Achi village trip 2013 (Feb.1st - 2nd),

Hello, we are Shasha from China and Yoon from Korea, on behalf of participants of Achi village trip 2013,
we would like to post our impression of Achi village trip on here.

We visited Seinaiji primary school on the 1st of Febrary, which is located in a very small village called Achi, Nagano prefecture, and surrounded a beautiful mountain and view. During the trip, we were very impressed by beautiful and peaceful nature, and its level of development, which can never link with traditional concept of village.

On arriving at Seinaiji primary school, we were able to observe the classes as well as school facilities while children were taking class. Even though there are 27 students in total, there were many works by children on the wall at backside of classroom and at hall way, implying how much they are enjoying their school life in the small Achi village.

The quiz and game session we prepared for children was very enjoyable thanks to the children’s active participation. At the quiz session called ‘Guess who I am!’, we showed some pictures from our countries such as traditional foods or famous place in our countries, and asked what it is to children. Surprisingly, many children knew quite many things about our countries unlike our expectation that quiz session may take time because it is a bit difficult.
At the game session, we did one of the Chinese games called ‘Making funny face’ and we were impressed again by the cooperation among students. Grade six students take care of other students so that all students could equally participate in game, and they followed the rule very well and respected the results each other.

Since snow was covering on the ground of school, we went out for snowball fight and sliding over the snow in a sleigh during lunchtime. It was one of the daily lives for children but it has been more than 10years since we sledged last time so we were a little scary. But we had so much fun !

After lunch break, we also had an opportunity to listen the presentation from teacher regarding the current circumstance of Seinaiji primary school and its challenges they are facing.

According to the story from teacher, with the decreasing population in the village and mobility of previous residents to big cities, the Seinaiji primary school is now encountering serious problem of multi-grade. However, different from multi-grade phenomenon in most developing countries due to poverty and lack of teaching resources, the multi-grade in Seinaiji primary school is mainly caused by lack of students. Sometimes, one grade has only 3 or 4 students which under the level of requesting teachers, then, the school have to try different types of teaching methods to solve the problem. Multi-grade is one of their strategies to combine two grades in one classroom and distribute different tasks to different grade students simultaneously. Although they are still at the experimental level of this teaching method, the attempt will provide innovative methods for the solution of the problem. Moreover, amazingly, although it is a primary school in village and involving in decreasing of student enrolment, the children are enjoying the same educational facility standards and abundant campus activities as schools in other areas, even in big cities within Japan. From the happy life of these kids, we have seen the commitment and efforts from the school and village to guarantee the education quality in spite of small number and more careful concern from teachers to each student.

Finally, this trip was such a great opportunity for us to visit truly village in Japan and understand Japanese traditional life through such close investigation. We would like to express our gratitude to professor Yamada for providing this opportunity. We really spent enjoyable and unforgettable time in Nagano.