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9 August - Yushukan and Yokohama

21 days ago by tpyfman

One of the most anticipated parts of the trip, at least for me, because my colleague James has been banging on for months about it's, ah, 'unique' approach to telling the history of the Pacific War.

The Yushukan is a museum of warfare in modern imperial Japan which is part of the private Yasukuni Shrine to Japan's war dead i.e. it's all a bit like the Imperial War Museum crossed with the Cenotaph or Westminster Abbey, but not actually funded by public money.

A war museum as part of a religious site is weird enough, but doubly so given the controversy surrounding Yasukuni and the Yushukan - for a flavour see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yasukuni We saw numerous 'Rightist' vans with Japanese flags and loudspeakers converging on the shrine...

The entrance hall held a 'Zero' aircraft and an railway locomotive from the Thai-Burma Railway, known to the Allied POWs who helped to build it as the Death Railway. The provenance of the engine was given, but not the history of the line where it was used.

The panel did tell us that it been preserved as a symbol of Japanese wartime engineering by donations from veterans of the Japanese army who had worked on the railway. In other words, some of the people responsible for the deaths of, on average, 1 in 4 of all Allied POWs in Japanese captivity. In German and Italian camps, the ratio was 1 in 20. The link between the preservers of the train, and the men who actually built the railway was not there at all.

Some of the early sections of the museum were clearly playing out the past issues of imperial versus shogun control around the time of the Meiji restoration, although the path of events was hard to follow.

It seems that the Yasukuni Shrine was initiated in the later 19th century following the civil warfare which restored the Emperor's preeminence, as a sort of 'truth and reconciliation' centre, for all (?) Japanese war dead to be honoured together to help overcome past differences. This inclusive (to a degree) practice has, infamously, led to the commemoration of convicted war criminals from the Second World War.

There are so many examples of twisted language or obliteration of key issues (whether the audience is Japanese or international) that it is hard to cover them all. However, I'll give a couple:

Nanking is barely mentioned, and atrocities conducted by Japanese troops there are not spoken of at all. The panel simply says the capital of northern China was 'attacked to end hostilities' and that Japanese troops had orders to maintain discipline. Six weeks of slaughter and defilement are left out.

The start of the 'Pacific War' is given as 8 December 1941. Which, I believe, is technically when Japan declared war on the US and Britain. However, the surprise attack on Pearl Harbour took place on 7 December 1941. This isn't mentioned.

The 'trigger' for the Second World War was apparently the US embargo on Japan's oil imports. Having westernised and industrialised, Japan needed these supplies to function, so by withdrawing them the US gave Japan no choice but to seek other sources of supply in East Asia.

Japan signed the Tripartite pact merely to strengthen its negotiating position with the US as regards trade. The fact that this was with two other aggressive nations - Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy - which might have not looked too friendly to the US and Britain, is omitted.

I'm obviously laying on the sarcasm as heavily as possible with these examples, but it's genuinely what you find at the Yushukan. Incredible.

To try and offer a note of balance, the section describing the defeat of Japan from the Battle of Midway onwards is at least honest in terms of military matters, and if it gives examples of Japanese heroism in retreat, then I daresay no other nation would do different in the same position. But anywhere the Japanese war conduct could be puffed up, padded out, or slimmed down to present as positive an image as possible, even to my limited knowledge, it was.

I read an article in an English language magazine about Yasukuni today. It was by a Catholic priest here in Japan, who discussed its strange place in Japanese society, as much reviled by Leftist Japanese as it is lauded by the Right, which leads to confrontation each year at the anniversary of the end of the war (and this is worth remembering - Yasukuni does not represent the feeling of every Japanese person). Ultimately, the priest felt that the shrine would diminish as memories and lives faded, and in 10 or 15 years from now, it would be left as a tourist curiosity, and not a flashpoint for Japanese society to convulse around once a year. I hope so.

The day ended with Boswells, in a sense, going back to the beginning. On their prep weekend back in London they met Sgt. William Rose, a POW who had served his time in Singapore and Japan. Today we visited the Yokohama Commonwealth War Graves Commission Cemetery, the only one of its kind in Japan, and where comrades of Mr Rose were buried.

It was a beautiful, tranquil place away from the bustle of Japan's two largest cities, surrounded by lush trees and maintained by a friendly custodian. A short time to reflect and study the personal messages that the CWGC allows on individual gravestones, and then a short service led by the students to say thank you.

