SAKURA SCIENCE High School Program Group 7
Deepening Interactions with Japanese High School Students at Meikei High School
Wednesday, December 13; Day 4 for Group 7. 115 students, specifically 98 high school students and 17 supervisors from India, China, Egypt, Kenya, and South Africa visited Meikei High School in Tsukuba City, Ibaraki Prefecture. This school is active in international education and accepts international students at the international Baccalaureate accredited schools.
At the hotel, the students were divided into 4 buses. To make friends with Japanese high school students, a translation app was used to allow them to practice saying "Nice to meet you. My name is so and so." "Can I take a picture with you?" and the like as we headed to the destination.
In the morning, together with the students at the school, the international high school students from various countries were divided into 10 groups and were able to experience Japanese classes. In the "calligraphy" class, they practiced writing the name of their home country in kanji. In addition, in the experience of making a pattern on a fan using Japanese ink, they looked happy to have a good souvenir to take home to their families. In the "chemistry" class, they were challenged to make meringue sweets that change color due to a change in pH. The leading teachers who happened to stop by on the campus tour also gave it a try and said they were sour but delicious.
In the classes of "theory of knowledge" and "psychology," the high school students enthusiastically discussed with each other despite their level of English. Furthermore, they deepened their interaction with the high school students at the school through classes such as "biology," "physics," "economics," "architecture," "society and environment," and "language and literature." By the time they had lunch, they were able to enjoy conversations such as "Japanese lunch boxes are cute and the food looks delicious." Finally, they took commemorative photos together using their smartphones, and the class experience came to an end.
In the afternoon, the international high school students listened to a special lecture given by Dr. Takaaki Kajita, the 2015 Nobel laureate for his research on elementary particle neutrinos, along with Meikei's students.
In the lecture titled "Looking back on my research at Kamioka - Neutrinos and Gravitational Wave," Dr. Kajita explained the processes he went through from his encounter with Dr. Masatoshi Koshiba up to the discovery of the mass of neutrinos through the construction and testing of Kamiokande, and his research on the large-scale, low-temperature gravitational wave telescope KAGRA on which he is currently conducting his work. Also, he ended with a message for the high schoolers by saying "teamwork is important if you want to achieve difficult things. It was good that I also met with good advisors and colleagues. If you have something you want to achieve, you must do it without hesitation." In the Q&A section after his lecture, there were some very specialized questions such as "how was it possible for you spread your research to the rest of the world?" and "is it possible to combine the quantum mechanics of neutrinos and the relativity theory of gravitational waves?" Dr. Kajita said, "I can't answer because you are more knowledgeable than me," which brought great laughter throughout the room.
Finally, Egyptian and Indian students expressed their gratitude by saying "We would like to express our sincere gratitude to you for giving us such a valuable opportunity today." This ended the visit to Meikei High School.