Meishi

We are getting ready to kick-off our unit for Japan.  In preparation for our “trip,” the students will be creating business cards called meishi.  In preparing for my own travels to Japan a few years ago, I discovered that there is a whole protocol for exchanging meishi with another person.  First, meishi is considered an extension of yourself that you are sharing with another person.  There is a ritual for exchanging meishi with another person.  You accept the card from someone by holding it in the two bottom corners.  You take a moment to study the card looking at the front and back of it.  Then, depending on the age and position of the person, you bow to each other.  Finally, you place the meishi in a special holder designed for business cards—-never in a back pocket.

We will be practicing this ritual in class after the students create their own meishi using google presentation.

As part of a teacher delegation traveling to Japan, we also had the opportunity to visit several schools.  It is fun to share another story of our experience with meishi while visiting the Japanese schools.  In the United States, students like to collect baseball cards or other types of game/sports cards.  While we were visiting the schools, students would come up to us and say “meishi, meishi.”  They were collecting the teachers’ cards like students here collect sports cards.  It left such an impression on me that I knew I had to expose our students to this aspect of Japanese culture as one of the first things of our unit.