That's it from this blog from Japan. Hope you've enjoyed it, sorry it's been patchy at times, but lengthy always! I have far too little time to pack and sleep before we head home tomorrow, so I've got to go. It's been a tiring but rewarding trip with an excellent, entertaining and intelligent group, and some fantastic teachers and colleagues.

Tips of the hat in particular to Ms Lucy Neale, Queen of Radiowaves in Japan, who with immense patience and persistence has marshalled the group into producing the terrific videos you can enjoy at www.radiowaves.co.uk/n/tpyf/stories

A big thank you to our outstanding guide Chieko - she was unstoppable!

And finally, Mr Dan Phillips, leader of the trip and frankly a force of nature. It's been a privilege watching a professional at work (even if it makes the rest of us feel a bit inadequate!).

Right, it's clearly far too late as I'm being much too nice to everyone. Best get in practice for being grumpy for when I get up... Sayonara.

Remembrance

8 August - First day in Tokyo

21 days ago by tpyfman

Friday 8 August was mostly a day of travelling on the bullet train from Hiroshima. Once we arrived in Tokyo (which instantly felt BIGGER than anywhere we had been so far) we went to the Edo-Tokyo Museum, which was a less than 20 years old and had apprently been created to help migrants to the city understand its history to help create a more civic spirit.. or something like that!

It was MASSIVE. The main hall was cathedral-like, with half devoted to the Edo period under the shoguns, and the other half to the Meiji resotoration period from the 1860s, when the imperial power was reasserted, and the imperial capital moved from Kyoto to Edo, renamed Tokyo ('Eastern Capital').

We focused on the section about the Tokyo air raids of 1945, once Tinian Island had fallen to the US forces and B29 bombers could attack the Japanese mainland. I got the impression that the B29 was seen as a particularly iconic weapon for Tokyo's collective memory: in a museum which had as many reconstructions as actual objects, there were remnants of a downed bomber underneath a schematic of the plane.

Looking to the right of this you could see why: photos showing the results of the firebombing were as empty a landscape as those seen in Hiroshima. It really brought home to me what I had already read, that as many people died from firebombing in Tokyo as did from each of the atomic bombs.

The Tokyo bombing was referred to as a 'man-made disaster', as if it were the equivalent of the 1923 Tokyo earthquake, somehow outside of history, without direct cause. This meant there was less blame on the Americans, but equally only limited reference to Japanese aggression, although it did note that the effectiveness of incediary bombing from the air had been proven by Japanese attacks on Zhonquing in China a few years earlier.

Where there was criticism, it seemed to be levied at a nameless Japanese authority for bad planning of air raid defence (a naive belief that perhaps just a single incendiary bomb would fall per ward of the city, leading to drills that only planned for this eventuality). An air defence law also meant that people could not evacuate without offical permission.

We only had a relatively short time in the Edo-Tokyo Museum, before heading off to the Shibuya district for an intense burst of Tokyo life: See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shibuya,_Tokyo. There's not a lot to be said that can adequately convey just how mad this place is; the amount of shops, cafes, restuarants, people and teeming LIFE is jaw dropping. Everyone piled back into the bus after a couple of hours proclaiming themselves blown away by it all.

We've done pretty well on this trip to have a diverse experience of Japanese culture, considering our time here has been short. We had traditional Kyoto, tranquil Miyjima, modern and friendly Hiroshima (as a city today it has a lovely feeling to it, very nice and buzzy but not too intimidating), and finally the awesomeness of Tokyo. If we could have only squeezed in some surfing and mountain climbing, we'd be sorted ;o)

7 August - Video and Survivor

21 days ago by tpyfman

After that intense morning in the Peace Memorial Museum, we had lunch and I took some quiet time to chew things over in my head - I guess others felt the same.

We then went and watched a video called 'A Mother's Prayer'. It went for the long-term effects on children from the A-bomb and the now familiar calls for everlasting peace.

I know I shouldn't get too personal in the network blog, so read my own blog to find out what I thought about one section of this film in particular http://www.radiowaves.co.uk/r/stevetpyf

After the film, we met an A-bomb survivor, Mr Kawamoto. He was 10 years old in 1945. It was an unexpected meeting: he started off talking in the third person, giving lots of statistics about how many people, soliders and especially schoolchildren were in Hiroshima, or just outside, at the time of the bomb. I think we were all confused - this was not personal testimony! We could get this sort of stuff back up in the Museum!

