My exploration of reflective practice was a relatively new endeavour which observed some aspects of teacher development that are under-researched in Japan: the use of reflective practice for teacher development of English language teachers (Yanase, 2014); the employment of qualitative research in teacher development (Sato & Kleinsasser, 2004); using in-service teachers as research participants; and employing a researcher from outside the professional sphere of the participants. It is also instructive to note, as some of Mr Sato's troubles outlined below suggest, that this new endeavour was embarked on by a novice researcher.

In this chapter, I situate my exploration of reflective practice by introducing certain key aspects of reflective practice and relating them to specific elements in the Japanese context; then, I discuss how the Japanese setting of my research study influenced my incorporation of these elements into the research design.

The Case of Mr Sato, Pilot Participant

Because one of my goals in pursuing this research study was to learn more about how reflective practice would or could function in a Japanese context, I needed to get a 'taste' of some of the challenges I might face in the proposed project, which would take a tremendous amount of time and effort to complete. So, before embarking on the main study, I conducted a pilot study with one participant teacher, Mr Sato (pseudonym) in Suburban prefecture (pseudonym) from September 2006 to March 2007. After my 2006 Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology (MEXT) seminar, I asked for volunteers from among the participants and Mr Sato was the only teacher to volunteer.