Hello everyone, I’m Meguru Ito, a physics teacher. Today, I’d like to talk about our annual STEM Fair, in this case STEM Fair 2025.
 The STEM Fair is a venue for presenting the outcomes of the ICT’s summer assignment, the Summer STEM Project, and it is held every year in late September. Simply put, it’s a showcase for summer independent research. Students choose their own themes, but this year, the ideas from 1st year students were especially unique, with many topics we’ve never seen before. Since ICT was founded eight years ago, this is the eighth STEM Fair (or the fifteenth if we include the 2nd year presentations), and it’s always exciting to encounter fresh ideas every year.
 What stood out this time was how much time and effort many students invested in ttheir experiments and production. For example, some caught dozens of fish to examine their organs for plastic contamination, others jumped about 3,000 times to study the effect on height, created animations by drawing dozens of frames, circled a local peninsula to investigate marine debris, or walked 7 km under the blazing sun.
 Although each presentation consists of just one poster and about ten minutes of explanation, imagining the effort and time behind them is truly moving. 
 Personally, I love these “just give it a try!” projects. Even if they’re not scientifically perfect, I want to recognize that enthusiasm. Of course, for a proper presentation, using charts and tables and drawing conclusions from them is also important, so I made sure to convey that to the students.
 Thanks to the students’ hard work and the teachers’ support, the STEM Fair has become a signature event at the Hakusanroku Campus. While 1st and 2nd year students’ projects aren’t advanced research yet, seeing their ideas and interests take shape is incredibly enjoyable. I hope we can keep this event going for years to come.

Meguru Ito

　Hello, my name is Kaya Yasuda. I am a 3rd year student at ICT. It has already been six months since I arrived at Dunedin International Airport. I’ve gradually gotten used to life in New Zealand, and I’m now enjoying every day here. In this journal, I’d like to introduce what my new daily life looks like after these six months.

　First, I’ll talk about my host family. My host family is a woman who lives with two dogs. To be honest, before coming here, I imagined a host family with parents and children. I thought we would have barbecues together and join various family events. So, when I received my homestay information during the spring holidays and read that she “lives happily with two dogs,” I couldn’t quite imagine what my life would be like and felt a little nervous.
　However, once the homestay began, I realized she was a kind person and a great match for me. We do things like having meals, walking the dogs, and going shopping at our own pace, which makes living together feel very comfortable. Our dinner conversations are always enjoyable—not only about school or studying, but also about funny stories from her work or the mobile games she’s into lately. Sometimes she suddenly says, “I feel like ice cream,” and takes me to a drive-through, and every Friday and Saturday night, we go to her friend’s house for dinner. I think this kind of lifestyle, just the two of us, is something I wouldn’t have experienced in a typical host family stay, and I really enjoy it.

　Next, I’d like to talk about how I spend my time outside of class. Classes here in Otago Polytechnic usually run from around 10 a.m. to 3 p.m., and even on longer days, they finish by 5 p.m. After class, I often go to the university gym located near my school. The gym isn’t just for sports—it also has a fitness area, pool tables, and even a café, so there are many ways to have fun. The facility is open not only to students from the polytechnic I attend but also to students from the University of Otago, and anyone can use it if they become a member. Because of that, I’ve been able to make friends with people my age, university students, and even working adults.
　There are also many international students who use the gym, from countries such as Korea, Singapore, Australia, and Japan. It’s always fun meeting new people. Especially when I meet Japanese students, there’s a special sense of comfort—a feeling of connection that’s a bit different from other friendships. While I often play badminton and volleyball with my ICT classmates, sometimes students from other countries join in naturally. Other times, I start by asking them to help me practice setting or serving. Before we know it, more people gather, and we end up having a small match. Everyone is very open and friendly, and many try to speak the simple Japanese they know. It’s always a fun and warm atmosphere.
　Recently, the days have become much longer, and it stays bright even after 8 p.m. After leaving the gym, I often go out for dinner with friends or take a run to the beach. I really enjoy spending my evenings freely and actively.

　

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I’ve now completely settled into life in New Zealand, and the days are flying by. Since the term is almost over and exams are coming up soon, I’d like to focus on studying hard as well.

Kaya Yasuda

Hello everyone. I’m James Taylor, one of the English teachers at ICT’s Hakusanroku Campus.

One of the best things about living and working at Hakusanroku Campus is the abundance of nature that surrounds us. We get to see a wide variety of interesting creatures up close. An example of this is the Chestnut tiger butterflies that appear in the Seto area at the end of every September.

Chestnut tiger butterflies are known in Japanese as “Asagimadara”. They are an interesting type of butterfly because they migrate very long distances, and one of the places they stop en route is just a few dozen metres down the road from our school. To encourage the butterflies, local residents and community groups plant Boneset (“Fujibakama” in Japanese) in disused allotments – like those near the Roadside Station Sena opposite ICT -- and call it the “ASAGIMADARA SORANOEKI (Sky Station)・HAKUSAN”. The Asagimadara Fan Club Hakusan conducts a marking survey here every year. On Saturday, September 27th, 2025, my son and I participated in a butterfly marking event organised by the Asagimadara Fan Club, Oguchi Community Centre, and the Hakusanroku Satoyama Revitalisation Council.

First, we listened to a lecture by Mr. Nakamura of the Asagimadara Fan Club Hakusan, who told us about the butterflies’ life cycle and migratory behaviour. Mr. Nakamura showed us examples of Chestnut tiger butterflies that he’d caught and marked, then gave an explanation and demonstration of how to mark them. Once they’ve been caught, the butterflies play dead,  so it’s easy to write on the white part of their wings. Using a felt tip pen, you have to carefully write the location (Hakusan or 白山 for us), the date (9/27), then our name or initials and a number to denote the order in which we caught and marked the butterfly. We also had to write all this information on a paper so that Mr. Nakamura could enter it online and share it with other Asagimadara Fan Clubs in other regions of Japan. We also had to write our contact details, so that if someone catches a butterfly we’ve marked, we can be contacted and told where it got to.

