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For memories of the home stay with Japanese families
Izumi
Kurosawa
Director
in charge of the Programme
Home
stay was conducted on June 17th, Saturday and 18th
Sunday.
Those
who volunteered for host family were
Mr.Kengo Fujta, Mr. Takeshi Konno of Toride City
International Exchange Association and the following BHN
Messrs and their families: Mr.Okabe, Mr.Tokura, Mr. Yamato,
Mr.Ymane and Mr.Yodo. We
can hardly thank the hosting families enough for their warm
hospitality.
This
event of the home stay was initiated by Mr.Nobusawa, former
president and the current
chairman of BHN and this is the third experience.
It has been always very popular with the trainees and has
been one of the most memorable experiences for them in Japan.
We
have received a complaint from one of the hosts saying
that his guest had left most of his dinner untouched.
We asked the trainee if he didn’t like his dinner.
He answered that he had been taken to a Chinese restaurant
in the China town of Yokohama for lunch and it
tasted so good that he was stuffed and could not swallow his
dinner. In order to
avoid such an “accident”, should we have asked our trainee to
try to keep some room for the next meal?
A
trainee from the Philippines sent an E-mailed to thank her host
saying that she was anxious to tell her family and friends about
her experience upon her return.
Her 82 years old farther lost his two brothers during the
Japanese invasion. She
wanted to tell her father that Japan is different now and that
there are Japanese with warm heart.
She told me the following morning that she could not wait
until her
return but called her father the previous night to tell her
findings.
Nearly
200,000 Japanese soldiers lost their lives in the Philippines
during the last war. There
must have been a great casualty on the part of the civilians of
the Philippines. We Japanese should feel sorry for them.
We should not say, “ How many times should we apologize
for the last war?” or
“ It is quite all right for the Japanese Prime Minister to pay
respect to the Yasukuni Shrine.”
Isn’t it necessary for every Japanese to feel sorry for
the sufferings of Asian people?
I believe we BHN is making a great contribution to Japan by
the training of Asian students and creating friendship in Asia. We
should be proud of it.
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