Category Archives: City Theme Activities

City Life, City Theme Activities, Ueda City

Session 1 – Orientation

[inspic=378,,gal,0]Although we participated in many community events and visited various landmarks, a major focus of the first two weeks in Japan was orientation. Orientation and training does not sound like much fun but it is essential for success in such a multinational setting. For the first session we have participants and road staff representing Brazil, Canada, China, Denmark, Finland, Indonesia, Japan, Kenya, Mexico, Norway, South Korea, USA and Uzbekistan!

Aside from the standard presentation on guidelines and regulations, the staff also eased us into everyday operations. Every morning we start off with a “You Know You’re In Japan When…” moment presented by each of the participants; however, I don’t think this short moment was enough to cover the numerous times each day when I found myself surrounded by strange mouth-watering meals, heated toilet seats, and men with perfectly-tweezed eyebrows. Of course, the day is not complete without a “watashi no story”, literally translated as “my story”. This gives an opportunity to a randomly selected World Campus – Japan member to tell his or her life story in about ten minutes. In such a way, we are able to know each other a little better and build some camaraderie even if it is by learning about someone’s most embarrassing moment.

During the first week or so we had an hour of Japanese class each day. Hiromi, our wonderful teacher, would patiently teach us basic survival Japanese. It was difficult but fun and useful at the same time. Incidentally enough, all Japanese people are astounded if we, as foreigners even mutter a word of Japanese.

During our stay in Japan, we are staying with host families. They not only provide us with food and shelter but we are also welcomed as part of the family. To show our appreciation we perform a thank you event, “Arigato Evento” complete with song and dance for the families and local community. The event consists of several parts including a cultural presentation segment where participants sing, dance, or just entertain the audience with cultural specific pieces. By watching the various cultural performances being rehearsed over and over, we really got to bond and learn about each other’s cultures. In addition to that, we also sing two English songs and a short series of famous Japanese songs.

Of course, when we were first presented with the overview of the event, we were a little overwhelmed. But with practice over the first two weeks, we were able to pull off the first event in Ueda City with glowing reviews from the grateful audience. My host-sister, Kazue, told me that the funniest thing she saw was our own version of SMAP, a Japanese boy-band. Lily Ha, a participant and friend from Denmark commented, “Being with everyone and presenting for the community was a lot of fun…” Ilkka Peltola, a fellow member from Finland commented, “It was pretty good – for amateurs”. I’m pretty sure everyone would agree.

Orientation is always difficult and can be tiring but it is worth it. 😉

(Jackie Alfano, USA)

City Life, City Theme Activities, Ueda City

Ueda City Theme – Food & Society

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July 1st was quite a scrumptious day for both mind and body. In the morning, a local farmer, equipped with samples of fresh tomatoes, cucumbers, and cherries, lectured the class on the farmer’s market of Ueda City. The delicious assortment of organic produce complemented the informative speech perfectly. The taste of the vegetables and fruits turns out to be rather dependent on the type of soil.

Even though his entire speech was in Japanese, it was fairly easy to recognize the passion the man had for his work. His life mission is to make organic, all natural crops a viable option for both the farmer and the consumer. The benefits of foodstuffs without the taint of chemicals such as pesticides cannot be denied but often times the price is much higher than the non-organic variety. To offset some of the cost, a farmer’s market was established in Ueda. A group of over 200 local farmers are able to sell their fresh goods there each day. With the large amount of possible sellers, the price goes down accordingly. Although, the competition is fierce in the farmer’s market, farming organically becomes feasible due to the huge numbers of consumers.

The visit to the actual market provided our taste buds with even more delights. After donning some colorful aprons and head bands, the World Campus — Japan participants were taught how to make oyaki, a traditional dumpling of the area. There were two types of dumplings, one filled with a sweet bean paste and the other with some type of pickled vegetable and both were mouth-watering good. The dumplings are cooked each day and packaged to sell right in the kitchen of the farmer’s market. As such, the store does not only sell organic produce but also fresh baked goods, such as breads, cookies, and dumplings.

A society cannot exist without a reliable food supply but in recent years, reliable foods are just not good enough. There is a conscious move towards healthier and more organic foods. In Ueda City, we learned that the high demand for natural foods is being met by the local farmer’s market.

(Guang Yeung, USA)

Abiko City, City Life, City Theme Activities

Abiko City Theme – Environment

[inspic=362,right,gal,0]As you know, in every city on the World Campus — Japan tour, we have a city theme. The theme for Abiko city was the environment. This is an issue that I feel very strong about but the topic is also quite broad.

When thinking about the environment you can talk about nature itself, but also the animals in nature on a more local level. But the environment can also be discussed on a more global level too; which today more or less means the discussion about global warming and the future that lies ahead of us. A discussion involving the life we want to leave for future generations and the ethics and morals around it.

With all these levels in this theme in mind, Abiko City and World Campus — Japan chose to focus on a few of them.

It all started in Uda City, with the group watching the movie “An Inconvenient Truth”. A film portraying the problems of global warming and why global warming is an important issue. The creator of the film, Al Gore, discusses his personal story connected to the environment and global warming and why he became interested. The movie also shows important facts about global warming and proves that it is an important issue that should be dealt with. The movie has been criticised for better and for worse all over the world and there are some facts that are not scientifically proven. But the message is agreed upon in the scientific world and a discussion has started on higher levels, around the world.

Our stay in Abiko contained visiting a bird and water museum but we also explored nature around Teganuma lake. We even had a speaker at the community music event talk about global warming and the responsibilities of the richer countries in the world to take actions. An interesting point he made is the definition of a developed country. Is a developed country definition only based on economy or can the environment have a bigger say here? If we take the environment in consideration then very few countries are really developed.