In previous years, Chestnut tiger butterflies that have been marked in Seto have later been found in places like Shikoku, Kyushu, Okinawa, and even Taiwan – that’s over 2,000 kilometres from Seto. The changes in the weather have meant that last year and this year there weren’t so many butterflies, but my son managed to catch and mark three.

I wonder how far they’ll travel.

James Taylor

Related Articles on Last Year’s ICT Chestnut Tiger Butterfly Marking Event

Project 1：Creating Name Tags

Hello everyone, this is Brandon Wohlfarth, one of the Engineering Design teachers for the 1st year students. Within our Engineering Design course here at ICT, students get the chance to work on a wide range of projects, but to help “introduce” the students to the design process, their first project was to create individualized nametags.

There were some criteria that the students needed to follow during the project: their nametag needed to be able to be worn, it needed to fit within a certain volume, it needed to be made using the 3D printers and/or laser cutters that we have here at Hakusanroku Campus, and it needed to visually show important characteristics about the designer.

During this project students walked through how to come up with ideas, practiced prototyping, and learned about the connections between features and functions. This project culminated in a presentation where the students were able to “introduce” their nametags to their classmates, and practice their English-speaking skills.

What I enjoy the most about Engineering Design is that, unlike tests and quizzes, there isn’t just one right answer to how to solve the problem. It was very interesting to see how the students decided to approach the challenge ahead of them. Many students focused on creating something that helped introduce their hobbies, or maybe a certain source of media that they enjoyed, allowing them to add parts of their personality into their final creation. This is just the first design experience for the students, so I am looking forward to where they go from here.

Project 2：Solving Problems through Teamwork

Within the first semester the first-year students also worked on a team project in Engineering Design IA. The goal of this project is for students to observe the world around them and identify the “Worst thing that they use everyday” and try to find a solution their individual pain points regarding the topic selected. An aspect of this project that I enjoy seeing is how students perceive and approach different challenges or inconveniences that they experience in their daily life. Each group tackled a very different problem, but they still needed to understand how an object is used, what are important features needed to complete a desired function, and a little about how people are an important part in designing a new product. We always get some interesting projects when we do this activity, so I am excited to share them all with you.

1. Ukusta

This group decided to take on the challenge of designing a new stand for the ukuleles found in the Living Commons at the Hakusanroku Campus. They wanted to make something that would stabilize the instrument while also helping to improve the visual aesthetics of the space.

2. Nosepads

This group decided to devise an adjustable attachment that could fit with various glasses or sunglasses, in order to help match the shape and contour of different noses. Due to the size that this type of attachment would need to be, for demonstration purposes only, their prototype was an enlarged version of their design.

3. The Tangle Terminator

This group decided to envision a way to help organize their laptop charging cables to improve upon its ability to be stored inside of a backpack, as most students do. They found that inside of the backpack, the cables tended to become tangled easily, which lead them to address this issue within the scope of portability.

4. Magnamewash

This group wanted to find a way to help organize the use of the laundry facilities within the Hakusanroku Campus dormitories. They wanted to help solve the issues of not knowing who is using what machine in an easy to install, easy to use way that would transfer information quickly and clearly.

5. Sortaro

This group found that sorting trash can be a difficult and time-consuming activity, and as someone who even after years of living in Japan still has challenges understanding this system I can relate. They wanted to make something that would still properly sort various types of garbage, but be in one easy to use location.

6. Shampoo Guardian Project

This group wanted to address the lack of shelving space within the showers at the Hakusanroku Campus dormitory. They wanted something that could be used within the shower stalls on campus, that was easy to carry and to access the various bottles that they wanted to use while showering.

 

I am looking forward to what they do in the second semester!

Brandon Wohlfarth

Hello everyone. I’m James Taylor, one of the English teachers at Hakusanroku Campus.

On Wednesday 24th September, I went to Shiramine to lead an English Café event for children. English Café began in January 2020 as a way to build positive relationships between local residents and people affiliated with ICT, mainly by offering opportunities to communicate in a relaxed environment.

Like last summer, this summer’s event was held at Shiramine Community Centre. Nine children from Shiramine Primary School, one from Hakurei Primary School, one baby, along with three adults (plus the staff who helped organise the event) attended. After greeting each other loudly in English to start the event, we played a game called “What’s the time, Mister Wolf?” This is a popular playground game that I remember playing when I was a boy. It’s similar to the Japanese game “daruma-san ga koronda”, but there are some differences. In the English game, the “wolf” is asked “What’s the time?” and the number he or she says is the number of steps the group has to take. The wolf is not allowed to look, and if the answer to the question is “dinner time!”, everyone has to run to the safe zone before the wolf touches them!

We took turns being the wolf, then settled down for some snacks while doing a quiz about my home country, the United Kingdom. During the summer I was able to visit the UK and take lots of photos of typical things, unusual things, and famous things.

We ended the event with three stories: “A Squash and a Squeeze” by Julia Donaldson, “The Pigeon Wants a Puppy” by Mo Willems, and “Five Little Monkeys Jumping on the Bed”, which gave the children a chance to join in by saying “no more monkeys jumping on the bed!”.

Overall, it was a successful event, thanks mainly to the hard work of the staff at the Shiramine and Oguchi Community Centres. I always enjoy the opportunity to spend time with local residents, and I’m looking forward to the next English Café.

James Taylor