All posts by Thomas Greve

City Life, City Theme Activities, Omura City

A visit at the Shorinji Kenpo Dojo

Today we visited the Shorinji Kenpo (a fairly young form of martial arts) Dojo. We were firstly given a presentation explaining all about it, from its founder to its philosophy. The basic thought behind Shorinji Kenpo is that to be better and more able person we need to have power and love. Without power we are incapable to help others, and without love we only hurt people. That’s why this art focuses on balancing self-respect and respect towards others. This means that during training you must not only train your technique on others, but let others train their techniques on you. And boy did that hurt!

The first technique we learned was something that made me feel like I was in Street Fighter (punch, punch, kick!) a basic offensive move basically (No Hadoukens, unfortunately)

The rest of the techniques we learned during our training were defensive, mainly meaning twisting wrists, breaking free from grasps and throwing our attackers into the ground. They taught us that we all have weak points in our body and that we should focus on using these to disable our attacker. My training partner Miyamoto, being only 10, was able to use them and actually hurt me with them. I on the other hand took some more time, which meant he had to lie on the ground and wait for hours whilst I tried to twist his hand in a position that actually hurt. All in all it was an amazing experience; we got to see a little girl of five spar with her father, got to learn some techniques, and got to apply them! I think that a couple of us in the group might be thinking of doing Shorinji Kenpo in the near future. Not only is it fun, but the philosophy behind it is something that should be looked up upon.

Álvaro Martin-Mazorra (Spain)

City Life, Host Families, Omura City

Visit of a Sushi Restaurant

sushi restaurant


On Monday night my host family took me to a conveyer belt sushi restaurant along with my host mother’s parents. It was a very interesting experience! We all had hot tea to drink. There were cups and teabags at the table, and we got hot water by pressing our cups against a spout at the edge of the table, just below the conveyer belt. To get out sushi we just grabbed the plates of sushi from the conveyer belt as it went by. We also ordered some specific pieces from the chefs in the middle. The chefs were in the middle of the conveyer belt loop, making the sushi. When they made some sushi, they just put it on the conveyer belt.

sushi restaurant


The sushi itself was delicious! My favorite was the cooked salmon. The shrimp was also very good. I ate a lot of things I’d never had before. My host family didn’t know the English names for them, so they showed me pictures of the animals on their phone. I had squid, eel, sea urchin, and many other things. I even had something with large fish eggs in it, the size of loquat seeds, that looked just like the eggs from Finding Nemo. Overall, it was a very new, exciting and delicious diner.

sushi restaurant


Benjamin Straub (USA)

City Life, Omuta City

Takuma Junior high School

Takuma Junior high School

Today, WCI made a visit to the Takuma Junior High School in Omuta. It was the first time for WCI to visit this school. The principle was really looking forward to our visit and had a clear vision in mind: to expand the childrens horizon.

It was a great and fun day we attended diffrent classes during the day. For example we had English class, music lessons, swimming class, Japanese and many more subjects.

The junior high school students are actually really cute. They are really curious but they are a bit scared to make a conversation, so they were relieved when they found out that I can speak Japanese.

Even though some lessons were hard to keep up with it was a nice experience for both WCI as for the Takuma Junior high school kids. `

Ellery (The Netherlands)

City Life, Omura City

2013 Arigatou event in Omura

Arigatou event


To say that the Arigatou event day was hectic, I think nobody will dispute. The visit to Takematsu elementery school alone is a story in of itself. Keeping on topic I was very unsure about what to expect from the Arigatou event, as we used almost the entire first day in Omura to practice the dance alone, making it seem like a really serious performance, demanding perfection. Much to my relief we were assured throughout the week that the first and foremost goal of the event was to bond with the local community, and try to give something back. So when the curtainfall drew near, changes were still being made to the program. I understood that what mattered most was to make the best use of the diminished time we had, due to a thight venue schedule, and do our best to connect with the local community.

Arigatou event


When the doors was opened, I was still a bit unsure about how it was going to go down. Then when I was suddenly called to the stage with Marijke and the birthday song started playing, my thougt was that there had been some mixup, and the entire event would start off on the wrong foot. However, as it turned out the LOC had discovered that the two of us recently had our birthdays, and sectretly planned to celebrate this with cake and presents, and that the celebration for Daniel and Ola siblings still was going as planned. After my confusion faded away, all there was left to do was to enjoy the evening. And what an evening! We had delicious food, lively performances, a first class band, and most of all; awesome people! I for one had a great time, and I truly believe that I wasn’t alone in that matter!!!

Geir (Norway)

Arigatou event


City Life, Omura City

Takematsu

Our visit to Takematsu was my favorite activity from week 1 in Omura. We were greeted at the school by the principal before students welcomed us with perdonal cards and placemats. I spent the day woth some of the 2nd grade students. They were excited to see us foreigners, even though we didin’t speak much Japanese! We got the chance to attend swimming class, which was a great way to cool off. However, my favorite class that day was music. We played games (rock, paper scissors) with the students. We sang B-I-N-G-O in two languages (both Japanese and English), and head-shoulders-knees-and-toes in four (Japanese, English, Norwegian and Danish)!

Lunch was an experience! The food was prepared in a kitchen, bit it was served our by students and eaten in the classroom. Finally, we held a music event with all the 5th and 6th graders, which was a lot, considering Takematsu elementary had more than a 1000 students. We performed some popular Japanese dances for them and also played some games. They were so excited to have us there, we felt like rock stars, especially when we gave high-fives to every student there! Overall it was an excellent experience for everyone involved as we got to learn about many other cultures.

Kayla (USA)