Hello, this is Yuri Makada from the Hakusanroku Office. The season has turned to autumn, and we can feel the cool breeze in the air. Today, I’d like to introduce some of the extracurricular activities that took place in September.

Not National Language, but Japanese

 On Wednesday, September 17th, 2025, Tsutsui sensei gave a special lecture titled “Not National Language, but Japanese”. Tsutsui sensei teaches a Japanese as a second (foreign) language classes for students whose first language is another language.
 This time, however, the lecture was aimed at native Japanese speakers. It focused on the fact that even the Japanese we use casually every day has complexities in word choice and grammatical structures. The lecture explored these points and examined how the function of words creates meaning.
 Tsutsui sensei commented: “Some students mentioned that they were not confident in Japanese or grammar, but everyone participated actively. I observed students thinking for themselves, gaining insights, and deepening their understanding through group discussions. I also learned new things from their efforts and comments. Unfortunately, we ran out of time and couldn’t cover one of the main topics, the difference between wa (は) and ga (が) so I plan to hold a second session in the next semester. I hope many students will join us again.”

Flower Arrangement and Ikebana Workshop

 On Friday, September 19th, 2025, a Flower Arrangement and Kado Class was held, organized by Takako Utsunomiya sensei and Fumi Kuroda sensei. Kazumi Minamikawa sensei (instructor) led the Flower Arrangement course.
 First, students created flower arrangements using summer tulip, roses, and statice. After learning from Minamikawa sensei how to use scissors and cut the flower correctly, students completed their own unique works by arranging flowers on special sponges, making the most of each flower’s characteristics and colors.
Next, students split into three groups and tried authentic Ikebana using a flower frog and a water basin, incorporating materials such as beans, lilies, sunflowers, asparagus, hiogi, and pincushions. Referring to Minamikawa sensei’s examples,
 students adjusted the height and angle of the flowers while considering overall balance. Each group had a different theme, resulting in a variety of creative and distinctive works.
 Students commented, “I was happy to learn about so many different flowers and to finish something beautiful.” Their works were displayed in the entrance and common spaces of the Hakusanroku Campus, creating a bright and elegant atmosphere throughout the school.

Career Support for KOSEN Students

 On Friday, September 19th, 2025, a lecture titled “Career Support for KOSEN Students” was held for 1st and 2nd year students. This lecture was giving by Mr. Tatsuya Taian from OLIENT TECH Co., Ltd.
 After graduating from a KOSEN, students generally have two main paths: employment or further education. Traditionally, most students choose employment, but in recent years, the proportion of students aiming for further studies has increased.
 Mr. Taian provided advice on both employment and further education, explaining their respective advantages and disadvantages, as well as how to approach job hunting and academic preparation. He concluded his lecture with the following encouraging words for the students: “Looking ahead to your future, gathering information early, and preparing in advance will lead to satisfying career and academic choices.”

The Secret of the Crest Vault: STEM Themed Escape Room

 On Monday, September 22nd, 2025, Domyson Abuan sensei and Sharmee Abuan sensei hosted an activity titled “The Secret of the Crest Vault: STEM-Themed Escape Room.” Students worked together to solve STEM-related puzzles and riddles in order to escape from a locked room.
 For each challenge they cleared, one digit of a four-digit passcode was revealed, with each digit representing a concept related to Science, Technology, Engineering, or Mathematics.
 Using their knowledge, teamwork, and quick decision-making skills, the students successfully gathered all four digits, completed the passcode, and unlocked the door to escape. Impressively, the winning team solved the puzzles in just 3 minutes and 48 seconds!

Shall We Dance?

 On Friday, September 26th, 2025, Justin Han sensei and Stephanie Reynolds sensei hosted an activity titled “Shall We Dance?”. On this day, two professional dance instructors and two volunteer dancers were invited, and students learned the basic steps of four types of ballroom dance (Waltz, Blues, Cha-Cha-Cha, and Jitterbug).
 In these dances, the usual roles are that men lead and women follow, each performing complementary movements. The Dance instructors focused on teaching the students the steps in each type of dance that are performed by both the leader and the follower. After learning the fundamental movements and counts, students paired up and practiced to music, experiencing the joy of dancing.
 Justin sensei commented: “At first, the students struggled with the motions and rhythm of the steps, but as they practiced, they greatly improved. The students expressed their enjoyment of the class while some students even asked about making it more permanent!”

Igarashi Takenobu Archive

 On Friday, September 26th, 2025, five 1st and 2nd year students visited the Igarashi Takenobu Archive at KIT. This archive, established in 2023 for the purpose of fostering aesthetic education, houses approximately 5,000 works and materials donated by the sculptor and designer, Mr. Takenobu Igarashi.
 The students toured the gallery and received explanations about the exhibited works and the artist. In the workshop, students brought four small everyday items, arranged them on graph paper, and looked for commonalities. They organized the items by aspects such as color, shape, and chronology, and then summarized differences in thinking within their groups.
 Through this experience, the students cultivated observation and creativity through the act of “seeing.

Soft Volleyball & Volleyball Tournament

 On Monday, September 29th, 2025, a hike to Mt. Hakusan and Mt. Sanpoiwa was originally planned, but due to rain, it was canceled. Instead, a Soft Volleyball & Volleyball Tournament was held, organized by Philip Cadzow sensei, where 1st and 2nd year students and faculty enjoyed playing together.
 The event started with soft volleyball. Seven-minute matches were played one after another, with teams giving their all and cheering each other on. Next came the volleyball matches, where every successful spike or receive drew cheers and loud support. Teachers and students teamed up, encouraging each other and playing with a sense of unity. An original game was also introduced, where all participants split into two large teams and everyone joined the court. This game featured a special rule allowing up to four touches before returning the ball to the opponent’s side, making full use of the large number of players and fostering teamwork to keep the ball in play. Finally, an intense match between 1st and 2nd year students took place! From the start, the 2nd years dominated with strong teamwork and powerful plays. The 1st years fought back bravely, but ultimately, the 2nd years’ coordination and focus led them to victory.

Book Review Presentation by 1st Year Students

 On Wednesday, September 25th, 2025, a book review presentation was held for 1st year students. The students presented for up to 3 minutes on the books they read during summer vacation (with no restrictions on genre), sharing what they learned and their impressions. Japanese students read English books and presented in English, while international students read Japanese books and presented in Japanese. The students presented about a variety of genres, including fantasy, adventure, biography, and mystery. Some students created animations based on the book’s storyline, while others showcased pencil sketches depicting a scene from the story.
 After the presentations, a vote was held among the students and faculty to select the best presentations. Two students were chosen as the winners of the English presentations (Japanese students) and one student was chosen as the winner of the Japanese presentations (International students). The results are as follows.

English Presentation Winner: Taiki Sasaki

English Presentation Winner: Shunta Tamura

Japanese Presentation Winner: Burba Anthony Revatta

Yuri Makada

 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 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