A Momentous Day with Kawasaki High School Students in UTM, JB

A Momentous Day with Kawasaki High School Students in UTM, JB | The past 29th October is a day that I will always remember. 150 students from Kawasaki High School, Japan, came to UTM for an International Exchange Program. They arrived in Singapore a day before, stayed a night at Grand Paragon Hotel, JB, and went to our campus by buses in the morning.

The program supposed to start at 9 am in the morning, but due to some circumstances, we started around 9.30 am. We sat in our arranged group for a simple welcome ceremony. The students who came for this program are around 16 to 17 years old. Some of them can speak English very well, some can understand but too shy to utter a word. I remember when I greeted "hajimemashite" to a Japanese student who sat beside me during the ceremony, she looks startled at first but then she nodded and replied, "nice to meet you".

During the welcome ceremony, one of the Japanese students shared the history of their school to us. Even though the presentation was not very clear because of the bad sound system, still, we got the evolution of Kawasaki High School from the first year it was built. The school has burned in the fire once but was rebuilt anew not long after the tragedy.

After the welcome ceremony, we left in the group to our arranged location. Our role as UTM students on that day was to assist them during the group discussion on several topics. As they did not have coverage to the internet, we helped them to search for any information they need for the purpose of presentation.

Lecture on Building Design and Technologies

As for my group, we started the activity with a short lecture from Dr. Shamsul Hendra on "Building Design and Technologies". After the lecture, Dr. Shamsul gave a task to all students to build a tower with two packs of straws and a tape. In our group, the students were divided into five small groups. So, they were competing against each other to build a tallest, strongest and unique tower.

Kawasaki High School students worked on their straw tower

I must say, the students of Kawasaki High School are very creative with high imagination. They managed to build something that is out of my mind. The winner for the tower creation was the one with the star shape in the cross section of the tower when you lay it down, chosen by their school headmaster. I was interested in the one which has a smaller base but not too tall. It looks so unique and elegant that way, no wonder it won second place. As for my group, they won third place, might be because their tower was the tallest. Hahaha!

The one at the most right won the best tower, my group tower is the most left

Yes, it was the tallest among all

The activity continued with the group discussion on building technologies in Japan. Yoshiki-kun in my group came with the idea to compare the traditional building with the modern one. The team members presented on the comparison of Tokyo Tower (東京タワー) and the Five-Storied Pagoda (五重塔). You guys may search about these two buildings for more details.

I don't know why should they hide behind the paper. Yoshiki-kun on the most right. Nanami-kun was the presenter.

Our lunch box with extra soy ketchup chicken

We had a lunch break and continued at 2.30 pm for the closing ceremony. I asked Yoshiki-kun about the food, he said it was spicy and he was flaming hot at the moment. Hahaha! Some of the UTM students performed Dikir Barat and Silat during the ceremony as the introduction of our Malaysian art and culture. Then the ceremony followed by closing speech and gift exchange between both schools before we went outside to UTM mosque for the photography session.

The school headmaster gave his closing speech

Photography session with UTM mosque at the background

The students went back to Singapore that evening. Yoshiki-kun told me that they will stay for another two days in Singapore and fly back to Japan the day after. Even though we did not have much conversation with the students, it was a very momentous day for me as I can practice my Japanese language (just that "hajimemashite", "douzo" and "do-itashimashite" to the headmaster as I gave him a present, haha!) during the program.

Hope to involve in another program like this in the future, insya'Allah.

Thank you Kawasaki High School students for coming to UTM!

P/S: Why do I keep mentioning Yoshiki-kun? Because he was the one who tried his best to speak English with me on that day. Other boys' names that I had time to ask are Nanami-kun and Taishin-kun. Haha! See you again, boys!