For me the stay in Toride city is always an interesting one. And that is because of the way that they are taking a community problem and trying to resolve it. Toride is one of the many bedroom cities of the greater Tokyo area that were once thriving and are now suffering with weaning populations and declining activities. What I find most interesting about Toride is the way in which they are reinventing themselves. A creative young teacher from the local branch of a Tokyo art school decided that he wanted to give back to the community by revitalizing it in part with art.

His projects often serve multiple purposes such as giving his artists and himself a showcase for their projects, introduce art to children, or cut down on litter during local summer festivals. Now as an aspiring artist myself, when I came to the city last year I loved what I saw and thought that it was a great idea.

The leader of the Toride art project, Mr. Sobajima and I made a connection and built a friendship. So during my stay in Toride this year, he invited me to come to his office to take part and help him with a project. I jumped at the chance.

We designed trash boxes (in whatever way that we chose) for a large summer festival, to help with a major litter problem, but in the past two years since Mr.Sobajima began helping them, it has been drastically cut down. So I came to his office and got right to work. A fellow artist and friend of his joined us which led to the idea of the three of us all to draw on one trash box as a collaborative effort. It was a lot of fun, and definitely had a striking appearance when finished.

Sadly I had to leave the city before the festival began, so I was unable to see our project in action, but I hope that our box was used well, helpful and inspiring. Toride really is moving along in a great way and I hope are painting a bright future ahead of them.

(Cody Permenter, USA)

As Jackie mentioned in her entry, our program curriculum includes Japanese classes. I as a Japanese, receive English classes from Cody-sensei during this time. The truth is that my English, is not enough for me to smoothly follow the program. My greatest ambition in joining it, therefore, is to be able to speak English, and these English classes have been a great support.

Classes were carried out almost on a daily basis in Ueda city, but to my dismay, beyond Tama, the frequency dropped to once in every city since Tama. The diminution of such an enjoyable time is sad for me, but I’ve instead been enjoying the classes as much as I can.

Cody-sensei speaks slowly and teaches considerately. Mingled with a joke here and there, the English passes seem to fly by. Since he also corrects what I have written, this is my one opportunity to review my own English. I am assigned a lot of homework everyday, but since the program is only a little more than a month, I have committed myself to the daily battle.

Despite the drop in number of classes, I have many allies who assist me in comprehending the English and taking part in the program: the Japanese staff members, LOC members, and fellow participants. Among them, Jackie (mentioned above) always supported me with slow English that was easier for me to understand.

I’d also like to take this opportunity to send out a big Thank you very much!!

I am still very dependent on you despite the program being half over, but I hope to continue to put in my best efforts and live up to your expectations.

(Rie Hayase, Japan)

Visiting the Canon factory was one of the highest points of our Toride city visit. Canon Inc. is a Japanese multinational corporation that specializes in imaging and optical products. This includes cameras, photocopiers and computer printers. This company’s products are located in over 200 countries, with about 115 thousand employees worldwide. The Canon factory in Toride works using the philosophy of “Kyosei”, which means living and working together for the common good. It believes in promoting measures to reduce environmental concerns that are present worldwide. They make these creative mottos to produce a more productive working environment. Not one second is wasted, but instead calculated accordingly for better productivity.

The general manager of the Toride plant gave us a brief introduction of the factory. He told us Canon takes an active role in a wide range of environmental friendly activities including development and production operations, emphasizing the separation, and processing of waste materials and recycling.

The concept of the “Meister system” was introduced to our tour group. A “Meister” is a highly trained worker that knows all the ins and outs of a certain machine. One step above the “Meister” is the “Super Meister”, who can assemble a copy machine, containing over 600 pieces, by himself, in about ten hours. This system is a complimentary program, which gives employees an incentive to work harder, to achieve such a level. This type of rewarding system allows the employees to feel innovative and gives them the desire to work more efficiently.

With over 6500 employees, Toride’s Canon factory shows responsibility and sustainability, in a healthy environment. It has been told to us that most of the employees work in their company until the retirement age. The company is not only interested in the satisfaction of customers, but also the well being of their employees. They are continuously cooperating for the development of the city and the community.

(David Leipnitz, Brazil)

When mentally preparing for the trip to Japan, my excitement for what was ahead was all I thought about. It wasn’t until I was on the plane that I started to think about how many participants from session one would stay through the 2^nd session, and how many of us newly hatched eggs there would be.

As people often do, I expected that many people thought like me and therefore had an expectation that many would be doing the same thing: applying only for session two.

So I was quite surprised to find out that there were only four of us that arrived on the 17^th (two more joined us later). This meant that I and the three others would face a close knitted group that had already spent the past month together. In many ways this turned out to be true but I was surprised to see how good everyone was at “opening the circle” and letting the new people in. On my first day, a few people came right up to me and introduced themselves and asked questions about my flight and jokingly gave little inside facts about each other.

“She is really good at Japanese…” “And that guy, he can be a real goofball…”

The long days and tight schedule also helped bind us together. Right from the beginning we experienced so many things together. A lack of conversation was never a problem.

Within a few days I had a good sense of belonging and saw the group as a whole without distinguishing between the “new” and “old” members. It has taken longer to get to know some people but I don’t think it has anything to do with “new” and “old” participants but more with individual personalities.

(Signe Tinngaard Olesen, Denmark)

This is the slideshow we played while in Toride, Ibaraki.

Toride was a quiet rural village until it was developed in the 1960’s as a bedroom suburb of Tokyo. People who worked in the capital started to move to Toride for its rich nature and good access to the center of Tokyo.

Starting in 1995, the city began to lose inhabitants due to an aging population as well as the trend for young people to move back to the Tokyo city center.

A group of local people got together to revitalize Toride. Places for people to come together were built; such as the old-fashioned candy store “Yoiko (good kid)” and the community art gallery “Emaru”. Since a campus of Tokyo University of Arts is located in the city, there have been many events arranged to connect young students and local people. Those people who stood up for the city include Ms. Kudo from Yoiko and Mr. Sobajima, who stayed in the city after studying art to keep doing more projects.

We were fortunate to collaborate with them during our visit. Mr. Sobajima, together with other members of the local organizing committee, set up an event called “World Street”. A day prior to the event, each participant drew 3 small flags; the national flag of their native country, one with how to say ‘thank you’ in their mother tongue, and one with something famous from the place where they’re from, to be used in a game with local elementary school children.

For the international event, 60 kids came to get involved and learn about different cultures. Children in Toride don’t have the opportunity to communicate with foreign visitors so often and so they were a bit hesitant to talk to us in the beginning, but after spending some time, connected really well. Passer-bys stopped for a while to take a look at what they were doing, and the otherwise lonely street was livened up once again.

Some of the participants also leaned “Tamasudare (traditional bamboo stick performance)” at “Hohoemi San”. We teamed up with special needs “Tamasudare” performers who incidentally have became so popular in the region, that they visit elderly homes and schools on a regular basis. We enjoyed the opportunity to perform together, fully dressed in Japanese street-performer costume!