Continuing from last year, the second-year students in the International Course will have online exchange meetings with a Korean high school this year. This time, we plan to hold five meetings a year with students from Seoul Tourism High School. In the first session, we introduced ourselves. We gave presentations introducing each other’s countries, schools, and towns, and then divided into small groups and enjoyed free conversation.
Pop-Culture Contents
This was the second meeting, and the topic was Pop-Culture. First, we introduced the pop-culture of each other’s countries as a presentation. Bihoku students were divided into eight groups and introduced the following topics:
- Popular actresses and actors
- Popular foods
- Anime
- Popular retro items
- Manga
- Popular words
- Gyaru culture
- High school fashion
Our Korean friends introduced the following:
- Korean dramas (Crash Landing on You, Reply 1988, etc.)
- Movies (Parasite, etc.)
- The band Lucy
- K-Pop Music (The group TWS visited Seoul Tourism High School for filming)
- The singer IU
After the presentations were finished, the students divided into small groups and had free conversations.
Japanese and Korean pop-culture was a topic of great interest, so the time seemed to fly by as they excitedly listened to the presentations. I also realized that there is a lot we know about each other’s countries and that we are influenced by each other. It was an exchange that made me feel as close personally to Korea, as our countries are physically.