What Is ‘Good’ Food?

In addition to writing online blog posts, we students write personal journals about our experiences abroad. We continually find ourselves sharing in unfamiliar cultural practices, and reflection journals help us step back from these experiences and interpret the Japan...

Remembering the Plight of Yanaka Village

One of the many reasons studying abroad here in Japan has been so incredible is that sometimes the opportunity arises to actually visit the locations we’ve been reading about in our textbooks. A few days ago, our class visited the Watarase Basin, the site for much of...

Religion in the ARI Community

I am not religious. I grew up going to church with my family (and still go on Christmas Eve and Easter), and I was a part of a youth group for a couple years. Regardless, Christianity plays little to no role in my world view. When I found out that ARI was a Christian...

Witnessing History at the Watarase Retarding Basin

As if this class has not already challenged and broken down my personal definition of what nature is, today we visited the Watarase Retarding Basin in southern Tochigi prefecture. The Watarase Retarding Basin is an active, industrial flood protection operation. In the...

Paper

So for those that know me, I have a bit of an origami hobby. I like to use certain papers for certain models, such as paper with more of soft cloth-like texture for making lotus flowers, thicker construction paper for a model that needs to retain its shape,  and other...