Public Service Announcement

As I alluded to back in a previous post, one of our final assignments for our Pop Culture class was to make a public service announcement about something related to Japan.  My group was kind of floundering for an idea through the semester and only decided on things at the last second, pretty much.  Rebecca and I had some ideas that we threw around, but we had a third member in our group who only contributed the occasional “hmmmmm” during our brainstorming sessions.  Very helpful!  In the end, though, we managed to put together a pretty awesome PSA, I have to say!  You’ll laugh, you’ll cry, and you’ll definitely learn something about being a better person.  Probably.  Maybe?

This idea came from the mind of Rebecca, so it’s all thanks to her that we won the runner-up prize for the best PSA in the class!  Although trying to explain our idea to the teacher beforehand proved a bit difficult.  We explained that there would be a ninja sword battle involved (of course), and after carefully going through the plot to get his approval, his response was…”But where do the lightsabers come in?”  ….What?  I’m not sure what kind of amazing PSA he was imagining, but there were unfortunately no lightsabers in the making of this PSA.

So, without any further delay, here it is!  A Stormy Battle . . .

(If you would like to see another example of a PSA made in our class, see the previous post Atsuta Festival!)

Iga Ueno, The Ninja Village

Before going to Japan, I got a lot of silly questions. Are there still samurai in Japan? Do ninja still exist today? With a sigh, I would say no, of course not.

Much to my surprise, I found out that our first cultural excursion as NUFS students was to a ninja village. I wasn’t sure exactly what that meant, but I didn’t need a second thought before signing up for this field trip. This was also our very first of many cultural excursions at NUFS, so I was eager to see how it would go.

It was my first time leaving the Nagoya area, so I took lots of random scenery shots from the bus…

We all loaded onto the bus and headed to our first destination, a nearby city that is famous for its silk. It was here that we were able to tour a small museum and then try our hand at making our own silk braided bracelets or key chains. We all had a lot of fun doing this, surprisingly, though it was a little hard to get the hang of! Luckily, the people who were helping us were patient with us, even when we were all messing up…multiple times.

My silk braiding loom

Rebecca’s bracelet

The end product was a nice souvenir as well! At first, I didn’t like the colors that I was given since they reminded me of Christmas, but after the hard work it took to braid it, they grew on me, and I really like it now!

My completed bracelet. A little Christmasy, but I like it!

My bracelet in action!

After we were done, we got back on the bus and, after an informational video about ninja, we arrived at Iga Ueno, the ninja village. We first were given a demonstration of an average ninja house. We were shown all the hidden passages and cubbies for hiding people or weapons if enemies came around.

Then, we got to see the main event. Two real life ninjas showed us various ninja moves and skills, such as the art of hurling knives, throwing stars, or even chopsticks at a board, as well as the important skill of being able to take down an opponent with just a length of rope. The ninja giving the demonstration was really charismatic and hilarious, and luckily for us, he even knew English! The highlight of the show was when he asked Dick Jones to participate in a trick and afterwards handed over the Original Ninja Handbook in thanks!

Today I learned ninja wore cat eye makeup…

Striking a jaunty pose for our benefit

Handing over the Original Ninja Handbook…so lucky!

We even got to take pictures with very cute ninja in training!

 

Overall, this was a really fun and interesting excursion. This is something that I never would have known about or thought to do without the NUFS excursion, so I’m definitely glad to have gone with this school over other possible choices! I’m looking forward to future field trips like this in the future!