Archived Blog – Tokyo Never Happened

By Christopher Wink | Dec. 19, 2006 | Final JYA blog post

UPDATE Feb. 12, 2011: All my NBCU JYA writing, video and photo work has been transferred to subdomain japan.christopherwink.com.

Things are easier on this side. I realized that when I woke up and, in my persistently active manner, decided I had to go the bank and settle some business. I spent at least a full minute worrying about how I would say what I needed to say in Japanese. Once I realized that wasn’t much necessary, it occurred to me that I have begun a nice grace period where everything I do is going to be awfully simple in comparison to my maneuvering and studying and eating and buying and banking in Tokyo.

The question I am almost always asked is if it is “strange” to be back in the United States. Of course, mostly it isn’t. I am a man of limited means so, while I most certainly have done a lot for what I have been offered, I have spent a great deal of my life wherever my family considered home. It is not strange to return to what I have known for two decades. I may have to readjust and rediscover, but strange is unknown and different. To be sure, in a grand sense, there is nothing different about the America I have found.

Continue reading Archived Blog – Tokyo Never Happened

Japan dean candidates have surprise ties to university (The Temple News: 11/27/07)

By Christopher Wink | Nov. 27, 2007 | The Temple News

Matthew J. Wilson thought it was strange that Ann Weaver Hart was born and raised in Salt Lake City when he first heard nearly two years ago that she was a top candidate to become Temple University’s ninth president.

Wilson, 37, the associate dean of and chief legal counsel for Temple University Japan, was finishing Asian studies and political science degrees from the University of Utah in 1995, while Hart was the dean of the school’s graduate program in education.

“It made me look twice,” Wilson said.

Hart was elected Temple’s first female president on May 4, 2006, and Wilson, who was in Philadelphia to interview to replace the retiring dean of the Japan Campus recently, is bringing the coincidence to light. Those involved are careful to mention that it is just that: coincidence.

“I didn’t know this until I first met him not long ago,” Hart said last week.

Still, the happenstance continues.

While the two didn’t know each other then, Hart explained her husband Randy met Wilson’s father, Jim, while they were studying law at Utah.

Hart’s ties to Wilson, who is one of two finalists to become the next dean of TUJ, go even further.

“My mother went to the same high school as President Hart and her husband,” said Wilson, who first visited Japan as a teenager during a yearlong mission for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. “But she was two years younger.”

Wilson’s competition for the TUJ dean position also has coincidental ties to high-level Temple staff.

Bruce Stronach, 57, current president of Yokohama City University, attended the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy at Tufts University, the very same as Dr. Kirk R. Patterson, the man Stronach is jockeying to replace as dean of TUJ.

Patterson announced his impending retirement Aug. 27, effective at the end of this calendar year. During his tenure, TUJ has seen sizable enrollment increases and a stabilization of longtime budget concerns.

Christopher Wink can be reached at cwink@temple.edu

Text as it appeared in the 11/27/07 edition of The Temple News. See it here. This is part of an ongoing series, see the original story here.

Archived Blog – For Starters

Christopher Wink | Aug. 28, 2006 | First JYA blog post

UPDATE Feb. 12, 2011: All my NBCU JYA writing, video and photo work has been transferred to subdomain japan.christopherwink.com.

Everyone who is in Japan raise your hand.

Note: I am typing with one hand. Clever, I know.

I am writing to you in my small – but expensive – two hundred thirty square foot apartment which I share with another here in the quiet residential Meguro-ku ward of Tokyo (one of 23 such municipalities). It has been quite a little adventure already, but let’s get ourselves orientated, no?

In the realm of self-evaluation, I love to consider myself the elder statesman of travel – at least for an independently traveling twenty-year-old. While most of my extended absences from my northwest New Jersey home have been wanderings throughout the continental United States, I spent the summer of 2005 in Ghana, West Africa. That was my first attempt at using education as a façade for international travel. Here in Tokyo I am keeping up that very pretext, though the time before I fall asleep is spent dreaming of travel and language, not books and tests.

Continue reading Archived Blog – For Starters

TUJ dean retires for the sea (The Temple News: 12/4/08)

By Christopher Wink | Dec. 4, 2007 | The Temple News

Kirk Patterson wants to sail the world.

The current dean of Temple University Japan, who announced his retirement at a campus-wide meeting on Aug. 27, is looking beyond his departure at the end of this month.

It was a dream of his from a very early age, but it wasn’t until 15 years ago that he realized he might be blessed with the opportunity to make it a reality.

“I’ll spend two years in Victoria preparing,” said the native Canadian over the telephone from Tokyo. “Getting the boat ready, getting my body ready.”

