Tag Archives: featured

訪問地

Meeting a Survivor of the Atomic Bomb

A-bomb-survivor-grp-photo

Day of activity: June, 11th, 2015

Today we got to meet an atomic bomb survivor.

Almost everyone (I hope) will, at some point, learn about the atomic bombs that were dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki through school/books/articles. At school you learn when it happened, what made the bomb so deadly, and what the death toll was, but today we got a small glimpse into what the bomb meant for the actual victims.

In the morning, into a classroom of sorts, in came a nice looking old man wearing a smile on his face. He introduced himself and then he turned on the projector and showed us pictures that he had painted based on what he remembers about the bomb.

He just stated facts, he didn’t need to resort to theatrics to pull at our heartstrings. His story of loss and hardship made me and several others cry during the presentation.

Eventhough his story was sad, it was a really valuable piece of history that not many get to hear. How his life changed instantly and how it still affects the survivors. I will be forever grateful to him for sharing his story with us.

Later on the same day, we visited the Nagasaki atomic bomb memorial museum. There were many actual artefacts that had been affected by the bomb such as glass bottles that had melted into clumps due to the sheer heat of the blast. The museum itself had also many interactive components which made exploring even more interesting.

I think that this all left an ever-lasting impression on me.

Helmiina Suuronen (Finland)

訪問地, 長崎県大村市

Visit of Omura City’s superintendent of the board of education

2015 Session1

Omura City, 10th of June, 2015

Today we visited Omura City’s superintendent of the board of education. The courtesy visit was the first “real” activity in our program, given that the previous day’s schedule was all orientation and preparing for the Arigato Event. Furthermore, the occasion was advertised as being quite formal, which made us quite nervous during the morning of our visit.

Despite our nerves, the courtesy visit was a success. After brief introductions we talked a lot about education in Omura, Japan and Japanese culture in general. The superintendent was very helpful and supportive when we talked about how we wanted to learn more, and more intimately, about Japanese culture. With his encouraging words we felt ready for the 12th of June and our first visit to a local elementary school.

After our conversation I gave the superintendent a present – a photo book – from Finland, where I’m from, as a token of our gratitude for how they had given us such a change to get to know more about the everyday life and culture in Japan. It was great to know how much people appreciated our desire to learn more about their culture and maybe share something from our own countries as well. As an added bonus, we also got cute Omuran-Chan stickers for each of us 🙂

Juuso Eemeli Myller

お知らせ, プレス・リリース

Unique way to experience Japan in Summer 2015

World Campus International, Inc. is offering an opportunity to take part in short-term, non-traditional experiential education programs in Japan. Participants can choose to sign up for one or more 3 week block programs in different regions across Japan participating in educational tours. While doing so, participants have the unique chance to gain Japanese and international experience as well as increase their personal and professional networks, all while enjoying the backdrop of Japanese culture, politics and business.

What does having this kind of “unique access to Japan” mean?

  1. A great chance to see Japanese cultural sites, eat delicious and exotic local foods and learn about Japanese traditions.
  2. A way to experience modern Japan through interactions with local politicians, business people as well as Japanese university and high school students.
  3. An opportunity to share your culture and volunteer your talents in structured activities with ordinary Japanese citizens, school children, disabled people and the elderly.
  4. An opportunity to experience an authentic Japanese lifestyle by staying with warm and welcoming host families.

In summer 2015, 3 sessions are taking place between June 8th and August 11th, 2015. More information and the application form can be found on the website. www.worldcampus.org. and also you can see participant reports on www.worldcampusblog.org.

訪問地, 地域学習, 東京都多摩市

Arigato Event & Country Presentation Day

Arigato Event & Country Presentation Day

Day of activity: August 9th 2014

Yesterday concluded a beautiful chapter of my life. Though I have experienced enough in the last two months to fill in a few years’ worth, I can’t help but feel that this amazing experience came to an end prematurely. As it is for most days in Japan, yesterday’s schedule was quite filled. The Tama community organized an event in which all WCI members got to present their countries to the Japanese youth. After this warm interaction, we moved on to our Thank You event, which consists of dances, musical performances, and other playful activities. It aims to show our gratefulness to all of those involved with the WCI program. This was for me the last of 8 events of this kind, and undoubtedly, it was the most emotional of all; as a mix of joy and nostalgia were present throughout the night. In the last few weeks WCI has become a family to me. We have played together, laughed together, cooked together, and discovered tasty foods together. We have sung together, danced together, and signed a ridiculous amount of thank you cards together. We have been happy together, and we have been sad to say goodbye to each other. Now I hope we take all of this home and make the world a better place together. Love to all my WCI family and everyone who was involved with the program. Thank you Hiro Nishimura for allowing us to live this experience. From the bottom of my silly canadian heart!

Jeremy (Canada)

訪問地, 地域学習, 東京都多摩市

JUKI company visit

JUKI company visit

Date of activity: August 7th 2014

Today, we were allowed by the JUKI group to tour their facilities. Mainly, they demonstrated how their signature industrial and home model sewing machines worked. It was quite amazing to see all of the ingenuity behind machinery that mostly sits in the back of people’s houses. However, we were given the opportunity to see them in action. Some of us used the machines to sew buttons and others fixed some holes or sewed sturdy stitches. This all paled in comparison to the machine that sewed an entire suit pocket or a suit front all in about a second! This is work, that when done by a human instead of the machine, would require at least half an hour. But this machine did it with care and very fast. It was a surprise to see that the same technology that is used in the big automatic sewing machines was also used to mount chips and other parts onto circuit boards. All in all I learned a lot today and it was a lot of fun!

Michael (USA)