7/17: Presentations

 

The next few days of the program followed a different structure. On Thursday and Friday, we focused on independent work time. After spending two weeks in Okinawa, we returned to Tokyo for the last few days of the program. On Saturday, we checked out of the hotel, and departed from Naha early in the morning. We arrived at our hotel in Shinjuku, where we planned to stay until Tuesday. On that weekend, Saturday and Sunday weren’t just free days, but also important days for working on our presentations.

These presentations gave everyone a platform to explore their reflections and positionality with the individual research topic as the main focus of the presentation. These presentations had flexible format, where we could be creative in how we presented the content and choose whether we preferred to present individually or in groups. With these guidelines in mind, everyone came up with wonderful presentations that highlighted their creativity and thoughtful research in their topics. Some of the ways that students approached this topic included art, such as through performance art inspired by “Cut Piece” by Yoko Ono and other works, the reading of a short story describing personal experiences related to race and gender, as well as a poem on modern narratives in Japan. There were also group presentations, such as a group combining two independent topics and looking at disability perceptions and “otherness”. Another group combined their topics through a conversation, understanding art in various ways and even creating art pieces for the audience to explore. Overall, each presentation shined, showing the passion and deep reflection put into it. After presentations, we traveled back to Shinjuku to wrap up the program with a final group dinner. We enjoyed a traditional style dinner, conversing about our experiences and what we learned. The next morning, we exchanged goodbyes as we checked out of the hotel.

To get to the presentations, we had journeyed individually from our hotel in Shinjuku back to the National Olympics Youth Memorial Center (also known as NYC). Just two weeks ago, we left these dorms where we had first started our program. I reflected on how much we had grown since then, and how many things we had learned. We began our learning by reading about art, reflecting on it as well. Our first week was filled with exploration, as we were guided from place to place. From there, we explored many aspects of literature and history both through assigned readings and even places that we visited. In this trip we grew as students, being challenged to think about how to reflect and draw connections. We were inspired to be creative in our learning through blog posts and our final presentations, and learned from the diverse stories of the guest speakers that we had the opportunity to hear from. We also grew as people, gaining new perspective through this journey.