Monthly Archives: 8月 2010

訪問地, 地域学習, 長野県上田市

Harry Potter Style

School Lunch

Six Schools and 2200 Kids are being benefited by this eight million dollar facility ran by 22 employees.

I am talking about the school lunch facility of the city of Ueda, where they even have a special room to cook the food of kids with allergies… Pretty well organized I must say, and the best of all, most of the energy they use to cook comes from the solar panels located on top of the building.

In Japanese Schools, the lunch hour is an actual class, it’s called Food Education. The kids learn from early age, how to eat healthy, they also learn about manners and even about portions and how to make sure everyone gets something to eat. Kids are assigned to serve the food and after the meal they check how well their classmates eat as a whole group.

As we all know, every country has their own system an after our tour at the facility we had time to share the different systems.

We thought the United Kingdom system is the most fun, interactive and fare system of all. Totally Harry Potter Style.

The schools are divided into groups or “houses” just like in Harry Potter. Each group competes to get points for eating healthy food, a teacher is assigned to eat with individual students, rotating everyday, that way they can evaluate how the student is eating, what they eat and how healthy the food is, the student’s eating habits basically.

Another very interesting thing about the system in the UK and that it might have nothing to do with Harry Potter is the fact that the school lunch is cooked taking in consideration the religion of the majority of the students there. If the school population is mainly Muslim, they will not cook anything with pork or if the majority of the students are from India you won’t find any beef in the menu at that school.

Interesting eh? the beauty of diversity and accepting differences.

訪問地, 長野県上田市

The price of life

six Coins

In World Campus – Japan you might think we do the same activities over and over every time i say we went to a castle, but you can be sure that we learn something very different from every place and it actually depends on us to look for the best learning opportunity, using our senses to the full of their ability.

This time we visited Ueda Castle and even though many of us thought, “oh, it is just another castle” this one was about to teach us something very interesting.

The symbol of the castle is the six coins you can see in the picture. Six coins that are now not only the symbol of the castle but the symbol of the entire city of Ueda.

I was very curious to know the meaning of the symbol, why six coins and not a different number or why coins…
In case you are also wondering, here is the answer:

“At that time we believed that after we die we had to cross a river to go to hell or heaven and to do so we had to pay 6 coins to the person in charge of the boat to cross. For the castle and the generation that was in charge of the castle meant that they were ready to die if necessary. They would defend their believes and their property until they died, we fight until we die they would say”

And that’s the meaning of the six coins!

訪問地, 奈良県宇陀市

Ninjas for a day!

WCJ-Ninjas

Uda City in Nara Prefecture is located right in the midst of Japan’s beautiful mountains and forests. Since I come from a small town in Alabama, Uda had a familiar feeling. However, like every other place in Japan, there was unfamiliar feelings as well!

To say that the scenery around Uda was beautiful doesn’t begin to do it justice! It was amazing! Since Uda is located in such a rural area, there was a lot less English than there was in Omura. Therefore, many of us were not quite sure what adventures our Host Family Day would hold. The answer was simple: Ninjas.

About an hour away from Uda is Ueno City, which has Ueno Castle…. And a Ninja Village. It wasn’t only me and my host family that went. Eve and her host father, Frank and his host mother and host nephew, and Shao and Tanja and their host mother all joined us.

At Ueno’s Ninja Village you can learn about real ninjas, how they lived, their equipment, and special features of their house! Also, for 500 Yen, you can dress up like a ninja all day long! Although this sounds like tons of fun, I had heard from someone else that it was not as fun as it might seem. Therefore, I was a little hesitant. However, this day was the highlight of my trip to Uda.

For a short time, we 5 foreigners were an elite ninja assassin clan! As ninjas we ate udon, explored Ueno Castle, threw shuriken, and took pictures with some tiny ninjas! The rest of the day was spent stealthily moving from tree to tree, finding the most ninja-esque poses possible, and doing things that would just look better if it were done by ninjas!

I have to say this might have been the best Host Family Day Ever!

(Ciara Smith – Alabama – United States)