SAKURA SCIENCE High School Program Group 5
Deepening Interactions with Japanese High School Students at Koshigaya Kita High School
Wednesday, November 13; Day 3 for Group 5. A total of 107 people, including 92 high school students from India, Indonesia, Peru, the Marshall Islands, Palau, and Micronesia, and 15 supervisors, visited Saitama Prefectural Koshigaya Kita High School (Koshigaya City, Saitama Prefecture).
After a welcome greeting given by Principal WAKANA Kenichi, the students received an introduction to the school and an explanation of the contents of the class. Koshigaya Kita High School is a high school designated as an SSH (Super Science High School) by the Ministry of Education and Science. It is placing importance on developing students who will be good human resources for the sciences. The emphasis in classes is on the experience of being in contact with the real thing. The high school students from overseas were surprised at how rich the content is when they learned that there are field surveys and training camps for each academic year.

After that, they were given opportunities to interact with the students at Koshigaya Kita High School in various ways. In a self-introduction game, the students selected three words and numbers about themselves and explained them and asked each other questions about them. In an introduction to traditional Japanese culture, they were taught simple greetings in Japanese, how to use chopsticks, and how to fold paper cranes with origami. Some Indian high school students were asked to write their names in hiragana and take that home with them.




After lunch, students from the Department of Science and Mathematics gave presentations on their research projects. The students in charge gave presentations on the results of eight experiments. These included the relationship between the size of the popping sound of a balloon and the method of bursting, how to make a bright plastic bottle lantern in the event of a disaster, and how to fold angles evenly with origami and others. They made full use of the translation app to describe terminology. They enthusiastically discussed the results of the experiments. They exchanged LINE connections and commemorative photos with high school students thereby deepening their friendships, and so that they will keep in touch with each other. Many promised to meet again if they come to Japan.


The last event was a special lecture that was the main portion of this visit. Prof. KURUMIZAKA Hitoshi of the Institute for Quantitative Biosciences at The University of Tokyo gave a lecture on "Structural Biology for Understanding Epigenetics." https://www.iqb.u-tokyo.ac.jp/kurumizakalab/
During that, the students were thrilled to see a video of KURUMIZAKA-Sensei singing and playing guitar on the campus of The University of Tokyo. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E-YY1tPX2Kk&t=48s The overseas students asked insightful questions, such as whether there is a relationship between DNA sequences and evolution, and one student requested an explanation of how cryo-electron microscopes work.


Lastly, the representatives of Group 5 concluded by expressing their impressions and offering thanks for the opportunity to visit, saying, "I hope that we can invite you to our country. "

