Summer lectures and fi eld work in Nagano

July 20-22, 2012

Peipei ZHOU（M2）

    We visited a place called KEEP, Kiyosato Education Experiment Project, where we were closer to nature. Under the leadership of an instructor of the Kiyosato Education Experiment Project, we went to the Botanical Garden, which has a lot of very meaningful activities. Originally the flowers and plants usually look very inconspicuous, so it is so interesting.     There, we observed closely some very common plants. Some of them emit a special smell, and some can blow sound, and some are even toxic, so we cannot easily touch them. We also did a very interesting game: the guide teacher let each of us find three leaves, and we hid them in our hands, not allowing people to see them. Then, we divided into seven groups, each group with two people. The seven groups stood in a circle. After the name of a plant was given by the teacher, we showed the most eligible leaves at the same time, then some people won or lost. With the largest leaves, it was necessary to come up with the biggest leaves in our hands, and the same group of people compared. Each time, we rotated companions once. At the end of the round, everyone won or lost. We had a better understanding of these lovely leaves. There, we made a unique umbrella. Some people made the teacher look, and some people made a profound shape. I made my own lucky umbrella using clover. This was a very meaningful event, for it let us close in proximity to nature and let us know that nature is beautiful and magical. The more love for the beautiful natural environment we have, the more inspired we must be to protect nature's determination.

Riyan Achmad Budiman（M2）

    It was interesting and fun fi eld work in Nagano. We learned much about the environment from the lecture in Nagano. We had a lot of discussion about the environment and its problems. Each of us presented diff erent topics about environmental problems. Each of us had diff erent information about what we had learned, and also we had diff erent points of view to see the problems. From the diff erent topics, we tried to analyze from our points of view and the result was that sometimes we had diff erent opinions from each other, and that was very good! Sometimes we are too serious with our own research. When it comes to another field, it is very good to broaden our knowledge. It was very good to share information with each other in order to get feedback. Moreover, the conditions at that time which were very convenient for study made it just was far away better than in the class.