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I am a university professor of English as a foreign language who lives and works mainly in the Tokyo area of Japan.
I add 'mainly' parenthetically because I also travel extensively for business and leisure. As a long term resident of Japan who has raised a bilingual family, I've spent more than 30 years investing time and effort into internationalizing Japan's educational system. I have had a lot of both wonderful and frustrating experiences - and it appears there will be a lot more along the way. My free time and vacations are spent exploring my interests: traveling, learning about new cultures and languages - first hand, respecting our planet's living eco-systems, and developing and actualizing my own evolution and personal growth, discovering new forms of artistic expression -particularly in world music. My hobbies are - along with scuba diving, interacting with Web communities, learning new technologies (e.g. Twitter, iPhone, etc), hiking & camping, and cooking.
I love photography and travel & culture so, of course, dabble in taking photos -- that's why I'm here and probably why you're reading this. I also try to do underwater digital photography when I get the chance.
My Facebook Profile:

Education, and the acts of Learning and Teaching, are a big part of my life and the latter is also my vocation. The former is my life's mission. I encourage, and sometimes require, my students to use computers and the Net for language learning and to enhance their knowledge and skills in intercultural communication. My focus is on developing one's own potential through challenges to perform - speak, engage, interact, communicate. I'm not much into literature or pop culture, except as it is relevant to knowing yourself and interacting assertively with the planet and its human and best, more ecologically responsible inhabitants - the plants, animals, and other life-forms of the natural world.


My own professional blog can be found at: LEON (Learning English On the Net): leon.blogspot.com

Here are some examples of classroom blogs:
kitasatoenglish.blogspot.com
studentviewjapan.blogspot.com

While Japan is certainly my adopted home, I also feel a very deep connection to Kentucky by 'home' state, and to Hawaii, the state I also where I spend as time as any place in the USA. My younger, Tomi, lives in California - near Silicon Valley (greater SF Bay area) where is working on a Stanford University project team, and does independent market consulting. My undergraduate degree was at Western Kentucky University (WKU) in Music History and Literature, and French with a teacher certification, followed by a Master's of Education in Reading Education. I had many interests as a undergraduate students and graduated with honors with more than 200 undergraduates credit.

I later attended an international graduate program at SDSU (San Diego State), earning a Master's in Educational Administration from 1991-1993 and thus I have a great affection for southern California, particularly San Diego, which I try to visit every few years.


My Background:

I was born to Jerry and Rebecca Brooks who were high school sweethearts at Caverna High School in Barren County, Kentucky.
Though I lived in many places, and attended a dozen school by the time I reached I high, I normally claim my home to be Bowling Green, Kentucky, where I spent the most time, early schooling for 4 years, and for high school (4 at BGHS) and undergraduate years at 5 years at WKU (with a triple major) in music, French, and education Upon returning from a Junior Year Abroad in Montpellier, France, (1973-74), with a few of my own high school and college classmates: Kathryn Scarborough, Judy Kim, and 7 other college classmates (Connie Turner, David Bond etc), I found that 'you can't go home again' was not only a clever little phrase (or a title of a novel). By 1975, the wanderlust had started to become the source of a strong desire to live and work in a different environment or another country. Little did I realize at the time where that dream would lead.

My college years were full with many musical activities, such at the chorus, madrigal singers, and orchestra, taking a full academic load, and working a part-time job at the university library which became a full-time one during the 8 weeks of summer. I even pledged and become a member a professional music fraternity at one point.

The next year in August 1975, my horizons broadened again when I met my spouse, Shizuko, a newly arrived foreign student from Japan who had just been admitted to the Master's of Music Performance program. She was petite, slim and had long straight black hair, hanging to her knees. She was a fellow classmate in my senior level classes at WKU Music Dept; we were married in 1976 a year after we met. In 1976-77 I began at M.A. in Education as worked as a graduate assistant. Then I got a job with Missouri State, working as a reading teacher at a state school for juvenile delinquents, so we moved to Popular Bluff, Missouri, just 2 weeks after the birth of our first child, our son, Mikio.
Shizuko's father was battling cancer during this period, so we decided to pull up stakes and look for work in Tokyo so that we could be near her father and mother. I started teaching at Nishimachi International School in downtown Tokyo in August, 1979. Our second son, Paul (known as Tomi) was born two months later. I remained as a teacher (music, French, and ESL, then computers) until our two sons were able to attend and whom I also taught there through the 5th and 7th grades respectively. Though I have changed schools and positions, I have been an educator since that time, most notably at The American School in Japan (five years at a 4th grade teacher), and then went into university teaching. Those moves began a set of unending journeys that has taken me around the globe and back again to Kentucky many times. I often visit my hometown to see my immediate family and sometimes old friends from high school, church and university. One of my most frequent visit while there is to my old college French teacher - Madame Mania Ritter, who is as astoundingly alive and eager to learn everything now at 87 as she was when I was in her college classroom nearly 40 years ago. Mania is still a great inspiration to me for how important a teacher - mentor - role model can be in a person' s life.

My wife and family occupy a very important place in my existence. Shizuko, a native of Tokyo, now our home, was trained as a pianist in classical music, having attended Kunitachi Music College in Tokyo and then received a Master's in Piano Performance at WKU, which is where we met. She's still playing and also composing, but does so mainly as an accompanist for choral and jazz groups at ASIJ, the American School in Japan.


Mikio, our older son, is also working full-time as a college instructor at a local college in Tokyo. Tomi (Paul) is now working in Silicon Valley, where he's has helped start up a subsidiary of theTokyo-based company, Cirius. Tomi will be getting married later this year to a Japanese woman, Noriko that he's known since their days at International Christian University (ICU) here in Tokyo. Mikio has been dating steadily a young business from Hong Kong, who currently lives in Tokyo.

We all share a love of animals - in particular our pet dogs. Currently we have 5 dogs. Ichiro, is a mixed breed blonde and bushy haired dog who belonged to my wife's mother, who passed at the age of 93 a little while ago. He's very healthy and loves to take long walks. The other pets are pedigreed dogs and are Manchester Terriers (Toy) which is a rare breed in Japan. They are a fiercely loyal, very clever, and energetic breed. No matter what they are, we consider them all to be a part of the family. The terriers live and sleep in the house - mostly in our beds - at least some portion of each night.

In June 2009, our two Toy Manchester Terriers, Bati, a 10-year old male, and Luna, his 2-year old mate became the parents of a litter of four tiny puppies. We are keeping two of them, Forte (a male) and his sister, Melody.
You can see some of the antics and tricks (or perhaps talent) these dogs possess on Shizuko's Youtube page:
www.youtube.com/user/shizukobrooks

I have had some wonderful self-expanding and self-development opportunities over the years as a educator, world citizen, and avid travel enthusiast. The thumbnail just above illustrates one of those excursions. I was able to participate as a EarthWatch volunteer in a community health project conducted in and around Djohong, Cameroon by the late Phyllis Jansen, a compassionate public health research and retired nurse, who inspired hundreds of visitors, neighbors, academics, and project volunteers by her vitality, commitment to educating the village people in that region about healthy living and safe childbirth, free from disease and pathogenic parasites, and who possessed an inimitable esprit de vivre in caring for the people of rural Cameroon. You can learn more about at:
djohong.blogspot.com/