"You want us to go to school on our day off?" my 9-year-old cried in disbelief. "Zettai iyada! (Absolutely no way!)" He's been in Japan since he was 5 and tends to speak in Japanese when he's riled. "Yeah, leave it to our mother to come up with a cockamamie scheme like going to school while we're on a trip," seconded his older brother, who is equally mouthy whether speaking in English or Japanese.

Jeez! It wasn't like I was asking them to enroll in a rigorous course of study; I simply wanted to make a stop at an old schoolhouse. The boys' 80-year-old grandfather was visiting from the United States and we had him on a Japanese-style "vacation." You know the type: a week's worth of activity packed into a frantic overnight trip. At that moment, we were in Nagano Prefecture and had just finished touring Matsumoto Castle. It was only a 10-minute walk to the old Kaichi School Museum, and I wanted to take a look. I got my way, but only after promising ice cream afterward.

We paid our money and entered the grounds of the school, which has been a museum since 1976. I opened the brochure we were given at the gate. "OK, everybody, listen up. This school opened in 1873, just a few years after the Meiji Restoration of 1868. That's when Japan ended hundred years of isolation and began to adopt many things from the West."