Day of activity: July 29^th 2015

Yesterday we had our very first arigatou event of session 3 in Toride. This was a special day because we got to both thank our host families and the LOC (Local Organizing Comittee) for their hospitality and all of the hard work that they’d done for us until now. It was both a very entertaining and emotional event that brought even the toughest of crowds to tears.

We started the day off by preparing for the event and doing a final rundown of everything. After setting the place up, we started receiving the host families and other guests. Things had to run smoothly, so I think it’s fair to say everyone was a bit anxious. Before the main event started, we had to preform what we had learned in the Japanese cultural experience we had the day before. In my case, that was karate. I have done Karate previously, but I was still a bit nervous about showing off what we had practiced the previous day. It all went really well in the end though.

The main event started with Hiro Nishimura’s speech, after which all of us entered the room waving country flags to a happy song. The flags were collected again by the staff, and we soon began our introduction by stating our names and country in our own language and then in Japanese in an ordely fashion. After the introduction, representatives of each country went on to tell trivia about their own country and the audience had to guess whether those facts were ‘maru’ (true) or ‘batsu’ (wrong). It was a fun experience to see what the audience thought of our countries.

After the introduction and trivia, we took our positions on the ‘stage’ and performed 4 different dances that the children in the audience especially liked. I was too focused on not falling to look at everyone’s reactions to be honest, but I like to think that they loved it. As everything was so rushed, we quickly sat on the floor in a semi-circle to sing to Annie’s “Tomorrow”. Each country representant sang a part of the song in their own language, so it turned out a nice mix of all sorts of languages, dialects and accents, which was nice.

The most fun- and definitely the most terrifying part- was what we did next. A select few of us had volunteered to write a letter to their host families and read it to them at the Arigatou Event… In Japanese! Not knowing what I was getting myself into, I of course, had volunteered too. So yesterday was the moment supreme. I was the second to read my letter to my host family (which WCI staff Espen had kindly translated for me), and oh boy, I never in a million years could have anticipated how hard and emotional it was going to be.

Not only was I under pressure to perform well in front of a lot of people, I was also cracking under the weight of having to perform well in front of the woman who had taken such good care of me, and who had been patient and giving beyond believe. As I got to the end of my letter, and the content got more emotional, I could see the tears forming in my host mom’s eyes, and I started to feel the same happening to mine. The hardest part was realising it would be a while until I would get to see her again, if ever. And that is one pretty difficult thing to deal with. My host mom and I couldn’t always understand each other, but the bond we formed was certainly understood mutually. I will miss her and her daughter and granddaughter so much, and I hope that with the Arigatou Event I’ve made that clear to them.

So to anyone who is thinking of joining WCI next year or in the future, I can definitely say that the Arigatou Event is the second best part of this journey (the first of course being the host families themselves).

Carla De Oliveira Silva (the Netherlands)

Day of activity: July 29^th

Today we had the opportunity to share our cultural perspectives on philosophy, and debate the meanings of commonly used words such as justice, tolerance and morality, with several members of Tsukuba university in the Torride city community centre.

We were first made to feel comfortable and free to share our arguments in what they called a “philosophy cafe” style atmosphere; plenty of sweets, drinks, rice cakes and biscuits (just enough to feed us while we worked up a mental sweat). We were then asked to come up with a witty code name while the debate and conversations took place; something connected to our personality or preferences in some way (I went by Goldie, referring to my favourite Ancient Greek philosophical tool, the ‘golden mean’).

Although the proceedings were supposed to remain as objective and lighthearted as we could keep it, from the get-go I noticed people had serious, passionate feelings backing their views- which was a good thing! I was pleased to discover that everyone wanted to participate and think about the world around us in a more out-of-the-box, abstract way. Throughout the trip so far, being pragmatic and down to earth has been more useful to us. We are a busy band of travelling foreigners, with little time to sort through our many differences and varied world views, so being asked for a more challenging and metaphysical discussion today made me very happy, as a lover of philosophy and debate.

I noticed that the university students were quiet, but watchful and keen to absorb the points of view that were put out to the group; usually the sign of mature and unbiased philosophers! I would have loved to talk one-to-one with some of the students, to learn more about their experience studying philosophy in Japan, and ask their views of the differing attitudes and life values between young and old members of Japan, but in the heat of the discussion we ran out of time to do so.

This was my favourite group activity in Torride, as it was the best way to learn more about the other participants and their cultures- by seeing their degree of maturity once in a mentally challenging environment, and their variety of cultural twists on philosophical issues, which I had never been exposed to before! In all, a refreshing (if a little intense) experience for all who took part!

Isobel Tawn Crookston (England)