He did cover how the city had been miltarised, and how schoolchildren were part of this war effort, as well as some details of the smell of decaying flesh, or the arrival of medical aid. However, it was all in the third person... He also explained that the typhoon which blew through western Japan in September 1945 cleansed the ground, as all radiation was on the surface because the bombs exploded in the air rather than on impact (He called this 'one good thing about the bomb'...). The implication was that this typhoon gave both Hiroshima and Nagasaki a chance to regenerate, when it had been feared nothing living would ever grow again.

As the session went on, the focus of his speech became a group of 2,000 or so orphaned schoolchildren who had not been in Hiroshima and therfore spared the actual bombing, but who, unlike many of their peers, were not rehomed with relatives or in official care.

By Christmas 1945 half were dead, and the rest, said Mr Kawamoto, were to fall under the influence of gangsters. He said that the ten years after the bombing were 'lost years', in which people did terrible things to stay alive, including killing other people.

The gangsters dominated the city in the absence of other 'help'. He finally stated he was one of these abandoned children, and the implication was that he had been taken in by gangsters, and done some of those terrible things.

He talked me about the embarrassment or shame of the lost years, and that how people who knew him even now tried to persuade him to stop talking about it at the Museum. He said that telling his story since his 'retirement' had made him much happier and relaesed him from his anger (to their eternal credit, the students refrained from asking him directly what his life had been).

He gave us all an origami paper plane he had folded, as a message of peace to take around the world. This time, the message really counted.

Mr Kawamoto was not a survivor of the 'flash and blast' as such, but a survivor of the damaged social conditions that the bomb created. It was a fascinating and unexpected take on the A-bombing.

7 August - Hiroshima Peace Museum (UPDATED)

22 days ago by tpyfman

[Back on the internet now, Saturday evening - I've expanded this entry as it was a major aspect of the trip]

The day after the peace and lantern ceremonies, we actually went to visit and lantern ceremonies, we actually went to visit the Hiroshima Peace Memorial Museum. It's a pretty big place, with the ground floor devoted to the lead up to the bombing on 6 August 1945, and an eyecatching pair of model landscapes showing Hiroshima before and after the strike. The most simple, but still striking artefact in this section was a wristwatch, stopped at 8.15am.

The Museum lays out its anti-nuclear cards from the get-go: in an opening video it uses the same sort of language as the peace ceremony to call for world peace through nuclear disarmament (as well as some rather odd, overly twee music).

The rest of the ground floor display is mostly quite balanced, dealing with the facts of the incident, including Japan's role as an aggressor in Manchuria, China, and - albeit only covered briefly - Malaysia and Pearl Harbour (this was all echoing the Kyoto Museum for World Peace we visited two days before).

There was explanation that the city of Hiroshima had basically been a military base since the Sino-Japanese War in 1894-95 i.e. the A-bombing could not be solely regraded as an attack on a civilian population. The full mobilisation (including 'spiritual mobilisation') of the Japanese population from 1937 was also mentioned, backing up this quite honest appraisal.

However, the Museum also made it plain that the US had more than one motivation for dropping the bomb: to limit Soviet influence in Asia by ending the war as soon as possible, and to justify the $2 billion cost of the Manhattan project... as well as the 'desire to force Japan's surrender'.

One of the students pointed out to me that the charge of 'weapons experimentation' (to awe the rising Soviet power) levied against the US seems to make sense when you consider that the Hiroshima bomb ('Little Boy') was uranium, but just three days later a plutonium bomb ('Fat Man') was dropped on Nagasaki. As I've said before, the second bomb is what clouds this whole issue for me... Was three days too short a time to allow for a decision by the Japanese to end the war?

In relation to the students' comments from the 6 August ceremony that the calls for peace were perhaps just words without apparent action, it was interesting to see the letters sent by the Mayors of Hiroshima to ambassadors and world leaders as a result of every single nuclear bomb test following the war. The language of diplomacy was interesting: each country was called on to play a leading role in nuclear disarmament, as if they were played off against each other.

Upstairs there is discussion about the effectiveness - or lack thereof - of various nuclear disarmament treaties since the Cold War. This was a point at which the information seemed to be played around with to fit the Museum's mission.

For instance, when sort of covering the theory of Mutually Assurred Destruction (although the term wasn't used itself) i.e. that a tense nuclear standoff arises from massive weapon stockpiles, there was no acknowledgement - at least in the English text - that this standoff has worked since 1945, and there have been no more nuclear strikes since Nagasaki. Instead the focus was on how possessing any nuclear weapons causes risk.

