Jogakuin High School

Our visit to the Jogakuin Girls School in Hiroshima offered us another opportunity to bridge the cultural divide. The school is located in the heart of Hiroshima and, like most urban campuses, its buildings are shoe-horned into the landscape. The photo to the left shows the entrance to the high school. As we came during examination time, we were only able to get a brief glimpse at the high school itself. We were warmly greeted by the superintendent (photo to the right), and we were also given a packet that contained literature about the school and Hiroshima, as well as a book of poems by survivors of the bombing. After opening remarks, we visited the memorial erected to the memory of the Jogakuin students who perished in the bombing (photo below left). Following this, we visited a middle school English class. Students asked us questions in English about our likes and dislikes, an affair punctuated by an astounding amount of giggling. After that we became the students, as the Japanese students attempted, with varying degrees of success, to teach us how to make origami swans like the ones found at the Children's Memorial in Hiroshima Peace Park. The photo below shows two of our instructors, apparently unfazed by our utter lack of manual dexterity.

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