BRIDGING GREECE AND JAPAN: AN EDUCATIONAL EVENT WITH MARI YAMAUCHI IN OUR SCHOOL

What a pleasure meeting Mari has been! On Wednesday 20th February, Mari Yamauchi, a Professor of Chiba University of Commerce, travelled all the way from Japan to Heraklion, full of energy and positivity and ready to take a series of initiatives regarding our students.

The dream team of this school event: Ben Petre, Maria Markaki, Mari Yamauchi and Christina Markoulaki

On Thursday 21st February, the main event was to take place in our school premises, structured as follows:

• The first step was to reply to the letters beautifully written by Rika Wakamatsu Suzuki‘s private school students, using the washi (wa for Japanese and shi for paper) or, in other words, the special correspondence paper Rika sent to us as a gift.The sight of the Japanese children’s neat handwriting and exhibition of kanji in certain cases was a miraculous cultural experience for the Greek students and teachers included. Our students enriched the whole process by adding drawings, projects about popular places in Heraklion and small edible gifts to each of the envelopes, all of which were placed in a colourful bag covered in symbols of Crete.

• Subsequently, our students (from 10 to 13 years old/ A1 to B1 level of the CEFR) presented some of their projects about Greek schools while Mari answered their questions about Japanese schools, using the following videos:

• What followed next was everyone’s absolute favourite: The chopstick challenge! Having watched related videos about popular food in Japan, our students were given chopsticks in order to eat some very “sly” banana pieces. The real challenge, however, was to beat Mari’s skill and speed.

• In the final stage of our discussion, people’s habits, hobbies and favourite places in Greece and in Japan were presented though a series of children’s projects and Mari’s exciting videos of her students participating in a college festival, her impressive climb of Mountain Fuji and, finally, those crowded Japanese trains which can only be entered with a gentle push.

One of our student’s projects.

The Venetian castle of Koules at the port of Heraklion.

Mari and her students about to begin the difficult climb of Mount Fuji.

• What will certainly not be forgotten by the young attendees of the event were the mouth watering snacks brought to them by Mari directly from her country. It was a cultural as well as a culinary experience for them, which we all still feel most grateful for.

• On the day after the school event, Friday 22nd February, we were fortunate enough to have Mari again in our school; this time, she joined in the different lessons which were being carried out on that day and took videos of our students presenting themselves to their Japanese penpals. This was the ideal way to complete this circle of activities, forming the foundation upon which a blossoming friendship was built. We ultimately made the promise to continue our cooperation with Rika and to get together with Mari again at another part of our planetary village.