Seiritsu International Education

Kalani with the manga version of herself. Drawn by Mr. Okura of Manga University

Yesterday, on Day 3 of the Japan Experience! 2010, the participants spent their first night with their home stay families. Upon arriving at Seiritsu this morning, everyone had lots of interesting things to discuss about their stay.

Just to give you a taste of a home stay experience, here are some of the activities the students enjoyed last night. Adele and Sarah went to a festival in Kawaguchi and watched a traditional dance performed by senior citizens in kimonos. Bruce was taken to a lively kaiten sushi (conveyer belt sushi) restaurant where you can either grab whatever looks good or shout out your order. Lizzie learned how to make origami and played with the kids in her home stay family. Jordan��s home stay family played cards with him until midnight! Binita and her home stay sister checked out a video rental store and settled on an anime called Prince of Tennis, of which they are both big fans! Kalani received a tour of a nearby river bank from her home stay family where there are many running tracks and sport��s fields.

Today during Day 4, JE10 participants began with our first Japanese conversation lesson! Today��s Japanese instructor was the always energetic Yano Sensei, a teacher at Seiritsu and Japan Experience program veteran. After a short break it was off for a Shodo lesson with another Seiritsu teacher, Maruo Sensei.

Shodo is the art of Japanese Calligraphy which involves drawing Kanji (the Chinese symbolic characters used in writing Japanese) in a very fluid and artistic manner. Maruo Sensei has trained for many years in Shodo and showed our students some excellent techniques to produce beautiful Kanji. Assisting Maruo Sensei were six high school members of the Shodo. Each student received several copies of their own art work, some made on huge pieces of paper!

We rounded off our day with an excellent Manga lesson taught by master artist Mr. Atsuhisa Okura and explained by Mr. Glenn Kardy from the Manga University (link). Manga University publishes manga-themed educational materials in several languages. Books teaching the Japanese writing system and how to draw Japanese cartoons are a part of their repertoire. Mr. Okura has been drawing manga for over 20 years, he has won many awards, including awards for his history of manga expos��� published in Wired Magazine two years ago.

Everyone is looking forward to spending another night with their home stays and then coming back tomorrow for the next exciting day of the program!