Perhaps, it won’t be unlike his five-year career as the top man for Temple in Japan

TUJ was in fiscal ruin 2001, prior to Patterson’s appointment as dean in January 2002. The branch campus had lost money for 10 consecutive years.

“TUJ’s reputation was very bad when I came,” Patterson, 54, said. “A lot of foreign universities were closing, so no one would trust them.”

So Patterson was brought from the corporate world, having held leadership positions in large communications and public relations firms before being chosen to fill the campus’s top position. After reorganizing the school’s mission and welcoming encouraged commitment from Main Campus, Patterson has overseen TUJ’s transition to a successful, profitable part of a growing Temple community.

After years of swirling rumors about the impending closure of TUJ, attitudes have largely changed.

Temple President Ann Weaver Hart’s trip to East Asia last month, which prominently featured TUJ’s 25th anniversary celebration, was an important reminder of that.

“When you’ve been in office for a long, long time and – I would hope – are happy with what you see as the future of the institution you’ve devoted so much of your life to,” Hart said, “you can feel comfortable stepping down knowing that you feel like the institution is in good hands.”

“President Hart is wonderful in her commitment to global education,” said Patterson, who speaks and reads Japanese.

The field of candidates to replace him as head of a growing campus has been narrowed to two.

Bruce Stronach, 57, is a career academic from Massachusetts and current president of Yokohama City University. Matthew J. Wilson, 37, originally from Utah, is chief legal counsel and current Associate Dean at TUJ. The final decision is expected to be announced before the end of January.

Despite an impressive turnaround, Patterson has not been without criticism. Some TUJ administrators and academic personnel have suggested that he has remained too closely involved in the daily decisions of what is still a small, albeit flourishing, university setting.

During a public presentation on Main Campus, Wilson, who would be the youngest dean in TUJ history if chosen, promised to improve something Patterson has cited as one of his earliest successes: campus unity.

“TUJ is a growing institution,” said Wilson while in Philadelphia Nov. 20. “But an important first stand is to reconnect with staff, to improve faculty morale.”

While Temple is not required to release by-campus fiscal results, after a decade of budget shortfalls, the past four years have been profitable, according to Patterson. Enrollment at TUJ has doubled to nearly 3,000 students since Patterson came, including 20 percent increases in each of the past two academic years.

“My successor will inherit an institution that is very optimistic,” said Patterson, who is not involved in the process to select his replacement. “TUJ is becoming a first in the world model for international education.”

Patterson is not shy about what the position has meant to him.

“If I hadn’t taken the Temple job, my life wouldn’t have been complete,” he said. “My decision was to leave Japan, not TUJ.”

After the announcement of his retirement, Hart said she would recommend to the Board of Trustees that Patterson become a Dean Emeritus after his departure, so he would be available to help with any transition period, if necessary.

But Patterson is certainly moving on. He has an ailing father in Spain and a dream of his own calling from the horizon, seeing the world by sea all alone.

Still, he not is without plans to return to what has been his home for 25 years.

“The first leg of my trip will be to sail back here,” he said with confidence in his voice. “No foreigner has ever completed a solo circumnavigation of Japan.”

“I just don’t have a boat, yet,” he said.

Christopher Wink can be reached at cgw@temple.edu.

Text as it appeared for the 12/4/08 edition of The Temple News. See it here. This is one part of an ongoing series about Patterson’s replacement. See the original here.

Tokyo, Japan Study Abroad Reflection

By Christopher Wink | Nov. 29, 2006 | Tokyo, Japan

UPDATE Feb. 12, 2011: All my NBCU JYA writing, video and photo work has been transferred to subdomain japan.christopherwink.com.

I will go home on December 8, 2006. There is a ticket that asserts I will be traveling to a place unknown to the part of me who has lived in Tokyo for the last half year. As thin as paper is, some of it carries a great deal of weight. Some of the most important and powerful things of this world are just paper. My ticket will not change much, nor will it be remembered by anyone in just a few short months. Importance is relative.

I will be happy to find my native America again, but how remarkable my time here in Japan has been. I have seen a 50-foot Buddha and 500 miles on an $85 bicycle. I saw a sunrise from the head of a dormant volcano. I watched an auction of bids for 500 pound tuna. I ate octopus and herring eggs and river shrimp and pickled beets and nearly 60 pounds of rice. I will remember it all.

Continue reading Tokyo, Japan Study Abroad Reflection

Dispute ends with one dead, one hurt (Philadelphia Inquirer: 4/26/06)

By Barbara Boyer and Christopher Wink | Apr 26, 2006 | Philadelphia Inquirer

One teen is dead, another is charged with murder, and police are looking for a third after an Olney playground turned into a bloody crime scene.

