Summer School Program 2015:An Encounter with Japanese Traditional Culture in Mino City
Seventeen summer school students and ten students in the International Student Center's Japanese Language and Cultural Studies Course visited Mino City* on Thursday, June 11, 2015. Their visit was a part of the Japanese Cultural Experience class offered in the Summer School Program 2015. Associate Professor Kanako Ogiso of the Nursing Course, School of Medicine, who is the member of the Gifu University Head Office of Glocalization (GHOGL), accompanied the students as an instructor.
After arriving at the Mino City Working Youth Home, the students dressed up in colorful yukata (summer kimono) of their choice with the help of members of the Sepia Kai, a civic volunteer group in Mino City. The same group had kindly helped Gifu University international students wear kimono in May this year when a Gujo Bon Dance Workshop was held at the University.
For most of the participants, this was their first time to wear a kimono, and they looked very impressed and pleased to be able to experience wearing a traditional summer kimono.
The students then broke up into groups, and receiving instruction from Mr. Katsutoshi Hattori, a certified master of the Gifu Drum Association, and his students, who are members of the Mino Ogura Drum Group, the students practiced beating wa-daiko drums. At first, they looked nervous, but they soon got the knack of it, and before long they were deftly using the drumsticks. The sound of drumbeats and the participants' cheering voices reverberated throughout the building.
*Mino City is located in the middle region of Gifu Prefecture.