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

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