Yagouba Bah, 17, of the 100 block of West Champlost Street, was shot twice and stabbed so brutally Thursday night that one police official said the wound looked as though the victim had been eviscerated on the playground.
And, police said, it all happened in front of the teen’s brother.

Maurice Harmon, 17, of the 5800 block of Howard Street, was shot in the thigh accidentally by a friend during the slaying of Bah, police said. Harmon was treated for injuries – and charged yesterday with murder. He is a junior at a school run by Community Education Partners at 12th Street and Allegheny Avenue.

At a vigil and antiviolence rally last night in the playground where the teenager was attacked, more than 50 people, many of them children, gathered around a tree decorated with teddy bears, cards and a poster board that read: “We love you, Gouba.”

Many were in tears. Some stared with blank expressions at candles placed at the base of the tree. Others cried out: “You didn’t have to kill him!”

Tondalea Wiggins, the boy’s stepmother, was the only member of the teen’s family who was able to speak to the crowd about the tragedy that had visited them.

“Let Gouba rest,” she said. “God has a plan for everybody. He don’t have to suffer no more.”

She also pleaded with the young people in attendance to stop the violence and to resolve conflicts amicably.

“You don’t fight somebody just because they came from another country,” Wiggins said. The family emigrated from the African nation of Guinea, she said later.

Then she had words for her stepson’s attackers:

“Whoever did this is going to pay. Maybe not today or tomorrow, but you’re going to pay for what you did,” Wiggins said.

This year, there have been 115 homicides, the same as for the comparable period last year, when the total for the year was 380. That was the highest since 1997, when more than 400 homicides were recorded.

Police said they responded to the Olney Recreation Center in the 6000 block of North A Street at 8:22 p.m. Thursday. There they found Bah, who had gunshot wounds to the back and side and a deep stab wound to the abdomen.

Bah, a ninth grader at Excel Academy at 6600 Bustleton Ave., one of four district schools for over-age students, was rushed to Albert Einstein Medical Center, where he was pronounced dead at 9 p.m.

Harmon was shot in the left thigh and taken to Einstein by a private vehicle, police said. Police yesterday were still looking for the friend who accidentally shot him.

As police surveyed the playground, they said, they discovered casings from a .45-caliber gun as well as a 9mm gun, a white metal rod, and a bloodied knife.

Police said the teens had a running argument earlier in the evening. Witnesses told police the fights flared and calmed, and then, before one teen starting swinging a stick, another pulled a knife and two pulled guns.

Capt. Benjamin Naish, a police spokesman, said Bah had been getting the better of the other teens before it escalated with weapons. Police said Bah had not been armed.

Police said the nature of the argument was unclear. They also had not determined who took Harmon to the hospital for his leg injury.

Yesterday afternoon, teens returned to the playground, where chalk marks and crime-scene tape remained.

Anyone with information about the crime is asked to call homicide detectives at 215-686-3334.

Contact staff writer Barbara Boyer at 215-854-2641 or bboyer@phillynews.com.

Inquirer staff writer Stephanie L. Arnold contributed to this article.

Text as it appeared in the April 26, 2006 edition of the Philadelphia Inquirer on B01.

Road-rage case ends in a guilty verdict (Philadelphia Inquirer: 4/1/06)

By Christopher Wink | Apr 1, 2006 | Philadelphia Inquirer

Friends of a newlywed father who was shot to death last May during a traffic flare-up with another motorist pumped their fists as his alleged killer was found guilty yesterday of first-degree murder.

Frank Jeffs, 52, of Southwest Philadelphia, faces a mandatory sentence of life in prison in the death of Robert Kerwood, 28, a South Philadelphia construction worker. Common Pleas Court Judge M. Teresa Sarmina scheduled sentencing for May 15.

“I’m absolutely very happy with the verdict,” said Kerwood’s widow, Julie, whom he married 11 days before he died. “It’s comforting to know he will never be able to do something like this again.”

In closing arguments yesterday, prosecutor Carmen Lineberger called Jeffs a “wannabe military” type who “wanted to kill something that day.”

The trouble started on the Schuylkill Expressway and escalated when the men exited, honking and cutting each other off on 61st Street near Eastwick Avenue.

Jeffs, who worked in heating and air-conditioning at the University of Pennsylvania, fired three shots from a licensed .22-caliber revolver. Kerwood died the next day, May 6.

Jeffs’ godfather and uncle, Al Pellecchia, called his nephew “the kind of guy who wouldn’t step on an ant walking by.”

“It’s obvious that somewhere along the line, [the jurors] weren’t paying attention,” Pellecchia said.

Defense lawyer C. Scott Shields said Jeffs was acting in self-defense.

“This a scary, terrifying guy screaming out of his big SUV,” Shields said in his closing remarks. “What was Frank Jeffs supposed to do?”

