Category Archives: Our participants

City Life, Host Families, Our participants, Toyota City

An Experience that I never forget

2011 August, 6th – 12th: In Toyota, I was hosted by an awesome family, and that was the Michiyamas family. On the first day, my host mother and sister took me to a ‘’KAMISHIBAI” exhibition place. There were a lot of kamishibai’s tools and instructions to let you know how to play “KAMISHIBAI”. “KAMISHIBAI” is a device to tell stories. You use a square box which has doors you can open to insert paper illustrations and pull it out when you are telling the story. I was very lucky to have this experience. I played kamishibai before kids, and they really enjoyed my performance. I felt very happy about that. Because my host mother is a professional teacher of kamishibai, so she taught me a lot of techniques. It makes me know more about kamishibai.


After we experienced kamishibai, we went to the Toyota Municipal Museum of Art. There they had an exhibition of a famous painter from Holland, named Johannes Vermeer. His paintings are very elegant and realistic. We had a wonderful afternoon enjoying and appreciating every painting there.


On 8th August, my host sister took me to Nagashima Spa Land, an amusement park that has the longest roller coaster in Japan. And my host sister and I are both crazy-loving ride on roller coaster! So, we rode every roller coaster as much as possible. There are totally seven roller coasters, we rode not only once but also twice for a tallest roller coaster. It was very exciting for me to have such a great experience in Japan. In Taiwan, we don’t have these kinds of roller coasters. It was really impressive and a lot of fun. We really had a wonderful time there.



(“Umi” Yi-Ting Cheng from Taiwan)

Our participants

Asian Party!

Fun Sumo in The Netherlands

Here in Leiden (the Netherlands) we had an introducion week for the upcoming first year students. This included visiting the student clubs around town. One of the clubs called Duivelsei, of which Frank (Another Worldwide Rep of WCI) is a member, threw an Asian style party on one of the nights. Jurrien (a participants I traveled with during WCI 2011 summer programs) and I, as students majoring in Japanese, just had to go there! There was sushi, sake, karaoke, DDR (Dance Dance Revolution) and even a sumo-wrestling-suit game to enjoy. This attracted a fair amount of people, including some upcoming first year Japanese major students. After we had a couple of beers, we decided to just talk to them and get to know them a little bit.

We ended up having some long conversations about our interests, our studies and, of course, our holidays. This was where Jurrien and I were able to tell them about our experiences with World Campus International and the staff and members. Our stories about getting dirty in rice fields, meeting an insane amount of people, the food, getting good friends from all over the world, experiencing the culture from the inside due to staying in host families, being able learning a lot (more than just the Japanese language) and about Japan’s advanced toilet technology made a really good impression.

For most of these students visiting Japan is a dream and I could see that our stories made them even more excited.

We had a lot of fun and I think some might consider joining World Campus Japan next year!

(Daniel Van Delft – The Netherlands)

Arao City, City Life, City Theme Activities, Our participants

International Fair, 9 Cultures (Norway’s Table)

Norway Table


This last weekend we had a great opportunity to host an international fair at the Arao City Mall. Right now our World Campus Japan group represents 9 different cultures and countries and the 4 of us Norwegians were excited to represent Norway. I wasn’t too sure on how I could show Japanese people our Norwegian culture but it the challenge was great and it turned out to be quite fun and new for me. Alexandra, Joakim, Torunn and I (Ola) were the 4 Norwegians in the group and we had the idea to serve traditional Norwegian porridge, which surprisingly many of the Japanese people seemed to enjoy. Hiro the president of World Campus International, Inc. luckily has a Norwegian wife Kristinn and she had been kind enough to make it for us (because none of our host families had the right ingredients), it takes about two hours to make it from scratch so we were really thankful for her help and knowledge for knowing the ingredients!

Norwegian porridge


Lots and lots of people from the community showed up for the fair anywhere from older couples to somewhat over 100 kids! By the end of the fair almost all of the porridge was gone. We were also letting people taste the Norwegian liquorice, which not too many seemed to enjoy as much as the porridge. We all really enjoyed sharing our cultures, traditions and taste buds with the Japanese community here in Arao, we thank them very much for welcoming us and we learned a lot from their culture so it was great to be able to give back and it would be great to do it again sometime!


(Ola Johanness from Norway)

City Life, Omura City, Our participants

Never thought I’d do this

The first day after meeting my host family in Omura even before the program week began I got a rare opportunity from my host family. My host mother, who is a elementary school teacher, decided to introduce me to Japanese elementary school life. It sounded nice so of course I took this chance but little did I know I would end up going into the rice fields and planting rice! Something I had never expected doing in my life. Also the way they plant the rice was different from what I imagined or seen. I thought they would just randomly plant the rice siblings on places that looked well for planting. But no, they span a line across the rice field and plant the rice siblings just in front of it, then the line moves and every one moves with it. It’s a very interesting and effective strategy. Seems like I learn something new every day!

planting rice


This was also a good opportunity to meet new people, older and younger. During the planting of the rice I talked to the kids, teachers and other people of whom I have no idea what they were doing there. I taught them about my country and they taught me about Japan. They learned that we don’t have any rice paddies at all and that instead of rice we mainly plant potatoes in The Netherlands. At one point a frog hopped on the girl and she was so frighten she fell into the mud, so they then taught me the Japanese word for frog (while laughing at the girl) which is: ‘kaeru” and I taught them it in Dutch: “kikker”. Everyone seemed to be enjoying the activity that day. I know I did. Except the mothers on the other hand, maybe because they probably have to wash the clothes afterwards…muwhahaha! All and all is was a great day and fun experience and I hope to be able to do it again while in Japan.

planting rice


(Juir from The Netherlands)

Our participants

Meet Iris Spruit – participant summer in 2011!

Iris Spruit

Hi,

My name is Iris Spruit and I am from the Netherlands. I have been living in Leiden, a town in the west of the Netherlands, for a year now, where I study Japanese. Next year I am also going to study psychology. I play the violin and I am in a student orchestra. Before I moved to Leiden, I lived with my parents in a small village in the norh of the Netherlands.

When I finished high school I went travelling with a friend for 6 months. This is how I came to love travelling, meeting new people and other cultures. I have never been to Japan, so I am really excited to go. I hope to improve my English and Japanese speeking skills and I hope to learn a lot about other cultures and ofcourse have a lot of fun!

Iris