Category Archives: City Theme Activities

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%.

City Life, City Theme Activities, Ueda City

Oishii Arigato Event

World Campus Cooking

It was Arigato Event Day and even when this day is usually very packed, the LOC (Local Organizing Committee) members from Ueda planned a potluck for after the event which normally doesn’t affect our schedule.

This day we, World Campus -Japan Participants were going to cook the meals for the Potluck! We splited up into 5 teams and cooked something from our countries and cultures, we had everything from Caseroles from USA to Guacamole (Avocado Dip) from Mexico. From filled Red Peppers and Tomatoes from Greece to Mash Potatoes and Beef from Canada. It was defenitely very Oishii (delicious in Japanese).

Everyone cooked what they could with the ingredients they could find in Japan. The families enjoyed the food and so did we, but most important, We learned from each other and from ourselves, about team work, recipes, flavors and cultures and we had a great time doing it.

City Life, City Theme Activities, Ueda City

Shy? not so much after all.[/lan_en]

Middle School

Some members of the community of Ueda got together to teach us how to cook Soba Noodles (Buckwheat very thin noodles that you can eat cold or hot)

Of course we started by making the dough for it and adding all the ingredients. After the dough was ready it was time to stretch it and cut it as thin as we could. We made the dough, cut the noodles, cooked them and ate them. They looked more like Udon noodles (thick noodles) but the taste was great, to give ourselves some credit. 🙂

After this awesome time we the community, we went to Kita Middle School for an hour of interaction. This time we really took advantage of those 60 Minutes we were given to get to know each other.

We introduced ourselves, danced sang and had an amazing time together. The students, usually very quiet and shy when it comes to interaction, specially with foreigners, really opened up and enjoyed the activities we planned for them.

They were dancing and signing with us like one big group of friends. Results like the one we had that afternoon with the middle school students are the reason we do our best to interact and to make it fun, not only for the students at the school but also for ourselves in World Campus – Japan.

City Life, City Theme Activities, Ueda City

Small actions, big results!

Tombo House

From the bus we could see the faces of the residents of Tombo House (House for handicap people) who were already excited to have us there, even when we were still inside the bus.

As soon as we got off the bus, they gave us a very warm welcome, they were ready to start the interaction and so were we.

World Campus – Japan members played a few traditional japanese games, the one on the picture was the most competitive, fun and hard one. Some of us were successful, some other just enjoyed watching others try.

The bottom line was not the actual games, it was about the happiness we were bringing to the Tombo House residents by just spending a good hour playing and interacting with them.

Sometimes we forget how important the little things in life are but in days like this i remind myself to enjoy those little actions because they could lead to amazing results like the one we had that day at Tombo House.