July 18, 2023
July marks the fourth time for the exchange with South Korea’s Hyewon Girl’s High School, which started this year. The topic of the first session was “Self-Introduction”, the second session was about “Future dreams and role models”, the third session was about “Introducing friends”, and the fourth session, this time was about “Unique Culture”, introducing each other’s culture. As our students have more and more online meetings, their conversations in English have become smoother and longer. They have become very good friends with the Korean students, and many of them have expressed that they would like to meet in person. The students are trying to make their interactions even better by continually improving how to expand on the topic, how to ask questions, and how to respond to what the Korean students say. They realized that the expressions they learned in class to continue conversations (Conversation Strategies) are very important, and they would like to practice using them more in class.
The topic, Unique Culture, helped us discover something new about each other’s cultures. We found many things in common and felt closer to each other. Japanese anime such as “Chainsaw Man” and “Oshi no Ko” are very popular in Korea, and J-Pop such as “Aimyon” is also popular. Also, K-Pop and Korean idols are popular in Japan, so we had a lot of fun talking about common topics. It was also interesting to learn about Korean culture that we didn’t know. “Korean kimchi is not spicy and there are many kinds of them.” It was really interesting to learn about the real situation in Korea, such as “Eating at a Korean restaurant costs about 1,000 yen and comes with a lot of free side dishes”, “Food delivery is popular”, and “Hanbok is only worn on very special occasions and is rarely worn”.
Our students selected various topics to explain about Japanese culture. They introduced seasonal events such as cherry blossom viewing, Tanabata, Doll’s Festival, and fireworks, Japanese-style cleaning time in school, Japanese food, anime, and music. They discovered that sticking chopsticks in rice is a taboo not only in Japan but also in Korea. It seemed that the unique cleaning time in Japan was a big surprise for Korean students. It was a meaningful meeting where we learned much about each other.