Category Archives: Arao City

Arao City, City Life, City Theme Activities, Host Families

Host family day in Arao

host family day in Arao

host family day in Arao

Day of activity: June 22nd 2014

For our host family day in Arao, my room mate and I went to Yanegawa with our host family. Yanegawa is famous for it’s beautiful river, and we had the pleasure of being able to ride a guided tour through the river. Although the guide was speaking in Japanese, which is not one of my strong sides, the ride was still very much entertaining. The guide was throwing jokes, singing us songs, and was welcoming enough to let us try to steer the boat, something that turned out to be incredibly difficult. The view of the river was fantastic – there was beautiful trees and flowers along the rivers edge, the river itself was filled with turtles, and the air was full of butterflies. Every now and then, our boat had to go beneath a bridge, however the water level of the river was very high due to the rainy season, so we all had to take cover to avoid our heads from hitting the bridges. In the evening we went to a restaurant where we enjoyed unagi (grilled eel). It was, like most Japanese food, very delicious. The day was all great fun, and I’m very glad I got to experience this with my host family!

Joakim (Norway)

Arao City, City Life, City Theme Activities

2014 Arigato Event in Arao

Arigaro Event in Arao

Arigaro Event in AraoDay of Activity: June 21st

Today we rehearsed for the Arigato Event that we preformed in the evening. For the culture pieces we not only had someone to play the piano but also flute and violin involved in this part of the Arigato Event, which I thought was very impressive. After rehearsing the event a couple of times, we were told that World Campus International were having a mascot contest. The purpose of the contest is to find a mascot for WCI that best represents the message of WCI. Everyone is encouraged to participate to design the mascot and the prize is one free session in WCI next summer so many were eager to participate!

The Arigato Event went very well and the evening ended with a lot of happy host families and WCI participants. My stay in Arao has definitely been an unforgettable experience that I will never forget and the Arigato Event only confirmed my decision to return to this wonderful city again in the future.

Amalie (Denmark)

Arao City, City Life, City Theme Activities

Okunoin temple, Swordsmithing & Iaido experience

Day of Activity: June 20th

After we visited the mayor the same day, we headed to Okunoin temple, which houses the largest temple bell in the world. Weighing approximately 37.5 tonnes, it is made in the image of the sitting Buddha. After receiving a prayer from a priest, we were allowed to hit the bell, which gave a deep, almost heavy, sound. We were then allowed to explore the quite vast temple grounds before we were shipped off to a swordsmith.

Bell & Sword 1

Upon arriving at the workshop of the swordsmith, we were standing in an iaido dojo. The actual workshop was a smaller building in the back of the property, reached after going through a zig-zag of narrow pathways.

The swordsmith, one of the few remaining of his kind, showed us the traditional way to make a Japanese katana, by flattening and folding a piece of metal many times, a layered metal is created, giving the swords their strength. The time it takes to make a single sword is roughly 3 months.

As it was very cramped with all of us stuffed into his small workshop, things got lively when the sparks started flying from the pieces of red-hot metal. We were also given a chance to experience just how soft (or hard) red-hot metal is, by getting some hands-on experience at metalworking.

Bell & Sword 2

Finally, back in the iaido dojo, we were first given a demonstration of iaido, and then a few lucky people got to try their hand at swinging a sword at a dummy made of we rolled up tatami mats. Being one of the lucky ones, I can confirm that it was very satisfying to cut the dummy in half with a single slash of the sword. At the end of the day, we took pictures of ourselves posing with the swords, said goodbye to the iaido practitioners and the swordsmith and called it a day.

Bell & Sword 3

Hands-on experience like metalworking ad iaido are ones that even native Japanese people rarely get to try, so this was absolutely a very fun, and at times thrilling, experience.

Espen

Arao City, City Life, City Theme Activities, Community Partners

Mayor visit in Arao

Day of Activity June 20th

Today was the most eventful day so far. From early in the morning we were dressed in our best outfits to meet the mayor of Arao city, Mr. Maebata. He gave us a general introduction to the geography and history of the area. We learned that Arao was once a prosperous coal mining town whose main mine, the Manda coal mine, had ceased its ore extraction operations in 1951. The amusement park “greenland”, whose ferris wheel towers over the city, made its obligatory cameo, and with the city pushing for the Manda coal mine’s acceptance as a UNESCO world heritage site, and Arao’s numerous natural tourist attractions, like the Arao tideland and wetlands, the Mayor revealed ambitions of a booming tourism industry in the area.

After Mr. Maebata finished his address, he opened for a Q&A session, and we were allowed to ask him about both business and leisure. This was a unique opportunity to gain an impression of Japanese politics at the city level. Unless you know enough Japanese to read a newspaper or follow the news on television, foreigners are usually only exposed to politics at the national level, so this was a valuable opportunity.

2014 Mayor visit in Arao

A few days later our visit was featured in the Ariake Shinpo, the local newspaper for the Omuta and Arao area.

10250664_740938652618828_1372895975_n-1

Espen

Arao City, City Life, City Theme Activities

Midorigaoka Elementery school visit in 2014

Midorigaoka Elementery school visit

Day of activity: June 19th

This day we visited midorigaoka elementary school. In most elementary schools we visited, the kids were all looking forward to interact with us, but this school was slightly different. This school had been in the World Campus – Japan program for several years in a row now and the connection with World Campus International and some of its members was seemingly deeper. Many kids who had experienced the cultural exchange a year before had already been looking forward to the return of World Campus – Japan since that same year. They were extremely happy to see us and came to see who we are as soon as we entered the building. We set up our World Campus – Japan headquarters in the library where we split up into four groups and all went to our pre-scheduled class rooms.

The first class me and my group joined was a first-years class. Because the first years students didn’t speak any English we interacted through music. We sang and danced with the kids and a lot of fun! We then moved on to the next class, where the students did speak some English. We all introduced ourselves and all the kids also introduced themselves. We then had a question and answer session so we could get to know each other better. After the classes it was time for a school lunch. We all picked up our lunches in the headquarters and the students came to pick us up and took us to their class rooms to eat with them. I went to the special needs education class in the school for lunch. This class consisted of three students, one teacher and one helper. The teacher used to be an English teacher before and thus the conversations we had went smoothly. We talked about the kids and what their hobbies were. Each of the kids showed us what they liked to do. One of the kids was extremely good at drawing and showed us a drawing he made of two kids playing outside. It had a lot of detail and was very realistic. If I had guessed who had made the picture, I would have guessed somebody who had been studying art or design, but no, this ten year old boy whose passion was to draw, drew this in his play time while all the other kids were out playing soccer or dodge ball.

After lunch everybody of World Campus – Japan, all students and all teacher gathered in the gymnasium. The students officially welcomed us to their school and we thanked them for welcoming us. As a thank you we performed several Japanese dances on stage and played games with them afterwards. The children knew many of the songs we performed and sang, danced and clapped with us and the music! They had a lot of fun. Even the teachers seemed to enjoy it and some of them even joined us when playing the games! We all had a great time here!

After the music event all World Campus – Japan members went back to headquarters and it was time for the kids to go home. Even though it was time to go home, many kids decided to stay a bit longer and say one last good bye to us while asking for our signature. After that they went home probably awaiting our next return. I hope that world campus international will get another chance to have this great experience again next year!

Jurrien Theunisz (The Netherlands)