as EFL instructor, I return as eikaiwa no sensei—master of English conversation. I've sketched out the methodological characteristics of enquiry in eikaiwa, offering a sequence of conversations through epistolary enquiry undertaken with students and colleagues in Japan. Personal essays and narratives emerged as I dwelt poetically and hermeneutically on the conversations. Enacting pedagogical relationship through eikaiwa , an activity set in kyōshitsu, defines kokoro for pedagogy: it can be site for ikiru chikara, the goal in recent transitions of Japanese post-historical curriculum. Coming, continually arriving, from far away is what drives me in to the eikaiwa no kyōshitsu for the praxis of freedom in the heart of things, the kyōshitsu as uchi , an irreducible interior setting for pedagogical experience. Just as eikaiwa is gakugai, becoming eikaiwa no sensei depends on the nature and potential of being gaijin. That eikaiwa no sensei should be regarded as master of something bought and sold as a way of the soul and pursuit of nobility—this points out the unique and complex position of eikaiwa no sensei. Considering the dō of kendo, judo, sadō, kadō and so on, I look at sensei: one of earlier birth to life and practice in a particular way. The status whereby sensei retains the nobility of the samurai is, after all, a matter of her own way of being as nobly human as it is possible to be. If cultural context is for adaptation (implying a movement towards an interior), then it is perfectly natural and also perfectly human to adapt every cultural form, to internalize and japan it. Dwelling in journey describes my hosomichi, and it takes place in an oku of the heart.