On the last activity day of World Campus – Japan program 2016 we visit a shrine which also works as primary school. We learn how to make spins tops with the children and later on learn Shakyo and Karate in the shrine.
Allision, Paul and Josh talks about their experience from the day.
Today we spent the day at Ryusenji temple, a temple with a 1500-year history. The temple also runs a kindergarten inside the grounds, and we spent the morning making origami with the children.
In the afternoon, we had two cultural experiences. First we did shakyo, a variant of Zen meditation based on copying Buddhist sutra. The idea is that by focusing only on writing, one can eliminate unnecessary thoughts. Also, it is common to offer the finished copy at the temple altar. Afterwards we got an introduction to the basics of karate and learned a simple form.
World Campus – Japan has been coming to this temple for a few years now, and the children were looking forward to seeing us. Personally, I always find interactions with children rewarding. If we can give them a good impression, they might want to go out into the world themselves when they get older. I think this is the best contribution we can give to the communities we visit.
Espen Nielsen, Norway
Toady we got to try out Naginata, Taiko and Caligraphy. They all startet with their unique show of what their activity was before they taught us the basic.
Sabine and Micheal talks about their view on the day.
Today we were able to try our hand at many different activities, like Naginata, Wadaiko, and Shodo.
One of my most favorite moments of today was trying the Naginata, which is one of the old forms of Japanese martial arts, similar to Kendo. We used long sword-like sticks made of oak and bamboo to hit places like the head and shin. I had never tried martial arts in general, so this was a new and exciting experience for me.
It was fun seeing people give it their all when doing Naginata and playing the Wadaiko, our next activity. Everyone was having fun with smiles on their faces, and I especially learned a lot during the special Q&A session we had with the Naginata instructors.
We were able to watch a Wadaiko performance, which was very intriguing. They performed 3 festival songs, and even included 3 elementary school kids in their performance. The little kids were so talented and were able to keep up with the strong adults too!
Near the end of the day, the Shodo Club from Chuo Gakuin University came to perform for us! Using bright colors, they wrote the lyrics to one of the songs that they played during their performance on a large piece of calligraphy paper that almost filled half of the room.
Later, we were able to experience calligraphy ourselves with kanji and hiragana. The girl that was helping was so funny encouraging us every step of the way. (Shout out to the wonderful Misaki-chan)
Today was a wonderful, experience-filled day. It didn’t matter if they were good at it or not, everyone had a great time trying new things out of their comfort zone.
Allison Beebe, USA
Starting off the day we took a train about a block away from the National Diet. We proceeded inside to have our bags checked and enjoyed the nice AC on a very hot and moist day. We had a guided tour of the diet building, getting a glimpse at the Emperor’s room and the main cabinet room. After we toured the insides of the building, we went outside to walk through a garden that had a tree to represent each of the prefectures and areas of Japan.
After the visit to the diet we were originally supposed to have some time to ask questions to a member of the parliament, but he couldn’t come, so we had extended lunch break instead. There was a souvenir shop in the building where we had our lunch, but sadly we couldn’t find any Abe-chan figurines.
We finished the day in Abiko, the third city of this session. After a brief internal time we met with the mascot, an old eel in traditional Japanese clothing, as well as our host families. And so we had to move on from Tama to Abiko; a new city, new faces and new friends.
Harrison Zurkan (USA), Juuso Myller (Finland)
