JAIST organizes Japanese Cultural Excursions for international students to deepen their understanding of Japanese and local culture, while also deepening their exchanges with Japanese students.

Excursion 1: Tea Ceremony

This fiscal year’s first Japanese Cultural Excursion was held on June 22, 2012. Participants visited ”Gyokusen-en” close to Kenrokuen Garden in Kanazawa to learn the history of the tea ceremony and the manner in the tea room. There were 2 Japanese students in participants to this event and it was a relaxed atmosphere with conversations made in Japanese and English including a host although it generally seemed to be filled with a feeling of tension and hard to step into the tea room.
They were served light Japanese confectioneries which were called “Phantom Japanese Confectionery” made by Yoshihara, a Japanese confectionery maker in Kanazawa. Not only international students but also Japanese were moved by these tastes and delicate designs with an image of hydrangea. Participants enjoyed tea the host served one by one and they tried making tea each other. But it was difficult to make fine foam with a bamboo tea whisk. They were impressed with the depth of the manner and the way of the tea ceremony which looked simple at a glance.

After the tea ceremony, they strolled in the Gyokusen-en Garden with the scenery of Kenrokuen Garden and visited ”Saisetsu-tei”, the oldest tea room in Kanazawa.

All the participants experienced the tea ceremony for the first time and they looked unaccustomed to it. But it was a fruitful excursion for them to be able to learn the history and the culture of the tea ceremony.

Excursion 2: Plant Tour at YKK Center Park and Baking “Shiroebi-senbei”(Toyama Prefecture)

We held the second Japanese Cultural Excursion of this fiscal year on August 30, 2012. 31 international students participated in the excursion. First, participants visited the YKK Center Park in Kurobe city, Toyama. They looked around exhibits of raw materials for products and manufacturing processes with explanations by a staff from the YKK Center Park.
All the participants were amazed at exhibits of giant airtight zippers. When they toured in the plant where the products were actually manufactured, they all stared at manufacturing processes with interest.

After the plant tour, they enjoyed a local specialty “Shiroebi-senbei” (rice cracker containing small white shrimp) through a factory tour and baking it by themselves at Tateyama main shop of Sasara-ya in Tateyama town, Toyama.

Before leaving for JAIST, they stopped by Kaiwomaru Park to take a rest.

Excursion 3: Making Soba Noodles

The third Japanese Cultural Excursion of this fiscal year was held on February 26, 2013. 10 international students visited snowy Kawachi Jiba Sangyo Center in Hakusan city to experience making soba noodles.
Although some vegetarian participants could not eat soba noodles with soba-tsuyu (soba noodle sauce) because it contained bonito soup, still they had strong feelings to learn and experience the Japanese food culture.

Under an instruction of a soba expert, they tried whole procedures through mixing buckwheat flour, kneading, rolling out and cutting the soba dough in groups of 5 participants. In the procedure of rolling out the soba dough, it was harder than they imagined to roll out the dough and one of groups asked the soba expert to help them. Moreover, in the cutting procedure, they all struggled with cutting the soba dough into a thin soba shape. They boiled and ate scratch-made soba noodles right after cutting them at that place. All international students enjoyed freshly made soba noodles.
They learned that there were the ways to slurp up noodles on purpose, not to bite in the middle of a noodle and so on when you had soba noodles. And everyone had an animated conversation about how to eat noodles in their countries.
The excursion went lively from beginning to end.