TOKAI HIGH SCHOOL, JAPAN

On Sunday 28th July 2013, students from St. John’s welcomed to the Academy visitors from the Land of the Rising Sun. The boys from Tokai High School, Nagoya stayed with local families during their two weeks in Marlborough and we had the wonderful opportunity of spending a day with them making short films in groups about the cultural differences in Japan and the UK. This allowed us to find out a bit more about the structure of a typical school day compared to one here and it turns out they are fairly close. We also found out that, along with the traditional Japanese 50-symbol character set hiragana and Chinese kanji characters, a special set called katakana also consisting of 50 symbols is used to transcribe foreign languages.

One of the students (Hiroto) even brought in his kimono, the traditional Japanese national dress along with a pair of authentic geta, the wooden sandals and explained that this clothing is still worn today at Japanese weddings. We were also treated to a spot of Japanese apricot! We will continue to build this link and have plans for the students to communicate with each other after the Tokai boys go back to Japan…blogging is the way forward! We really hope to meet with the group again in the future!

WRITTEN BY HRISTIYAN GEORGIEV