There was also some interesting presentation of figures in a table showing how many warheads are possessed currently by nuclear nations. Although Russia numerically has the most, USA was set at the top of the list, and UK was third despite having half the missiles of France. Not sure what to read into this, but it smacks of a lasting - if understandable - bias against the USA and her immediate ally.

Also, the figures on one panel for supposed warhead limits set by various treaties didn't match another panel... Hmmm. Always hard to get a true picture in any museum due to a lack of knowledge vs. the curators writing the text. Even harder in a museum where the English is a translation of a language you don't understand at all.

The last thing I remember from this section was a panel that said all the lessons of history tell us that using military might to impose a country's will on another nation is wrong, therefore nuclear weapons must be abandoned.

In one sense this is of course completely true, but incredibly short-sighted and unrealistic, because a) nuclear disarmament doesn't itself create peace because there would still be 'conventional' weapons, so b) what about the capacity for self-defence, or defence of weaker nations when threatened whether by nuclear, biological, chemical or otherwise? As we can see in the world today, this is also a flawed counterpoint, because avowed noble intentions of 'standing up for freedom' don't always sit neatly with reality...

Moving into the area of the museum that showed the physical results of the bomb, you walked through an effective reconstruction of a ruined building, with its 'windows' showing paintings of the blasted landscape.

Turning a corner, the worst thing I saw on display were two artificial figures with their flesh dripping from their forearms. This seemed gratuitous and unnecessary, compared with the large photos of genuine burn victims which needed no embellishment. Reconstructing the horror seemed a cheap action, somehow - making this a tourist attraction and not a museum.

Other objects that stuck with me included the steps with the shadow of an incinerated person faintly visible (the lights seemed bright in this case - I know it's museum geekery, but I truly hope this isn't lost to time by bad collections care...), and a wall stained with the black radioactive rain. But nothing hit me like the images of the post-strike wasteland, and the burns on the victims in the photographs.

[Have a look at my personal blog for some rather strong opinions on the calls for everlasting world peace we heard in Hiroshima, at the ceremony and in the museum www.radiowaves.co.uk/r/stevetpyf ]

6 August - Hiroshima Peace Ceremony

23 days ago by tpyfman

Sorry for not blogging for a day or so - it can be hard to get a computer with all the students really getting stuck into their Radiowaves work! Of course, their videos and blogs are the best way to get a flavour of this trip from the other side of the world.

Let's go back a day to the morning of 6 August. We awoke on Miyajima island with bleary eyes for a 5.45am ferry. Breakfasting on the coach, we drove through Hiroshima's suburbs, heading for the city's annual Peace Memorial Ceremony.

For me, and I guess some or all of us, because we knew the ceremony took place at the time the bomb hit, travelling through the still-sleepy city there was an eerie echo of 1945 as we headed towards 8.15am.

Of the ceremony itself, what to say? The students' video stories will tell you their views on what happened and what they felt about it. I'll save my thoughts for m'own blog, but I can say that it was hot, and hard to see from the area we were sat in as 'foreign guests' (which in itself may tell you something about the event planning for the ceremony).

The chairman and Mayor of Hiroshima City Council both spoke, as did two children from a local school. Their speeches all took the same theme of the need for everlasting peace which could only be brought about by nuclear disarmament. The Secretary General of the UN echoed this, but also brought out another point about the world's population being now mostly urban, and that the city of Hiroshima and mayors from cities around the globe could play a key role in bringing this about. Seemed a bit exclusive of rural populations, but maybe that's just my being a country boy...

It was seriously warm work sitting through what was, to be fair, a short enough ceremony. Afterwards the students did video interviews with other foreign visitors as well as recording their own immediate reactions.

We wandered around the peace park soaking it all in, and then went for a traditional okonomiyaki lunch, frying noodles, vegetables and meat on a hot plate on the table in front of us. This was pretty popular with the group, but it didn't exactly cool us down...

Back to the hotel to relax, then a pretty intensive debate about the ceremony. I was immensely impressed with the way all the students made their points, and what they had picked out from the speeches. Even when they disagreed with each other they kept their cool and kept the debate flowing.

