We tried to show all the memories that the participants had in Kumamoto, through this slideshow.
OneRepublic – Counting Stars©
Category Archives: Kumamoto City
Hospital day
Day of the activity: June 18th, 2015
Today we went to the Jikei hospital where they have a so-called ‘baby hatch’, or more formally ‘the stork’s cradle’. It is a place where parents who are unable to care for their children can drop off the baby anonymously.
Before we went to the hospital itself, we had s meeting with a nurse whom had worked with the cradle for several years. She told us many emotional stories about women who couldn’t even tell their parents that they were pregnant, and had come to the stork’s cradle. I was quite surprised that the social stigma around pregnancy under the ‘wrong’ circumstances was still so powerful, and even more shocked and surprised when we were told that before the cradle was started, there had even been a problem with babies being abandoned and found dead.
When we came to the hospital, we were overwhelmed by all the cameras and journalists who were there for reporting on our visit. Apparently all the local TV stations, and at least one national newspaper, were there to cover our visit. We went to have a quick look at the hatch itself, and then we went inside to talk with one of the founders of the cradle.
It was very interesting to hear what he had to say about the effect that the cradle has had, but all the cameras made it somewhat uncomfortable. Afterwards, some of us went to take a closer look at the hatch, and even got to look inside. Inside was a letter with information for the child’s parents, and I was relieved to see that it is impossible to leave a baby without taking the letter.
Johannes Meyer (Norway)
WCJ 2015, Session 1, NHK Broadcast on Jikei Hospital
NHK broadcasted an item of our visit to the Jikei Hospital Baby Hatch System. Helmiina Suuronen’s interview is in it as well!
NHK©
Interaction at the YMCA
Day of activity: July 07th 2014
Last Monday morning’s scheduled activity was very interesting. Really. The presentations were a little long and very detailed, but thez gsve me a lot to think about concerning how much planning goes into a city (an interest of mine that has nothing to do with either my major or the job I sm am aiming for).
In the afternoon, my normal shyness-induced awkwardness was amplified by the addition of a new component to the game JanKenPon (a Japanese version of Rock Paper Scissors) where the ‘winner’ of the round points at their opponent’s face, says a phrase, and points their finger in one direction of four (up, down, left, or right) on the last syllable of the phrase. Also on the the last syllable of the phrase, the ‘losing’ opponent looks in one of the four directions, and prevents the ‘winning’ opponent from truly winning by not looking in the direction that they point in; if the ‘winner’ doees not straight out win (i.e. their opponent looks in a different direction), the dueling pair start all over again with JanKenPon until someone wins. Confusing, right? Now try learning that on the fly when neither party speaks the other’s language very well.
After this amusing activity, we went upstsairs to make Ikinari Dango and were able to see everyone in the aprons they had borrowed from their host families; some of the combinations of World Campus – Japan Participant and host family apron had the occational incongruous and hilarious results: Actually, Ellis had hinted about the design of his host mom’s apron while we were visiting Kumamoto’s Tourism Department that morning which lead me to guess that it was pink and frilly to which he answered with an affirmative. But, seriously Ellis, an apron that has tomatoes on the pockets is not pink! A combination of the following pictures is more what I meant when I said pink and frilly! Funny aprons aside, we had an interesting experience making Ikinari Dango (in a ‘I have no idea what the heck I am doing, but let’s see how this turns out’ sense of the word “interesting”).
The YMCA students were really good at including us in the process of making the dough (very sticky stuff), putting the anko on the sweet potato slices, and wrapping the potato & anko combo in a thin layer of dough. Afterwards, we ate a lot of watermelon while the dango were being steamed, and then we ate the dango shile they were still piping hot. (‘Su-i-ka’ in Japanese means ‘watermelon’, though the ‘su-i’ is not the same as ‘su-i’ which is one of the pronunciations for the kanji which means ‘water’.)
Finally, as we were saying good-bye to the students, I randomly got AKB48’s song “Koisuru Fortune Cookie” stuck in my head. For those who don’t know: “Koisuru Fortune Cookie” is the first song of the Japanese Medley which we participants of World Campus International perform at each Arigato Event. As a result, I started dancing a little of the choreography, someone asked me what I was doing, I answered with a Thinking that We Should Perform the Japanese Medley, and the whole thing snowballed until about half of us were performing with music and a fair number of the YMCA students were recording us. This impromptu performance, I think, was the highlight: a great ending to an already exciting day.
Jackie (USA)
Overwiew of Kumamoto City
Day of activity: July 10th 2014
Finally we are in Kumamoto city! Last year Kumamoto city won the mascot contest with their mascot Kumamon which is a very cute bear and we went to see him! He was very happy to meet us and danced a lot of dances including the famous Kumamon dance that he is famous for.
In spite of the connection with the host families in Omuta, everybody was exited to meet their new host families and performing the Arigato Event for them the next day in order to thank them for hosting us. The Arigato Event went fine and we made the host families happy.
To get a better understanding of Kumamoto city we also visited the director of the tourism department. He told us about the Japanese culture in Kumamoto including the education system and the public health.
One thing that is also very unique for Kumamoto is the baby hatch in J K Hospital, which we went to see. The baby hatch is the only one in Japan and the legalization of the baby hatch has created a massive debate in Japan. One of the main topics of the debate was the parent’s responsibility of their children, which some believe was being ignored by creating the baby hatch. We also went to see the director of J K Hospital and the creator of the baby hatch. One of his arguments for creating the hatch was to prevent babies from being left to die in Japan. By hearing the director talk, you could really feel that he considered the baby hatch to be his legacy for Japan. He said: “I hope that no one leaves their babies in the hatch but it does happen and it saves those babies from a terrible fate.”
During in our stay in Kumamoto we also interacted with the student and staff at the YMCA. The speaker Mr. “Pumbkin”, yes he said that we could call him that, directed through the day were we made a special dessert with the students of the YMCA and it was so much fun!
On host family day I went to Kumamoto castle with my host dad and Caroline from Sweden that I was staying with and it was very beautiful. A Famous Samurai called Miyamoto Musashi fought one of his many battles here which made the experience more exciting for me. We also vent to visit a very famous garden in Kumamoto with a lot of shrines that were very beautiful.
On our last day we interacted with some of the university students of Kumamoto Prefectual University which was very fun because one of the things that we did was to play a game were you would have one paper for each represented country in our group and each person wrote what they associated with that country. After wards the persons would take the paper representing their own countries and say whether the things that were written on them were true or false.
When we leave Kumamoto I will take experiences with me that will last for a lifetime. I will always look back and remember the good times I had with WCI in Kumamoto and I already want to go back.
Amalie (Denmark)
