New day, new opportunities… in World Campus – Japan. This time we went to the Suizenji Gym, to learn about Kyudo (Japanese Archery) Our Sensei has been teaching Kyudo for many years, so, we were about to learn from the best. There is something he said that was very surprising to all of us; 90% of the points you can earn in a competition is based on your PRE shooting performance. Only 10% has to do with hitting the target. So literally, you could hit 100% of your targets and loose the competition if you don’t follow the PRE performance rules and procedures.

Once we were done with the theory we went on to try out our Kyudo abilities. One by one we were facing our own fear to let go of the string that holds the arrow while we pulled as hard as we could. I have to say, all this tension is happening very close to your right eye, you could feel the wind after letting it go.

In World Campus – Japan, as we’ve said in previous posts, we have amazing opportunities to learn “first hand” from the protagonists of the stories.

This morning we had a discussion about adoption, abortion and other related topics with the members of World Campus – Japan, of the community and LOC. I personally have a very clear idea of what I want and think, but it was very constructive to listen, debate and respect the opinions of the rest of the group.

The conversation followed a visit to Jikei Hospital, the only place in Japan that is using the system of a “stokes cradle” (A place where families can drop off their baby if they can’t or don’t want to take care of them). Once we got there we were introduced to the system, and it was nothing like I imagined. When in the morning we talked about “A BOX”, I didn’t think it was actually a box, but it is.

Once the family member opens the door of this very comfortable looking box, leaves the baby and closes the door, there is no way to open it again. Inside the box there is a note from the Hospital to the family member dropping off the baby. An alarm goes off for the nurses to know that a new baby has arrived. Families can always come back to the hospital to request their baby back, as long as they leave some information with the baby in the box.

How everything started. A Doctor from Jikei Hospital felt guilty about being in his position and not being able to prevent certain actions that were happening in Kumamoto (babies being left in garbage cans or being killed by their parents) His passion for a change was so strong that he started working on a system that would give those babies a second chance. He went to Germany, where the system was already in use and adapted the system to the Japanese society with an amazing success.

He is a living prove that Passion conquers all, and that one person can certainly make a difference in the world. In Hiroshima (next few posts) we for sure learned about the power of one person.

(Yoly Amaya from USA)

In Kumamoto, we had our World Campus – Japan – Arigato Event at the beginning of the week’s stay, which is not very usual. The energy was a little low because it was the first time we had to perform our Arigato Event at 2pm. We usually do it around 6pm or 7pm. Even so, we made it happen pulling together as a team like always. The energy started to grow and we got really excited to see our host families and some friends we met the day before, like our Noodle Making Sensei. She was so excited to have the opportunity to hang out with us in a different environment and so were we.

The Kumamoto Arigato Event ended up being one of the best arigato events EVER!!! and i am about to explain why. We decided to play a few games with the host families that attended the arigato event and not only we layed, we laughed so hard that it was almost painful 🙂 For the game, we had the host families find a partner to pop balloons with, we had about 60 to 75 balloons ready to get popped. We had one rule: “No Hands”. They took the instructions perfectly and balloons were popping up and down, soooo funny!. The positions, the screaming, the laughs of everyone… We just had a great time that afternoon.

The second part of the Arigato Event was even more powerful, the participants share all their energy and great vibe with their audience. That’s what the Arigato Event is all about: people coming together to prove the peace can be found among people from different cultures, backgrounds, countries and languages.

Left Arao City after a fun experience at Greenland and took a train to the City of Kumamoto, Capital of Kumamoto Prefecture and home of the beautiful Kumamoto Castle which we will talk about on the next post.

To start our Kumamoto visit, of course we met our wonderful host families and for the first Activity Day we went to a restaurant where we had the chance to learn how to make “Udon” (Wheat Noodle) – So, hands on…

Not only we made the noodles but after we finished, we had lunch. Our own, home-hand made Udon noodles! It was definitely not better than buying them but at least we could say we made them.

The owner of this very spanish restaurant was happy to have us there, a bunch of foreigns trying to make a very japanese dish. I am sure it was more fun for them.