Today, Yamadera-san gave me a day off for joining a group with three German students. They are member of the “Deutsche Sportjugend” (ドイツスポーツユーゲント).
This is a sub-club for the youth of the association for Olympic Games in Germany (“Deutscher Olympischer Sportbund e.V.”)
So the three boys got the chance to visit Japan for 23 days.
In return there are also Japanese students now in Germany.
Very nice exchange.
They’ve already gone to Kansai Prefecture and they are now in Fukushima and they will go to Yamagata and some other places. Very busy! 😉

Anyway… I was invited to join them.
And we visited Nishinkan today which was the first time for me and very interesting.
Of course we couldn’t try out everthing because there was not enough time.
We “only” joined a Zen-Meditation and a tea ceremony (茶道).
Most interesting part for me was the Zen meditation.
A monk told us how to do and we did 15 minutes.
The time was over very fast. I really was surprised!
But of course, I couldn’t free my mind. Instead I was afraid, the monk will hit me with his stick.
So I tried to make no mistakes like moving, talking or something else.
This was all I were thinking.

After Nishinkan we went to a pottery where some of the group could paint on a plate for burning it later.
I didn’t because there were too many people but not enough plates. So I let the childrens do.

I enjoyed this day very much! The kids were very friendly and funny.
They even tried to speak German! すばらしい！

Cheers
Rebecca 🙂