Nara Tour

   On May 9th, we went to Nara, where was one of cities that has original Japanese history and culture. We visited Buddhism temples and Shinto shrines. I have known a little bit about Buddhism because my family believed in Buddhism. But Japanese Buddhism was sightly different from Chinese Buddhism even though they were both generated from India. Besides, I learnt how these two religions have affected Japanese people from the ancient time to nowadays, especially in their daily lives.

   There were a lot of deer in Nara. They were cute. But I was too afraid to tough them.

Todaiji Temple we visited was built in the Nara period. There was a bronze Buddha in the building which was super amazing. We were told that the building was innovated several times due to fires during the wares and the current building was about 33% smaller than the original one. However, it was still the largest wooden structure in the world.

Shinto shrines are recognized by gates like this. There was actually no god statues in Shinto shrines because Shintoism believed that gods were everywhere.However, there were a lot of stone lanterns at both sides of the path to the Shinto shrine. It was said that most lanterns were donated by folks.

The most interesting thing happened in Nara visiting was that many primary students were super nice and saying 'hello' to us. Although I didn't think they recognized me as a Chinese, I felt they welcomed our group very much. Many students need to ask questions in English in order to complete their assignments. They were really brave.

In addition, we went to a beautiful garden and different times buildings which showed the construction, custom and culture of Japanese.

It was a great but also tiring experience. Too much walking made me felt exhausted. But it was absolutely worthy.

FUJITEC Tour

  Today, we went to the company FujiTec which is known for making elevators and escalators. To be frank, I had never noticed the brand of the elevator or escalator I had taken before. I thought the function of a elevator or a escalator is to help people to move, which was pretty basic. However, the motivation and innovation of FujiTec made me think deeply about how the elevator and the escalator work.

  The visiting of manufacture process was pretty cool. Even though FujiTec adopted machines and technologies to do parts of the elevator and escalator production, it also kept the part that produce the parts manually. For example, the laser process was done by the machine to make tiny parts. There were many processes requiring human beings to complete.
The introduction to different kinds of elevators FujiTec produced amazed us a lot. The company designed a type of elevator which was specially beneficial for welfare. The elevator has a chair inside the car (which refers to the cabin we are in when taking the elevator). Apparently, this type of elevator was designed to fit the aging society Japan is facing. Also, the elevator equipped with a sensor to avoid door accidents or crash really showed the company's innovation in safety.

  The thing touched me most about FujiTec was its responsibility to the society. The company invented his mascot Tecky to aware and educate Japanese children the importance and essence of safety when taking an elevator. I think the company which always considers its role in the society will stand longer. And consideration about a company's role in the society is one thing that business people should always have when doing a business.

Nagoya Castle Tour

  The first attraction we visited was Nagoya Castle. The building was about 400 years old even though there were many times of renovations going through this period due to the destruction of World War II. But with help of a samurai character during the tour, I could still get to know the history of the castle.

From what I saw and heard during the tour, I was surprised by the wise of ancient Japanese people who built the castle and the stone wall. They wisely arranged stones at the edge of stone walls in order to strength its ability against shaking during earthquakes. As we all known, Japan is a country which suffers with earthquakes frequently. Ancient Japanese people's wisdom in reducing damage caused by earthquakes made me so impressed and I think their construction ideas must have inspired a lot of Japanese people to build wisely.

 Also, the samurai characters who are young people and trying to protect and inherit the culture of samurai impressed me a lot. Besides performing and showing everywhere about the samurai culture, they also sell CDs and attend TV shows to earn funding. I asked this guy in the picture that any difficulties in working as Busho-tai. He said that nowadays people don't know the way he was talking and he was trying to inform and remind people their culture. I was touched by his motivation to inherit Nagoya's samurai culture.

Arriving here

May 6

  The flight from Shanghai to Nagoya was delayed due to the late arrival of the aircraft. But the whole trip only took about 2 hours. So I didn't feel very tired comparing to other classmates who took the flight around 12 hours. I was excited and really enjoyed the flight to Nagoya. I hoped to have a great time in this amazing island.