Tag Archives: martial arts

City Life, City Theme Activities, Omura City

The special kid finally hit the balloon with his Kyudo bow

Henry shooting with Kyudo bow in Omura
Henry shooting with Kyudo bow in Omura

Nijinohara Special Education school. It has been two years since I came here. Such a familiar and nostalgic place now. Coming here was as exciting as last time.

The day started with us being given an introductory lecture of the school and it’s branching schools. After some questions and instructions, we went out and did some fun activities with the kids. I remember last time, Jana, a chancellor at the time led a game called álele with the us all. This time around, it was Thomas. He was very good at leading the game, and the kids loved it!

For the rest of the day, we were divided into groups and participated in different activities and lessons with the children. I got to participate in an English class with Louise from Sweden, Paul from the states, Jean-Michael from Luxemburg, and Yunzhi from China (same as me btw). We spend our time with playing some rather bizarre but fun games involving English words, and being interviewed by the kids.

During the afternoon, we went to the Kyudo Dojo in this town. Kyudo is a form of Archery that is unique to Japan. Not only does it emphasis a lot of archery, it also emphasis on form.

After being taught the forms in Kyudo through a sling-like thing, we were given the opportunity to try at a real bow. Not only were the bows pretty heavy to pull, they were huge too. For me at least, the forms and technique we learned were really helpful. We were given some target balloons we were to hit with the arrows. Those that hit at least one balloon were given some snacks as a prize.

Last time I was participating in this program, I didn’t manage to hit any balloons. This time around, I managed to hit one! I wasn’t alone in hitting at least one balloon. At least all of Chinese participants in this session hitted at least one. I decided to try out on the real target that was a little bit further away than the balloons once I hitted a balloon.

At the end of the day, some people participated in a Kendo experience. I decided not to take part in the kendo activity since I was quite tired and I had a light case of headache. I don’t know how, maybe it is because I didn’t drink enough water for the day. Maybe….

By the time dinner was served, the headaches were mosly gone. The dinner for today was Japanese Curry with rice, It’s a cuisine made of Japanese curry paste, often with some beef, potatoes, and carrot, almost like the european gulasch. It is quite popular among kids here in Japan. We sat around a small table in front of the TV while eating. I usually ate together with my host brother, Shingo. The rest of the family joins in a little later.

We spent the rest of the evening small talking while watching TV. Since this is the first time the Miyamoto family were being a host family in WCI, they have not been in a single Arigato Event before. As thus, they were pretty excited about it. The Nagasaki Arigato event is in my most humble opinion the best of those I’ve been apart of. At least it was so the last time. I really hope they will enjoy the event. ‘I’m gonna make sure the event will be successful’ were the last words I thought to myself as I went to bed.

Henry Yang
China

Abiko City, City Life

Sleep is for the weak, Arigato Event is for World Campus – Japan!

If you thought that World Campus – Japan is the kind of program that would make you feel rested, well you’re very, very far from the reality. The previous day, I went to sleep at 2:30 am, because I had to write a letter to my host family and didn’t have time before. My host family invited two other host families in the evening (so there were 8 little kids running around in the house, which might sound very cute, but is at the same time very tiring).

So the morning, with my eyes half opened, we had our first Naginata practice! Even as a half Japanese, I had no idea how this sport was done. We practiced it in a tiny room with 25 people in it doing some Naginata moves. It was actually very fun, even if I almost made a hole in the wall. I enjoyed it much more than the Kendo we tried in the previous week.

Later, we tried Taiko. I usually love it, but today the song was a bit repetitive, so we decided that it was much better to dance Bon-Odori all together instead. Here is the World Campus – Japan mentality: “If we find a way to dance and make fool of ourselves, we’ll probably do it.” I guess that Arigato event is a perfect example to illustrate that. Anyways, it was much more fun dancing traditional Japanese dance with Japanese people around, all wondering what kind of weird gaijin we were.

After eating our lunch, which consisted of onigiris and soup, we had an exciting meeting about the next city, with our beloved city runner Jürrien – yayyy!

Later we started practicing for our Arigato event. I decided to step out of my comfort zone and take a clever risk (just as Hiro-sama always says) by standing in the front row for the dance. I have to admit that even if my dancing skills are as bad as most of the participants, the dance of the Arigato event is probably one of the best part of the whole trip (as much as being thrown away by Juuso when he gets a bit excited).

During our Arigato event, I saw my host mum crying. This is the kind of thing that makes you feel very proud of yourself, and which makes World Campus – Japan such a great program. Even if it’s just one week, the people are accepting you as a member of their family. Creating bonds with different people from different age is very rewarding.

After the arigato event, the Abiko city and all the host families prepared food for all of us – yayyy again! I started running around with the little kids and got exhausted (again)…

But guess what? Tomorrow for our host family day, we’ll wake up at 4 am to go to Tsukiji fish market. Don’t get me wrong though, I am very excited, but am I ever gonna have a normal amount of sleep one night during this program?

Miya Ferrisse (Switzerland)