Royal College and Japanese School hold cultural exchange programme:

Building bridges of friendship

Ananda KANNANGARA

The annual cultural exchange programme between the students of Royal College, Colombo and the Japanese School, Rajagiriya was held on a grand scale at the Japanese school premises last week.

The programme was conducted under the patronage of the Principal of the Japanese School, Kazuo Okazaki and Master-in charge, Japanese Language, Royal College, Nimal Senaratne.

It was a memorable day for both Royal and Japanese school students. The day's programme commenced with the welcome speech made by the Japanese School Students' President, Ms. Kumada.

Principal Okazaki highlighted the importance of conducting such cultural programmes between schoolchildren of different communities and said that these programmes will help bridge the gap between children of different countries from their tender ages.

During a short period of three hours, students participated in various Japanese traditional sports activities such as the popular Japanese game played with a top called `Koma', 'Take-Uma' played with bamboo poles, 'hane-tsuki' a Japanese game similar to badminton, 'fuku-warai,' the traditional Japanese game and a ball game `Ken-dama', These were very interesting games for the students of Royal College as well as for the teachers who were present on the occasion.

A teacher of Royal College, Senaratna said the objective of holding such an event was to introduce new friends of different ethnic groups and also exchange social ideas and cultural values pertaining to both countries.

Gifts were exchanged by the students at the event. The Japanese students had brought various traditional items from their country, while the Sri Lankan students presented the Japanese students with hand-made traditional greeting cards.

The students also took part in indoor and outdoor games. The visitors had the rare opportunity of partaking traditional Lankan sweetmeats like kokis, pani- walalu and aasmi.

Principal of the Japanese School Okazaki said that they wished to introduce more technological programmes from Japan for children in Sri Lanka in the future. The School Principal also said a home-stay programme will be introduced and students at Royal College will be given an opportunity to visit Japanese homes, while students from Japan will also be entertained by Sri Lankan families.

Students of Royal College presented Sri Lankan wooden handicraft to visitors to coincide with the occasion, while the Japanese students presented the students of Royal College Japanese traditional handicrafts.

NEWS IN BRIEF

by Rohana JAYALAL

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