By visiting the bird and water museum we had the opportunity to visit the nature around us and how human activity affects the environment we share and love.

Also in the water museum we learned how they cleaned the water from pollution as this lake that was the dirtiest in Japan for 27 years. Though they suddenly changed their mindset and began a cleaning process making the lake cleaner and more beautiful.

I also had the opportunity to present my passion to the group as a follow up on the movie we saw the week before. As a continuation on “An Inconvenient Truth” which portrays the problems more than the solutions, I therefore decided to make a PowerPoint on what you can actually do and the difference it makes.

I tried to focus on the solutions giving the most impact. Of course recycling, less waste and less consuming and energy use was at the top. But also things like eating less meat and changing your way of transportation makes a bigger impact using little tools.

The most important thing in my opinion is to see the connections for example that what you do has an influence on your surrounding. Chemicals as an example will never be reduced if we do not start to use less of them and reducing their quantity in the environment. But also informing others and creating awareness about the problem is 50 % of the job since alone we are limited but together we can change, as cliché it may sound it is still true.

But if you want to make changes then make changes you are comfortable with in order to make a long-time commitment and change.

A great week with many sources of information and activities, it was a wonderful conclusion on our amazing stay in Japan with a great foundation in becoming World Citizens.

(Jonathan Cygnaeus, Sweden)

City Life, City Theme Activities, Uda City

Uda City Theme – World Religions

[inspic=364,right,gal,0]On March 24th, the World Campus International participants had a lecture about Buddhism by a monk (who was also my host mother) and then took part in a series of presentations and discussions organized by the participants.

In the lecture given by Ms. Okazaki, she explained to us her view of Buddhism. Quite a few of the participants from western cultures were surprised that Buddhism should be considered a religion because they had heard Buddhists say it’s more a way of life than an organized religion back at home.

We learned that there are a lot of different forms of Buddhism and the one she is practicing is called Nembutsu Buddism which is based on the teachings of High Monk Shinran (1173-1262).

Shinran spread the teaching of the Nembutsu. The preaching of the absolute power of the other, that one need only trust entirely in Amida Buddha. He focused on the forty-eight vows of Amida and if we have faith in Amida, we have already been saved.

Taking the Nembutsu as an invocation of gratitude to the Buddha, he categorically denied practices of one’s own power as superfluous. He preached absolute reliance on power of the other (= Amida), such that one is saved when one achieves correct faith.

Afterwards we had presentations and discussions on other World Religions. Groups of 4 to 5 World Campus — Japan participants presented a certain religion to the others so that everyone had a basic understanding of those religions in order for us to talk about them. Those religions were Hinduism, Islam, Christianity, Judaism as well as Buddhism.

Whenever possible in our discussions we did give people in our group who belonged to one of the discussed religions also a platform to explain their views of their own faith.

We also asked people about the stereotypes of different religions and discussed that some religions had bad media representation and can be misrepresented.

In this process we learned a lot about religions and how people from different ones can work together on a topic like religion with out having negative outcomes as seen so often in the world.
In the end we also gave people who are Atheist time to speak so they could share their views too.

After the discussions, everyone agreed that no one should have a bad view of someone because they have different faiths and that we should live together and respect other people’s values and belief systems.

It was a great day to be able to discuss a topic which is not easy in such a kind and friendly manner with people from all around the world including the local Japanese and we all learned much and did get a step closer to understanding global citizenship.

I wish that all religious leaders in the world could experience that what we did here in Uda City in Japan in our discussion about World Religions as it would really change their world as well.

(Daniel Gallion, Luxembourg )

City Life, City Theme Activities, Suita City

Suita City Theme – Globalization

[inspic=361,right,gal,0]The city theme for Suita was globalization and I found it to be particularly interesting because it connected with WCI’s main mission of creating global citizens. Suita city itself is very urban and the participants were excited to explore what the city had to offer.

Upon our arrival in Suita city, we were welcomed by the city mayor, Mr. Yoshio Sakaguchi. He brought warm regards on behalf of the citizens and welcomed us to the city during an exciting time of year as the World Expo memorial events were taking place during our visit.

Early in the week we were able to visit two companies. One group of participants visited an egg company while the other group visited a noodle company. Both groups had unique experiences interacting with the staff members in each company. This was an exciting opportunity for both participants and the company staff as we introduced our theme of globalization. We were able to exchange ideas with management and staff on various topics relating to globalization and its effects on businesses across the world, for example, economics and global warming.

We also had another unique opportunity to visit the Asahi beer company. We were able to tour the company observing that the company was very effective with waste management, recycling nearly 100% of all the products they use to manufacture their product. It was also a great opportunity for the participants to inquire as to how Asahi is currently handling the issue of globalization. This experience was meaningful because it was held after our internal group discussion about globalization where members shared their thoughts about developed countries opening up for developing countries in order to have a share in globalization.

Additionally we spent another day visiting two very different companies in the city; the Mitsubosh Diamond Company and Asahi Broadcasting Company. The diamond company expanded our view as we observed their practical approach to building networks across the globe. We had a lot of interaction with the employees there and that helped us to further understand how companies in Japan approached globalization. For added experience, participants were able to use public transportation for the first time on the tour as a means of understanding how transportation systems work compared to those in their home countries.

Our participants grew a lot from the interactions that they had with the companies as well as host families in our globalization-focused stay in Suita city, Osaka.

(Henry Musenze-Mukasa, Uganda)