Our First Week in Nagoya!!!

Meeting with our university buddy, Chia
13 May 2018 

We arrived at Nagoya Daigaku station to the greetings of Kuno sensei, our university supervisor, and Chia, our university buddy. After settling down in the staff lounge, we were invited by Chia to nabe, where we bond with our Japanese friends by eating hotpot together. We had fun doing groceries for nabe, learning more about Japanese food, culture and courtesy while interacting in one of our friends' house.

Nabe in our friend's house

They were really hospitable and friendly and we picked up some useful phrases which we can use with our sensei. For instance, "Yoroshiku onegaishimasu......" which means making a request and also to thank the person.

We really enjoyed this informal mini culture exchange session with our friends and this serves as a start to our eventful Nagoya stay in the next 5 weeks.

Orientation around Nagoya University14 May 2018

We learnt a lot from Kuno sensei as he bought us to a mini tour around the campus. They have a lot of study spaces and cafes around the campus and we found out from Kuno sensei that Nagoya is known for its cafe culture.

After touring the central library, Kuno sensei also bought us to visit several research-corporate buildings, Nobel awardees memorial halls and museums located within the school compound.

Nagoya university is also one of the top 10 university in the world which dedicates to the intense research and efforts on gender equality.

Study spaces in Nagoya University

Toyota research-corporate building

Disaster Mitigation Research Building

A picture with Kuno Sensei in front of Nagoya University

At the entrance of Faculty of Educational Science

Social Education lecture with the Master/PhD students

16 May 2018

It is a great opportunity to sit in one of the classes and be engaged in an interesting discussion about social education in different countries. Due to the international nature and vast experiences of our class, we got to hear about social education from Japan, China and Singapore.

We learnt about Kominkan, Japan's social education facilities encompassing centers for education ranging from children and youths till adult and community. It is indeed a fruitful session as we not only learnt about the social support system in various country, but also made two new friends from China who were from the class!

Visit to Koyo High School and Sakura-Dai High School

17 May 2018

We were really surprised and grateful to receive a warm welcome from the staffs in the respective schools during our visit. They were really friendly and put in much thoughts into their planning to ensure that we enjoy ourselves while learning as much as we can.

The students were also very excited and friendly and to our surprise, two students even approach us, inviting us to join them in their class.

We were really thankful for their hospitality and kindness and look forward to spending the next few weeks with them!

~Our thoughts~

Personally, my highlight of week 1 in Nagoya is the dinner at our Japanese friend's house. I could have a glimpse of how the locals live. It was a very nice opportunity to learn about the Japanese culture and make new friends. One thing that I learned about the Japanese culture which I found interesting is the reason why Japanese people love using transparent umbrellas. 

Our Japanese friends shared with us that firstly, it's because they could see the rain drops. Secondly, transparent umbrellas are the cheapest umbrellas that are available hence they could buy and throw the umbrellas easily. 

Another highlight of week 1 for me was interacting with the different students of Nagoya University (Faculty of Educational Science). We met with undergraduates such as Chia and her friends and Master and PhD students during our Social Education lecture. It was very interesting to listen to their reasons for studying in the Faculty of Educational Science. Unlike Singapore, where all undergraduate students who study in NIE will become teachers, it is not the case for them. Some of them have different dreams; they want to influence the educational sector through policies or research which gave me a different perspective as someone who is training to be a teacher- that I may not necessarily need to be on the ground to influence change. 

By Florence and Hui Li (: