BUNKA Jr Secondary School – KIEO – Tokyo Japan Visit – March 16, 2009

March 16, 2009

The next  2 days were supposed to be spent with KIEO students. Our first pitstop was BUNKA junior high school, under KIEO university.

So our journey starts with a small bag with a few clothes enough for next 2-3 days and we set out on the morning of 16th.

Pretty dust bins I saw on the roadside shop, 4 types, one for each category of waste.

See this one ( and we thought we only hung our stuff outside in our balconies.
 

When we reached the main gate of the school we saw this. The sign was designed by the principal of the school himself!!

Students discipline starts the moment you enter. You have to take out your shoes and put in the rack exactly in the same direction, and wear red coloured slippers inside.

We were welcome by a opening speech by the principal of the college Akira Watabe. The student to his right is Hiro, who helped in translating to english. He also had taken up the responsibility of being the leader for the day.

Post this we all gathered in a auditorium cum basketball stadium of the school. There were interaction sessions. Students were sitting there, most of them clueless as to what is happening. Some of us spoke about India and Indian lifestyle through a simple presentation.
 

These guys are singing there school song for us. We loved the song. Will try to put it up here some time.

Each of us was assigned one classroom to interact with and talk to the students. I was excited. They love Indian culture, especially hindi. If you say namaste to them, they will immediately flock around you and do a V sign, and echo namaste loud and clear. Here is how the class room look from inside.

Each classroom has a AIM of its own which as a class activity they put up on a board. Noticeable is that each student also has a short term AIM to be fulfilled which he articulately draws and puts on the board.

Was wondering do we find these in Indian schools?

12:30 PM. Lunch time. Ate this->
  Was very nutricious, I would say. Looks very less in amount, but it made me full. Japanese are known for consuming highly nutricious food. This one was rice with seafood, seafood soup and milk and a fruit.

Interestingly, extra curricular form a very important part of their school life. School nurtures the talents. Every open space all around the school on every floor had paintings, sketches, stories, poems written by students and pasted open.
 

This is me(center), with Ukita Waru(left to me) and other Japanese student.

This lot of girls were screaming out NAMASTE (hello) and BAHUT ACHHE (very good) when I greeted them similarly.

 

After a lot of enjoying and talking with them, we left for our next stop which was KiraKara Street.

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Narita Local Train Terminal

We moved our luggage to the local train terminal. We bought a SUICA card ( or a PASMO) which is used for auto fare adjustment for train,bus travel in tokyo city. This card is also useful to buy from vending machines and can be used at general stores (conveni).

We bought it for 3500 yen, thats approx. Rs. 1970 during that time. Although there is no meaning in trying to convert yen into Rs. and judging the expensiveness in japan, but as usual we do it. So this card is valid till the charge becomes zero. Its a swipe card and can be swiped on the entry and exit stations

Some pics inside the local train we took to reach our next destination – Monzen Nakacho

For more info on Suica Pasmo Click here

Japan Kaizen Study tour – Narita Airport

At Narita Airprt in Japan, where we reached at 7 pm on March 15th, local time Japan. Airport is unbelievable clean. This was the time when we started experiencing the polite nature of the japanese people and the disciplined nature (although on the first day itself i would be facing amjor crisis).

Dr G and Shinjo-san were present at the terminal to receieve us. Shinjo-san has been helping Dr. G during the previous tours as well.

Japan ICT Sessions

THIS comes as a rather late entry from me. I must have put this together earlier.

In the month of March, I got an opportunity to visit Japan as a part of Kaizen Study Tour for the year 2009, under the guidance of Dr. Shrinivas Gondhalekar (or Dr. G as we all call him, Founder / Expert at  KANZEN institute Asia Pacific ) and Dean (Operations) @ Welingkar Institute of Management Development and Research, where I am currently pursuing my Post Graduate Diploma in Management.

This trip is a part of one the initiatives taken up by Dr. G to promote and enhance relations with Japan and make us aware of the Japanese way of living and working.

I had always been fascinated by the way japan has developed over the years after 2nd world war post which the japanese morale had been destroyed completely. Everyone knows about Hiroshima and nagasaki attacks. With my current post graduation, learning Japanese language (Nihon-go) not only as a part of curriculum but also a part of the relationship development.
Utilising ICT to have carefully charted out chat sessions with the students from Keio University in Tokyo is also a plan of this. We used to have weekly chat sessions with japanese students in groups, which focussed on specific subjects and engaged in constructive chat with a lot of information exchange. These used to happen on thursdays morning 8 AM.
A multitude of subjects like Education in Japan and India, World of mathematics, Beauty of two countries etc.
Pre-relationship building happened during  these chat sessions.
Prof Hasebe from Keio had facilitated these sessions.

These kind of sessions help in nurturing the following objectives:
Developing trust amongst the Japanese students and professors
Understand a bit about Japanese culture
Assess the level of english as a language in japan.

These sessions ran for a period of two months, each of which was followed by feedback to be submitted on the Keio blog.

Th students we interacted in these sessions were the same ones we would be meeting in our trip to Japan