Category Archives: 長崎県大村市

A day in Nagasaki City

6月 24, 2014 Thomas Greve

Today, we went to Nagasaki. We had heard earlier last week from Omura – san, a representative from the local community, about his troubles finding a survivor of the atomic bomb in the town that we are staying in, Omura.

No one of the people that he asked wanted to speak about the experience, due to their fear of discrimination, and, for some of them, the hate towards foreigners. Yesterday, I heard from my host – grandfather that he was a survivor of the atomic bomb that was dropped on Nagasaki. He shoved me a notebook containing his information from when the bombs were dropped.

In the notebook I could see that he was 3 years old when the atomic bombs were dropped. I assumed that the notebook was some kind of way for the Japanese governement to keep track of survivors and reunite their families. My host – grandfather diden’t tell me a lot about his experience, probably because of the strong feelings that he is still harburing in connection with the experience.

I knew that when we whent to Nagasaki City we would go to the atomic bomb and listen to a survivor telling us about her experience.

Both the museum and the survivors speech were emidiadly educational.

While I had learned about the atomic bombs in school back in Sweden, it was a whole different experience seeing the destruction in the museum and hearing about the effects directly from a survivor. Listening to the survivor and seeing the remains of both people and rabble in the museum changed my impression of the bombing experience.

I knew what happend was horrible but i believed that no one, exept the survivors, would actually be able to know exactly how horrible the atomic bombings actually were.

Thinging back upon what I have learned, heard and experienced today, I have decided to start i new project. I will create a video to show to the world, accompanied by music, using the materials that i gathered today.

This is for myself to show my appretiation to the people making this possible, and to sharewhat I have learned and experienced today with other people in the world.

Joel (Sweden)

熊本県荒尾市, 訪問地, 地域学習, 長崎県大村市

First Day in Omura

6月 23, 2014 Thomas Greve

Day of activity: June 10^th 2014

Due to some long flight delays with Air France, resulting in being re-routed to Tokyo followed by Nagasaki I finally arrived in Omura city at 7 P.M. My host family as well as Hiro Nishimura (the person in charge of WCI) met me at the airport and greeted me kindly. I was then driven straight to a warm welcoming party where delicious food was served by lots of smiling people. It was at this point that I realised I had made the right decision to visit Japan with the World Campus International company.

Ellis Jones (U.K.)

訪問地, 地域学習, 長崎県大村市

A visit at the Shorinji Kenpo Dojo

7月 18, 2013 Thomas Greve

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)

訪問地, ホストファミリー, 長崎県大村市

Visit of a Sushi Restaurant

7月 17, 2013 Thomas Greve

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.

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.

Benjamin Straub (USA)

訪問地, 長崎県大村市

2013 Arigatou event in Omura

7月 1, 2013 Thomas Greve

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.

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)

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