Kerwood had waved “a black, shiny object” at Jeffs – investigators believe it was a cell phone – and yelled for him to pull over.

“He thought it was a gun, and acted to defend his life,” Shields said.

Kerwood’s family yesterday remembered him as a thoughtful and loving father of three.

“I don’t think a day would go by that he wouldn’t call and say, ‘I love you, Ma,’ ” said Kerwood’s mother, Julia. She said that after her son died, “I wanted to give up, but now I think I’m going to get my life together.”

Contact Christopher Wink at winkc@phillynews.com.

Text as it appeared in the April 1, 2006 edition of the Philadelphia Inquirer on B04.

Airline-flight harassment case is heard (Philadelphia Inquirer: 3/18/06)

By Christopher Wink | Mar 18, 2006 | Philadelphia Inquirer

Local radio personality E. Steven Collins was settling into his first-class seat next to his wife on a flight to Philadelphia from Los Angeles when he noticed Robert Baldwin.

“He was muttering something,” Collins said.

From there, his July 31 flight got worse – a whole lot worse, he told a Philadelphia judge yesterday as he pressed charges of harassment and ethnic intimidation against Baldwin.

Collins contends that Baldwin, who sat behind him and his wife, used racial epithets, kicked his wife’s seat, and put his bare feet on her headrest throughout the five-hour ride.

Collins is large – more than 6 feet tall and more than 200 pounds – and has a booming voice. He could have responded to Baldwin’s affronts in many ways, he said.

He chose to notify the flight staff and ultimately the police, including a personal call to Commissioner Sylvester Johnson.

“African American men need to know that they don’t need to be violent to get justice in this system,” said Collins, host of E. Steven Live on WPHI-FM (100.3) and national sales director for Radio One Philadelphia.

He said justice began yesterday with the first day of Baldwin’s criminal trial.

Assistant District Attorney Joseph Khan frequently pointed to the role of alcohol. One flight attendant testified that she had served Baldwin, of Blue Bell, two double vodka tonics. Another said she had thought Baldwin, who was accompanied by his son and wife, was intoxicated before he got on the plane.

In response, Baldwin’s attorney, Mark Cedrone, called several of Baldwin’s former coworkers from Rohm & Haas as character witnesses. Baldwin left the Philadelphia chemical company after the harassment charges were filed.

Colleagues labeled his reputation “excellent” and his history of racial tolerance “sterling.”

Cedrone also questioned whether Municipal Court had jurisdiction, because the dispute started in the air and ended at Philadelphia International Airport, part of which is in Delaware County.

Judge Marsha Neifield directed both sides to file briefs on the jurisdiction question by May 15 and said she would resume the trial May 23.

“Baldwin has to know that you can’t say things and do things without consequences,” Collins said. “We’ll pursue this every which way and in every direction possible.”

Contact Christopher Wink at winkc@phillynews.com.

Text as it appeared in the March 18, 2006 edition of the Philadelphia Inquirer on B01.

Travel Well (Newsweek submission: 3/18/07)

By Christopher Wink | Mar 18, 2007 | Newsweek submission

I have an excessive devotion to my nationality. I like to think there is something distinctly American in that pride of being American. I have saved money and made friends all to answer my desperation to travel, desperate to learn and explore and represent this nation.

I carry a four foot by six foot American flag that was once my grandfather’s whenever I’m abroad, whenever I’m representing this nation. So, that faded flag has gone from his attic, to the wall of my row home in Philadelphia, to a migrant workers’ station in Mexico, to a slave castle in Ghana, to a great wall in China.

I take very seriously my representing the United States. I speak with the polite “vous” in southern Quebec and drink slowly my wine in central Tuscany. Yes, I have an excessive devotion to my nationality. But, sadly, perhaps it is my expressiveness that is distinctly American. I have seen hundreds of Italian club-goers glaring at a group of American girls who were having too much fun–pocketbooks over their shoulders, shoes in one hand, drinks in the other–as they tripped through a break-dancing competition.

Continue reading Travel Well (Newsweek submission: 3/18/07)

My Cross-Country Adventure Summer 2007

San Diego to Philly |  Thurs., Aug. 9 to Aug. 24, 2007 | Michael Butler and Matt Sheehan

There is something distinctly American about the cross-country trip, so, while I had my fair share of road trips — going as far as driving from the New Jersey coast to Idaho and returning — I had never driven across this fine country of ours, until summer 2007.

With two friends, I flew to San Diego, rented a vehicle, drove north along the California coast and then hopped from national parks and cities of interest all the way to the East Coast.

I hope to add more details and information in the future, but, for now, enjoy some photos of general interest from the trip below.

Continue reading My Cross-Country Adventure Summer 2007