The majority of students were critical of the ceremony for attempting to be both a commemorative service as well as a call for world peace from a limited perspective, but there was a counterpoint that the Japanese people, and the city of Hiroshima, had a right to mark this anniversary in their own way, and that our Western perspective inevitably limits our capacity to appreciate how things are done here.

In the evening we had another popular meal, shabu-shabu: a Japanese hot-pot where thin strips of meat and veg are quickly boiled in a pot on your table. This hands-on cooking seems to agree with Boswells!

The evening was quite magical: we went back to the T-bridge (aiming point for the Enola Gay bomber crew) to watch the lantern ceremony. This was a much more informal affair than the morning, with anyone who wanted writing their message of peace on a paper lantern, and floating it - with a lit candle inside - down one of Hiroshima's six rivers. The sight of the thousands of lanterns heading away down the rivers to the sea was a very special experience.

It was a VERY long day, and all credit to the students for sticking with it and working so hard on their Radiowaves stuff - Lucy has been keeping them well marshalled!

Pop over to my blog at www.radiowaves.co.uk/r/stevetpyf to see what I thought abut the day.

The wonderful lantern ceremony (all pictures on this blog are by Lucy!)

From Kyoto to Miyajima

25 days ago by tpyfman

A day of changes of scene, fast trains, world peace and floating shrines.

We started at the Kyoto Ritsumeikan University for World Peace. The students were asked to compare the museum with their own recent time spent at Imperial War Museum London. In a brief hour, we saw a museum that used its opening section to acknowledge freely the Japanese role as aggressors in the Second World War, actually dating back to their invasion of Manchuria in 1931 (hence in Japan the Second World War is often called the 15 Year War, 1931-45).

The Museum then went on to detail the role of other nations in conflict including and since the Second World War. It was difficult to get a sense of what was really being discussed or presented by the museum displays, as only headlines were translated into English. This at least told us that the museum was principally aimed at a Japanese audience, although the English guidebook was helpful in providing more information than the panels.

The point of the World Peace Museum visit was to warm up our brains as we moved - on the ligthening fast Shinkansen bullet train - to our second stop on the trip, Hiroshima. We are actually staying on an island called Miyajima around an hour from Hiroshima by coach and ferry. Hiroshima gets very busy with guests attending the annual A-bomb cermeony, so it would have been harder to find rooms in the centre of town, but Miyajima island is a restful, quiet place - especially once the tourists visiting the famous floating shrine have gone home - so it is ideal for the students to start to reflect on the trip to date and the more serious work to come.

We've strolled around the island and taken many photos, before getting togged up in yukata (basic kimonos) to have an amazing twelve course Japanese dinner in our traditional-style guesthouse. Everybody at least tried something they hadn't ever eaten before... and we need the energy for an early 5am start tomorrow, as we need to get to the Peace Park for 8am, in time for the ceremony at the time of the dropping of the bomb.

I think some students are feeling a bit weird at participating in a ceremony about an event so contentious and cause of so much destruction and death. Mr Bell said a few wise words to put them more at their ease, but I don't think tomorrow can be anything other than a strange day for all of us.

Team Boswells at the Miyajima Shrine

Day 1 - Travelling over + First full day

26 days ago by tpyfman

So, we're here in Kyoto and well underway.

[Fast fact about Kyoto: the name apparently means 'The Capital', as Kyoto was an older imperial capital of Japan, which took over from the nearby city of Nara when the Chines Buddhist influence was felt to have grown too strong there. 'Tokyo' simply means 'Eastern Capital', renamed from Edo when the imperial court moved there in the 19th century. Thanks to Chieko our guide for that one!]

Okay so, the travelling was loooong, but as civilised as could be expected, although sitting down and doing nothing but eat is a bit wearing! We got to the hotel a little before midnight on Sunday, and then were up bright and early (well, just about in my case!) on Monday for a day of touring traditional sights in Kyoto.

First up was Ryoanji Buddhist temple, most famous for it's Zen rock garden. There are fifteen stones, but sat on the viewing platform, you can only see a maximum of fourteen from any angle, reminding us that nothing in life is perfect.

There seemed to be a real excitement in the group at seeing the 'real Japan' - the city of Kyoto itself seems fairly modern and 'a bit like America' (according to some of the students) in terms of branded stores and wide roads. By contrast, being in the idealised 'natural' environment of temple grounds seemed to help a lot of us believe that we were finally and properly here.

The a short step down the road to the Kinkakuji Temple of the Golden Pavilion -- check out pictures of this beautiful structure in the students' blogs (e.g. see www.radiowaves.co.uk/r/Hide/blog).

