The Japan ICU Foundation (JICUF) has a tradition of representing ICU at the UN International School (UNIS) in Manhattan. This past month, we joined in the annual “Aki Matsuri”, which featured various cultural activities and a Japanese language speech contest. It was a great chance to spread the word about ICU to students from all over New York and New Jersey!

This was the 22nd annual Aki Matsuri, which was held on Oct 27th and hosted at UNIS by the Northeast Council of Teachers of Japanese (NECTJ). The purpose of NECTJ is to broaden Japanese language education in the northeastern area of the country and to assist educators in their professional work as teachers of Japanese language and culture. This year’s event drew over 300 local area high school students from 14 schools and over 100 volunteers. The 2015 Chairperson was Dr. Mariko Sato Berger, Teacher of Japanese and Music at Townsend Harris High School in New York. There were also four guest students from different schools in Tohoku for the event.

Our ICU booth at the UNIS Aki Matsuri was a big success! We were placed in the “Nihon no kyouiku” section, which was co-located with the JET Program and Temple University Japan booths. This meant that interested students could seek us out more easily to learn more about studying in Japan. We were able to talk to many students from a variety of high schools in New York and New Jersey, as well as their teachers. We passed out a lot of brochures and spoke to them about the various options for studying at ICU, such as four-year September students, OYRs, the Summer Course in Japanese, and so on. The timing was especially nice, as the first and second application periods for prospective ICU September students will soon follow.

Following the booth activities, the Japanese language speech contest took place, featuring a select group of very talented competitors. Each student gave their speech entirely in Japanese, with the English translation displayed for the audience. They also had to answer a certain number of questions in Japanese from the panel of esteemed judges, all of whom were native Japanese speakers. It was very impressive!

The HS students in the photo below at the ICU booth were the first student group we spoke with. Each of them came from a different HS in either New York or New Jersey, and enjoyed learning more about studying at ICU. They were all very genki, and in fact, the young man on the far right side of the photo won the first prize in the Japanese language speech contest!

In all, it was a wonderful opportunity to keep building the kizuna between UNIS, ICU, and JICUF. A number of students from UNIS have gone on to study at ICU through the years, so we are happy to keep this tradition alive and well here in Manhattan! Thanks again to our colleagues and friends from NECTJ for organizing such a great Japanese educational and cultural event. We look forward to next autumn’s festival as well!