The GLCA/ACM Japan Study Program offers students the opportunity to participate in a four-week Spring Practicum during February and March.  The main purpose is to get students out of Tokyo in order to something they would not be able to experience otherwise.  When the practicum started, all students were sent to Daito-cho, Shimane.  Responding to a request from the students, the practicum has gradually cultivated additional sites.  Some of them lasted only one or two years, and the others have been extended further. 
　　This year, seven students worked with children at elementary and middle schools in Daito-cho.  Four students practiced at a Zen temple in Okayama.  Three students volunteered in local government offices, NPO offices and a church in Daito (Osaka), Kyoto and Kobe respectively.  Two students conducted a two-week project with Waseda students on production efficiency followed by working two weeks with regular employees at a pharmaceutical plant in Fujieda.  Two students worked at a hotel kitchen and in local restaurants in Morioka.  One student practiced sanshin, a three-string instrument while working at a restaurant in the newly built National Okinawa Theater in Naha. One student created an English document while helping with agricultural work in the field at the Agricultural Research Center in Ishigaki. 
　　I have made a round of visits to all sites to thank them for their support and to try to build lasting relationships with them.  Each practicum has its own characteristics.  The students choose one site from existing sites or ask for possible new sites.  In the past, a student who had chosen a ski lodge as the practicum site returned to Tokyo saying that he had not come to Japan to clean rooms and tables.  The following year, however, two students begged us to send them to the same place, promising that they would never complain about the work.  One of them returned there in the summer before leaving for the United States.  Last year, a student who had stayed at the Zen temple wrote in his reflection paper that his experience at the temple would be the best thing that had happened to him in Japan.  This year, a student at Morioka volunteered to call us thanking us for his superb time in and outside of the kitchen.   He later told us that his career planning is moving toward becoming a chef after college.  A student at Naha has found a registry record proving that his ancestors had lived in a village near Naha. 
　　I am personally grateful that I was not only able to visit these all sites, but also that I have touched upon the roots of the lives of the people on the places.  As a language teacher, I feel especially fortunate that I could share my thoughts and impressions using my own language in depth with them.