Day of activity: July 27^th 2015

Today we assembled at the city hall of Toride city where a big bus was waiting for us. When we, some hostfamilies and all World Campus Japan members were present, we started the drive towards a town with a sake factory and weaving company. It was fun riding the bus together, and we talked a lot. Once we arrived it was already pretty hot outside, but the sun was shining so it was bearable. It wasn’t the moist heat we sometimes have.

The first activity was cloth weaving or dyeing, and I was in the group that would dye- we were all looking foreward to it! Once we were all present, we were set around a table and could choose between orange and blue dye. I chose blue. We all got a scarf-like cloth and folded it in a triangle. We bound the pointy edges tight with a rubber band, and then we shook it in the dye. It was pretty intense muscle training. Can’t imagine someone dyeing a whole kimono by hand like that… After a lot of shaking and making funny remarks, we let the sensei wash our cloth and they all turned out beautifull! I was really happy to have had that experience. We could take our woven coasters and our scarfs back with us.

After that we stopped at the sake brewery. Inside it was reeealy hot! But we got a nice tour and it was amazing to be able to see where that delicious sake was made. The sensei that showed us around was really nice. He was, like many Japanese, really suprised to hear about how tall Dutch people are. After the tour we got to try some sake. We tasted one with alcohol and one without. The first two were really delicious and we toasted happily together. The third, we decided, was a bit wierd- but a nice experience. After the sake brewery we went home. We were pretty tired from the heat and all the nice things we had seen and done. It was a lovely day!

Anna Lansik, (Netherlands)

Day of activity: July 25^th 2015

Today was a lot of fun. I’m bad at taking buses, but I had to. I missed it and I got driven to the meeting point instead. We met at Katarai No Sato. I was happy to see everyone, and we made our daily talk round. Some of the staff told us about a strange guy doing tricks with his diabolo wich they saw, and I laughed a lot. After this, the LOC (Local Organizing Comittee) women showed us a short movie about Toride. It was funny, because the translation didn’t always work out like it should. Then we made our own onigiri and even though we didn’t have enough space, I liked it. Later, we made little flags; some with countries and some with motives. The host families arrived and we ate a lot of tasty food. We began to make self-made kites with drawings. We had monster, pokemon and bird groups. My monster group won. It was a great day and the food was wonderful.

Marie (France)