22nd September

Workshop
This whole morning, we were going to have the workshop. 14 participants were divided into 2 groups of 7 people. Sunmeng and Bellin were group leader respectively. I was in Bellin’s group and took the role as note-taker. First, we started with giving some ideas and perspective for what we had seen in Akita and Japan. Then, we sorted those ideas into 4 different categories: education, culture, people, and environment. After a long time of organization, we compared our outline with Sunmeng group’s and started a little debate. Frankly, until now I still don’t know what the purpose of our workshop was, but from this workshop, all positive points of Japan engraved deeply on my mind.

At the end of the workshop, Mr. Hideaki, our coordinator, handed us a package of present for our visit to Akita. Inside the package, there was a sheet of newspaper with the news of our courtesy meeting with Nakano, deputy governor of Akita prefecture, a photo of farewell party, a photo at Mt. Kanpu, an album of photos of our group in Akita, a CD of photos, a DVD of AkiSho, and @ peace dolls from Chidas, my host family. We went back to our room and packed our baggage. Then we walked to a restaurant nearby to have our last meal in Akita. The food I remembered was a big dish of spaghetti.

Farewell Akita
We left Akita View Hotel and arrived at the Akita Airport at 2:00pm. Some host families came to see their son and daughter off. They burst into tear. The scene was touching. Bellin represented us to thank Mr. Hideaki for the stay in Akita. Then, we waved our hand goodbye and got on the plane. This time I sat at window seat and I could see the view outside very well from taking off at Akita Airport to landing at Tokyo Haneda Airport.

Tokyo Tower
We didn’t go to Asakusa Hotel yet because we had to see thje Tokyo Tower, but only from distance. Today I hadn’t taken any good photos yet, so I took as much as I could this evening. From a park nearby, Tokyo Tower appeared perfectly under our eyesight. It’s about 5pm, the time for walking in garden. We could see Japanese people relaxing and enjoying the evening breeze. Some kids were playing baseball. It’s also a flower garden, as beautiful as the one in Noshiro. Time’s up. We got on the bus and headed to Asakusa Hotel, where we had left for 5 days.

Return to Asakusa View Hotel
When reaching in front of the hotel, we were given a new room key and warned to wear mask on our face again. I totally forgot about H1N1 in Tokyo as it was not serious at all in Akita. We met the 2nd and 3rd group university students, who had just arrived from Hokkaido and Aichi, again at the hotel and one of them told us that there were 8 Vietnamese participants of another JENESYS group infected by H1N1. That sounded very scary.

This evening we had dinner at an Asian restaurant, actually Vietnamese. The decoration inside was Asian style, and we could see some Cambodian elements on the wall. The taste of food was rather different from what we had eaten these days. Still, it was not the same as the tasted of home. After dinner, we didn’t have chance to go shopping because there were a lot of activities tomorrow and we had to take a good rest. Anyway, our group had to prepare a speech for Virya to state at the farewell party tomorrow night. Therefore, Bellin, Virya, Sunmeng and I discussed together the outline of the speech. While discussing, I closed my eyes for several times. When we finished, I went to bed without having a bath or changing my clothes. That night, I slept like a dead.