week of May 28-June 4

This week, I got on the bus and went to Peace Culture Village and spent my time there. After a 2 hours bus ride, I arrived in Konu on Sunday evening and started an amazing week.

Peace Culture Village (PCV) is a Japanese nonprofit, international eco-village, organic farm, and experiential peace training camp in Hiroshima, Japan that cultivates peace as a way of life. The devastating consequences of war are visible around the world, but even in Hiroshima, there is little discussion of how human hearts, minds, conversations, and social/economic/political systems have to change if we hope to create a culture of peace. PCV is working to fill this gap by providing hands-on, skills-based training. Because we believe that peace among humans and peace with nature are equal requirements, our training focuses on imparting conflict resolution and environmentally sustainable living skills.

People today talk about peace all the time, but do they really know what peace is? As an experimental community, PCV gets people into thinking about what peace actually means. Usually, there're guests coming and going, either staying at PCV for a night or only participate in daytime works; this week, with Mr.Steven Leeper and some other directors and staffs gone, it was only me and Mary Popeo in the village--but we still had an amazing time, and I have much thank for her patience and understanding(my extreme fear of insects, nameless bugs, etc.)! Growing up in Beijing, which is a big city, I've barely had any chance to actually live in the countryside and there're lots of things that are new and interesting for me: going to sleep with the sound of frogs on a summer night; waking up by the chicken and the sunlight; planting and eating our own crops for meals...everything was incredible and brand new for me.

We planted rice:

Had ramen:

Saw the Tatara Bridge in Onomichi:

On Monday morning, I went back to the World Friendship Center.

Thank you Peace Culture Village for this amazing experience. ~