Date of Activity: July 19^th

On our first activity day in Uda, Nara we got to experience a form of zen meditation called “zazen”. Some days in advance I had already heard some rumours that there was going to be a man with some sort of whipping stick involved, hitting people if they were sitting in a wrong position or falling asleep, etc. Me being me (I’ve tried meditating before, but I always ended up tired after 10 seconds) I figured that I’d probably be one of the first being hit.

We drove up to this really nice temple called “Renshouzen-ji”, where we were met by the monk that was going to guide us through the zazen. The first thing we did before we started was to join our hands in prayer and bow to a statue of Buddha. We then proceeded to another room to begin the zazen. Already at the first part, where we learned the right way to sit, some people were having difficulties. We had to first put our right ankle on our left thigh, and then our left ankle on our right thigh, which can be REALLY hard. And painful. When meditating, we had to sit in this position without moving, with our backs very straight, not even moving our sight and – that was seemingly the most important part – not moving our thoughts. We were told to count our breathing from one to ten over and over again until the meditation was over. I’m not sure if there was even one person who managed to do this throughout the whole thing. We ended the zazen by bowing to the statue of Buddha again.

After having lunch, we met up with a bunch of elementary school kids and played lots of games from our countries with them! For about two hours the room was filled with running, screaming and laughter, a big contrast to the silence we experienced during the zazen earlier that day. We ended the day drawing personal flags. Soon the floor was covered with rainbows, animals, moustaches and whatever else people felt represented them. Oh, and everyone was given ice cream. That made me happy.

(Maria Sørlid, Norway)

Sometimes communicating with elderly people can be challenging, but communicating with elderly people that don’t speak your language…now that be a little tougher. Well in the end it turned out much better than I thought. In Uda we were invited to spend the morning at a Japanese nursing home were we had the chance to interact and learn from elderly community members at a nursing home. After we introduced ourselves we found out for some of them we were the first people they ever met from different country which was a great opportunity to represent our countries.

We started off by writing calligraphy kanji characters, mostly positive characters like; Love, Dream, Hope ect. It was a great chance to learn calligraphy but also to help the members. Because some of them were in wheelchairs or slightly disabled we helped them write the calligraphy by placing our hands over theirs and writing with them. It was a very powerful moment for the group of us.

I think we originally planned on visiting the home and giving, serving, and impacting the community members but didn’t realize how much they would teach and impact us. When we said our goodbyes and it was very difficult for us, one of the women in a wheelchair probably in her mind 90’s took my hands and started to speak Japanese she then soon begin to cry at that moment language was no longer needed and I felt her embrace and energy and I know what she was saying was from the heart and she cared very much about the words she was saying even though she probably knew I didn’t understand. Luckily when she was speaking there was someone behind me that translated what she said. One of the things she mentioned was “Thank you so much for visiting us and spending you time with us all and I’m happy to have lived this long so I could meet you on this day.” It was a wonderful experience and its great to think that at age 90 people are still able to inspire and impact in this world!

(Brandon Serna – External Relations Manager for Summer ‘11 Road Team)