Tsumami zaiku workshop for exchange students in University
Hello! I am Tomomi Yamashita, ITA Representative Director, and instructor.
As I mentioned in last week's newsletter, we offered a Tsumami zaiku workshop to 36 international students from the university in Tokyo the other day.
We were asked to hold a workshop for them to experience Japanese culture as part of their university class.
The international students came from all over the world: Korea, Taiwan, China, Singapore, Indonesia, the United States, England, Spain, Russia, Mexico, and Australia.
Since we had two hours, I first prepared materials to lecture them about tsumami zaiku.
The classroom lecture took about 10 minutes with lots of visuals so that students won't get bored.After that, we had them make a magnet of plum blossoms with a basic maru tsumami.
Since the venue was large and there were many people, I had five support instructors help.
Some were so interested in their first time try, that they were able to do it even before they were taught, while others struggled with it because they were not good at handicrafts.
However, everyone was able to finish!
Once they finished one piece, many students wanted to do it again.
The idea was to encourage cross-cultural exchange through tsumami zaiku,so I decided to have the students create their fireworks in group work.
I thought the material might be a little difficult to use, but I prepared many colorful fabrics of different sizes of crepe and habutae.
At first, there were some concerns about whether they would be able to work together well, but team leaders naturally formed, and team members enjoyed working together.
Each work was all unique and very interesting!
At the end of the workshop, each group presented their work.
Although people tend to think of tsumami zaiku as an individual activity, it has proved to be a useful team-building activity.
If you have a chance to try it in your country, please do so!