[inspic=1722,right,fullscreen,400]バスから『とんぼハウス』（障害福祉サービス事業所）の人たちが見えました。私たちがバスの中にいる時から彼らは私たちと会えて嬉しそうでした。
私たちがバスを降りるとすぐ、暖かく歓迎してくれました。私たちも彼らも交流をする準備ができていました。
プログラム参加者はいくつかの日本の遊びをしました。写真に写っているけん玉は一番激しい争いになり、楽しく、そして難しい遊びでした。私たち何人かは成功しましたが、残りの数名は他の人が一生懸命やっている姿を見て楽しんでいました。
根本的なものはゲームや遊び道具ではありません。それは私たちが『とんぼハウス』の人々と過ごす時間にありました。私たちが彼らに幸せな楽しい時間を運んだのです。
時々、私たちは小さなことが人生にとってどれだけ大切かを忘れてしまいます。でも、この日のような出来事が小さな行動の大切さを思い出させ楽しませてくれます。それは私たちの小さな行動が『とんぼハウス』で素晴らしい結果へと導いたからです。
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[inspic=1716,right,fullscreen,400]Six Schools and 2200 Kids are being benefited by this eight million dollar facility ran by 22 employees.
I am talking about the school lunch facility of the city of Ueda, where they even have a special room to cook the food of kids with allergies… Pretty well organized I must say, and the best of all, most of the energy they use to cook comes from the solar panels located on top of the building.
In Japanese Schools, the lunch hour is an actual class, it’s called Food Education. The kids learn from early age, how to eat healthy, they also learn about manners and even about portions and how to make sure everyone gets something to eat. Kids are assigned to serve the food and after the meal they check how well their classmates eat as a whole group.
As we all know, every country has their own system an after our tour at the facility we had time to share the different systems.
We thought the United Kingdom system is the most fun, interactive and fare system of all. Totally Harry Potter Style.
The schools are divided into groups or “houses” just like in Harry Potter. Each group competes to get points for eating healthy food, a teacher is assigned to eat with individual students, rotating everyday, that way they can evaluate how the student is eating, what they eat and how healthy the food is, the student’s eating habits basically.
Another very interesting thing about the system in the UK and that it might have nothing to do with Harry Potter is the fact that the school lunch is cooked taking in consideration the religion of the majority of the students there. If the school population is mainly Muslim, they will not cook anything with pork or if the majority of the students are from India you won’t find any beef in the menu at that school.
Interesting eh? the beauty of diversity and accepting differences.
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[inspic=1714,right,fullscreen,400]In World Campus – Japan you might think we do the same activities over and over every time i say we went to a castle, but you can be sure that we learn something very different from every place and it actually depends on us to look for the best learning opportunity, using our senses to the full of their ability.
This time we visited Ueda Castle and even though many of us thought, “oh, it is just another castle” this one was about to teach us something very interesting.
The symbol of the castle is the six coins you can see in the picture. Six coins that are now not only the symbol of the castle but the symbol of the entire city of Ueda.
I was very curious to know the meaning of the symbol, why six coins and not a different number or why coins…
In case you are also wondering, here is the answer:
“At that time we believed that after we die we had to cross a river to go to hell or heaven and to do so we had to pay 6 coins to the person in charge of the boat to cross. For the castle and the generation that was in charge of the castle meant that they were ready to die if necessary. They would defend their believes and their property until they died, we fight until we die they would say”
And that’s the meaning of the six coins!