We then had a nice restful buffet lunch before heading to Kiyomizu temple, which is known for it's incredible viewing terrace (built with no bolts or nails whatsoever, just cunningly constructed wooden latticework) and it's clear water springs which run in three streams (e.g. see www.radiowaves.co.uk/r/claireylea/blog). Drinking from each in turn is said to make you more healthy, wealthy and wise (Werner wanted to be doubly sure so he filled his bottle with a bit from each!).

Throughout the day the students were mobile blogging from mobile phones, and using the video camera to record short pieces, including interviewing each other and TPYF staff - those videos will be appearing n the Stories section right now! See www.radiowaves.co.uk/s/japan/stories

Back to the hotel for some reflecting on what we felt the day had started to suggest to us about Japan. James from IWM talked a bit more about the role of Shinto religion in Japanese society, especially when it was allied to a strident Japanese nationalism in the early twentieth century, leading up to the Second World War. The students commented that having the head of the political state, and the state religion as the same man - the Emperor - was a strange situation - how could political decisions be questioned if they apparently came from a god?

The session - and the whole day - was a good prep for tomorrow when we get more into the specific historic element of the trip, visiting Kyoto University Museum for World Peace. James asked the students to start considering questions like: why have a peace museum? Why not have one until 1992? How is it different - or similar - to the Imperial War Museum? Is the museum trying to make a political point, and if so, is this the right thing for a museum to do? These are all genuine questions - none of the TPYF team have been to this museum before.

Everyone seems to have coped pretty well with tiredness today, and I think everyone is excited to be here, somewhere so unknown and intriguing. After a cracking dinner in the hotel, the students went to a karaoke bar with their teachers, whilst the TPYF team nobly spared the ears of the world and stayed behind...

Busy day tomorrow, with the Peace Museum here in the morning, then Shinkansen bullet train to Hiroshima and ferry to Miyajima island. I'm off to write m'own blog now - www.radiowaves.co.uk/SteveTPYF

Keep reading and commenting!

Kyoto

Almost there...

1 months ago by tpyfman

... give or take a couple of days and some transcontinental air travel. Yes, the Boswells School TPYF trip of a lifetime to Japan is nearly here!

'Who is this tpyfman character?', you may ask. Well, for the next ten days or so it'll be me, Steve Gardam from the Imperial War Museum, the home of Their Past Your Future.

I'm the official TPYF 'network blogger' for the Japan trip, but everyone from Boswells - and some TPYF staff - are blogging as well. Don't be shy, come and meet all of us through Radiowaves!

We want you to leave us comments on what we write, video and photograph whilst we're in Japan.

I'll be using this blog to tell you a bit about each day, and what we did as a group (I'll use my own blog at http://www.radiowaves.co.uk/r/SteveTPYF/blog to tell you what I think personally about the things we see and the history and culture we've encountered).

The flight heads off on Saturday 2 August and we'll arrive at our first base in Kyoto on Sunday evening, Japanese time. Like I said, we're almost there... See you in the land of the rising sun.

I seem to have very few pictures of me not wearing shades or a cheesy grin...

Counting down...

1 months ago by tpyfman

Journey of a Lifetime - TPYF

We are twenty four students are preparing to embark on a journey of a lifetime, with the next exciting ‘Their Past Your Future’ trip. On 2^nd August we will set off to Japan on a mission to learn about the devastating effect of the world’s first nuclear strike and to explore the broader Japanese perspective of the Second World War.

Technology at its best

While visiting Kyoto, Hiroshima and Tokyo we'll report our findings live to Radiowaves using mobile blogs, videos and radio, so that people around the world can learn alongside us.

See the us live in action here on Radiowaves

Get involved – We want to hear from you!

Previous TPYF trips have built up record breaking audience figures, with thousands of people logging onto Radiowaves to connect with the reporters. To get involved and follow the reporters’ journey to Japan, go to www.radiowaves.co.uk/tpyf

Welcome Boswells

2 months ago by tpyfman

On tuesday the new TPYF reporters were recruited.

We had a great day making Radio and learning how Radiowaves is going to be used whilst in Japan.

The photo below was taken from a mobile phone and sent to Radiowaves. Reporting on the go - Mobile blogging. Reporters will get very familiar with Mobile blogging in the run up to the August Japan trip.

The New TPYF reporters

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