Week of June 18th- June 24th

Time flies and I only have two weeks left at wfc. I started getting to know the students at Shudo University a lot better; everyone was extremely friendly, even some don’t speak perfect English and could only barely communicate—their smiles made me feel super welcome. I’m always surprised at how fast they’re learning and how passionate they are for each class, of course one big reason was how funny and dedicated Mr. Ronald is, as a teacher and as a friend. The commute to the university everyday takes about three hours back and forth, including around 3 miles’ walking distance, but I still think it’s worth the time and efforts.

Last weekend, I had the honor to be invited to join WFC’s board meeting. Since most of the board members can’t speak English, the meeting was mostly conducted in Japanese, and Barb was the translator for both me and Dannie. I also gave a self-introduction in Japanese and that impressed them so much, so I’d say the Japanese crush course was actually really helpful! Even though it was intense and I had to wake up at 5am to skype in after my internship has started, I’d say it was still worth it. I’m glad I learnt a little bit of Japanese before I came here.

I’ve also started going to the hummingbird cafe to help out this week(actually last weekend). Erika, the owner of the cafe, started the cafe by herself and built the furnitures in there by herself with her friends. Her idea is for people to “learn to work by themselves”, so everything needs to be done by the guests themselves in there. For example, if someone orders coffee, they’ll have to grind the coffee beans by themselves from the machine provided and boil the water then make their coffee. I went there twice this week; for the first time, I helped Erika to go to downtown to get printed flyers of the activities of the cafe for June. I also helped write down some of the menus, since I know how to write Kanji and learnt the Hiragana and Katakana characters, also translated some of them in English. There was a Hibakusha talk on the second time I went. Erika only has two workers there so it was a little overwhelming when there’re activities held and a lot of people coming in. The surprising thing was that I actually met Steve Leeper there on that day! Steve is the owner of the Peace Culture Village, who went back to the U.S. and just came back a day ago. I didn’t get a chance to meet with him and thank him for his help with my visa application, but there we go! Such a small world!