All posts by Thomas Greve

City Life, Community Partners, Tama City

Preserving the future

Eco Nico Center

First official day of session four… we started with a very different kind of tour. The tour of the Eco Nico Center. A fascinating garbage facility that serves the City of Tama and two more cities in the area. 80 staff members work at this facility; 60 directly in charge of the disposal of the garbage and 20 in the administration area.

You might think that Eco Nico Center is just a garbage facility but it is more than just that. At Eco Nico Center they are committed to preserving the environment by using different systems to reuse and recycle as much as possible.

They run the facility following three main principals: To reduce the burning garbage by reusing and recycling, to burn the garbage with higher temperatures so they reduce the germs that come out of it and to take as many resources out of the garbage as possible.

Japan, as we all know is a very small country if we consider the amount of people that live here and they don’t have too much space available to dump the left over ashes, so, Eco Nico Center besides all the efforts i mentioned before, they also make what they called eco sand made from the combination of cement and the ashes that are left after burning all the garbage. They use the Eco Sand for construction works and also for blocking Tsunamis.

The City of Tama is determined to recycle and reuse as much as possible, not only because they understand the importance of the subject but also because it is very encouraged by the local government to reuse, recycle and educate about the subject.

Interesting fact we learned on our visit to Eco Nico Center… Did you know the Brazilian Soccer team uses uniforms made out of plastic bottles?

City Life, City Theme Activities, Tama City

Shishi Mai

shishi mai

Shishi Mai or Lion Dance. Awesome way to start session four of World Campus – Japan in Tama City. A welcome from the LOC (Local Organizing Committee) with a Shishi Mai Dance. Tama City is located very close to Tokyo as well as Toride but on the west side of it.

The Lion Dance involves a person dressed as a lion with a lion head and all, accompanied by music played live. The group of performers jump around, do a few steps but the best thing of all… the lion pretends to eat your head at times. He walks through the audience and “Eats” people’s heads as he pleases. It is actually a sign of good luck or a wish for good luck if the lion “eats” your head which it happened to many of us.

That night we also met some of the amazing university students that were going to spend part of the week with us. Not only to hang out but to take us on a really cool Metropolitan tour of Tokyo. (Next post)

Great beginning for Tama!

City Life, City Theme Activities, Toride City

One sky, One World

Kites

Another awesome day in Toride and in World Campus – Japan.

This day we not only learned about Japanese kites and the history of kites in general, we also learned how to make them, color them, glue the pieces together and how to tie them together.

The LOC brought in a professional kite maker to teach us how to make a great kite 🙂

120 kites were made that morning, World Campus – Japan members, LOC Members (Local Organizing Committee) and host families were divided into three groups with a different theme each. Ocean Theme, Flags Theme and Kanji Theme (Japanese Writing).

The final result was awesome, we had a blast creating the 120 kites even though was so hard to organize them without ruining them but we made it through and went to the next part of the day. We never imagined how cool it was going to be.

We took off with three boxes full of kites tied together. Everyone walked to the park close by, with amazing view, super green grass and just the perfect wind for the kite flying.

We all made an effort and manage to make our kites fly up in the air, 40 of them, all tied together. It was just beautiful as you can see in the picture.

All the World Campus – Japan Participants, host families and LOC members were having a great time, enjoying the weather and looking at our kites fly together. We also played and took some really cool pictures.

For us, that afternoon was not just a moment to fly kites, it became the best team building afternoon we ever had in World Campus – Japan!