Japanese Culture One to One

Japanese Culture One to One

Today is Monday and we were back at Aichi Keisei for our final day at school.  It was great to see the kids and hear their stories from the weekend.  I was told of new food they had, new Japanese words and ideas they learned.  Most importantly I was told of how much they enjoyed and liked their host families.  That is the most valuable part of an exchange such as this - students stepping out of their comfortable routines of friends and family in Canada and into a new family in a very foreign culture and connecting with that family.  They then start to see not only Japan, but other events in their everyday lives from a truly new perspective.  For that, I am very grateful to the staff, students and parents of Aichi Keisei High School.

The activities we had today were more introductions to Japanese culture.  We first met in a classroom with some of the Japanese students who will visit us at the end of May.  Two of their teachers were experts in the art of Shodo - Japanese brush writing - and they introduced us to the art, while the Aichi Keisei students coached us individually.  After practicing some simple characters and learning the fundamental brush strokes, we were given some more complex and meaningful characters to try.  Keely and I were given the first to characters of the school name: 愛 ai　And　知　chi. 愛 means 'love' and  知 means 'knowledge'.  So together we wrote 'love of knowledge'.  Pretty good thing to do at school.

In the next period we worked some more students who are coming to us in May.  They had been asked by their teacher to prepare their own presentations for us in English about certain aspects of Japanese culture they thought we should know about.  We learned about a local festival by a boy who wrapped a loin cloth on his body over his uniform to demonstrate what the men wore at this festival.  We learned about a special sweet rice cracked made locally and got to try it.  We learned about the love for Ghibli Studios' Totoro and Spirited Away.  They gave us the presentations in English and we communicated with them well in their second language.

Finally we went outside to make mochizuki.  This is a treat made by two people, in winter with cooked rice,  a wooden mallet and stone mortar.  The cooked rice is pounded with the mallet to turn it into a big sticky cake.  When the mallet is on the upswing one person reaches in with their hands and turns the cake and withdraws the hands before the down swing of the mallet.  We had the safe job of wielding the mallet.

Our students then had lunch with their student hosts in the hosts home rooms.  After that the KSS students and their Aichi Keisei student hosts got on a train to go shopping in a traditional outdoor shopping area.  A fun day.  The kids told me about their plans for the evening - many were going out with the family to sing karaoke.  This is wrapping up too soon.  Off to Kyoto tomorrow.