Category Archives: City Theme Activities

City Life, City Theme Activities, Tama City

Saving lives

Emergency Training

The paramedic program at the university of Kokushikan, university well known for its sports activities, is a very intense program with many great teachers and very committed students. We visited the university and met with about 20 paramedic students from different levels of their education.

That morning we learned about how to give CPR to a person which was a lot of fun, we got to see inside an ambulance and even play a little bit with the equipment. It was a good morning to start with but the best part came after the CPR training when we had time to discuss about their reason to become paramedic, also their interest and daily life routine. This last one includes very much work and studying and very little sleep, not much exercise and lots of junk food. No wonder why the life expectancy for paramedics in Japan is the shortest of all careers.

To continue with the conversation, we did an activity where we asked questions and the people there had to place themselves around the room according to their answer. Some of the questions were, would you move to another country? do you like the place where you live? would you marry someone from another culture or religion? do you believe in marriage? and the last question was, do you believe the world will be a better place in ten years?

It definitely helped us understand the values of the Japanese young generation and the differences & similarities we have as people.

City Life, City Theme Activities, Tama City

Shishi Mai

shishi mai

Shishi Mai or Lion Dance. Awesome way to start session four of World Campus – Japan in Tama City. A welcome from the LOC (Local Organizing Committee) with a Shishi Mai Dance. Tama City is located very close to Tokyo as well as Toride but on the west side of it.

The Lion Dance involves a person dressed as a lion with a lion head and all, accompanied by music played live. The group of performers jump around, do a few steps but the best thing of all… the lion pretends to eat your head at times. He walks through the audience and “Eats” people’s heads as he pleases. It is actually a sign of good luck or a wish for good luck if the lion “eats” your head which it happened to many of us.

That night we also met some of the amazing university students that were going to spend part of the week with us. Not only to hang out but to take us on a really cool Metropolitan tour of Tokyo. (Next post)

Great beginning for Tama!

City Life, City Theme Activities, Toride City

One sky, One World

Kites

Another awesome day in Toride and in World Campus – Japan.

This day we not only learned about Japanese kites and the history of kites in general, we also learned how to make them, color them, glue the pieces together and how to tie them together.

The LOC brought in a professional kite maker to teach us how to make a great kite 🙂

120 kites were made that morning, World Campus – Japan members, LOC Members (Local Organizing Committee) and host families were divided into three groups with a different theme each. Ocean Theme, Flags Theme and Kanji Theme (Japanese Writing).

The final result was awesome, we had a blast creating the 120 kites even though was so hard to organize them without ruining them but we made it through and went to the next part of the day. We never imagined how cool it was going to be.

We took off with three boxes full of kites tied together. Everyone walked to the park close by, with amazing view, super green grass and just the perfect wind for the kite flying.

We all made an effort and manage to make our kites fly up in the air, 40 of them, all tied together. It was just beautiful as you can see in the picture.

All the World Campus – Japan Participants, host families and LOC members were having a great time, enjoying the weather and looking at our kites fly together. We also played and took some really cool pictures.

For us, that afternoon was not just a moment to fly kites, it became the best team building afternoon we ever had in World Campus – Japan!

City Life, City Theme Activities, Toride City

Shaking the basket

yashukibushi

On the morning of this day we went to the Kubota Factory in the City of Tsukuba, very close to Toride. The Kubota Factory is a tractor and big machinery factory with a lot of technology in their facility. They even have little robots running around performing different tasks. It feels like at some point this robots will take over everyone’s job at the factory. Maybe they will in the future.

An interesting fact about this factory is that they have all the signs in both japanese and Portuguese because they have a very high Brazilian population among their employees.

Continuing with the day, we went back to our meeting place and there were community members waiting for us to teach us different Japanese “activities” like Karate, Koto (Japanese Traditional Harp), how to dress and be a Ninja and Yasukibushi (Japanese Dance or Eel Dance).

I have to say this last two were so funny! But we will talk about Yasukibushi only, since we already talked about Ninjas in one of our articles from Uda City.

Yasukibushi, a very funny japanese dance that explains the process of fishing for eel. The participants of World Campus – Japan had the chance to learn from a very good performer from the area. They were wearing the complete attire for the dance, including a big basket to put the eel in, afer catching it.

The picture doesn’t really show how funny it was, but if you have a chance, search for a video of this very traditional and entertaining dance.

Those who learned had a blast laughing and trying to do the movements the right way and those of us who were watching really had sore stomachs after the dance from laughing so much watching our friends do the dance.

Definitely a great day!

City Life, City Theme Activities, Toride City

WCJ Helping Toride

Sake Factory

The town we spend this week at is called Toride, a City located right outside of Tokyo, about an hour train ride to it. Toride has the beauty of a small town, lots of nature around, super green but with all the benefits of being very close to the big city…Tokyo.

Our first day in Toride was a very busy and interesting one because we had a very special task to complete on a very short amount of time.

The idea was to make promotion material for four different stores in the area that have been around for more than 100 years and because of the developing of the City, they have been losing clients and the town’s citizens have lost interest even though they are one of a kind store in their own business.

A Sake Factory, a Japanese Season’s Dolls Store, a Pickle factory and a Shovel factory.

After having a tour an explanation of the business from the owners we went off to create the promotion material.

World Campus – Japan participants enjoyed the visit, learned about their business and the products they make and tried to make the best promo material possible to improve their sales. We hope our work meets their expectations because we enjoyed it 100%.