Topic:
Cultural Buds
 
Written by:
Rensei Inoue, Faculty of Management, Department of Management
Katsutoshi Satoh, Faculty of Science, Department of Biochemistry
Aki Fujiwara, Faculty of Engineering, Department of Architecture
 
We three students call ourselves the "Cultural Buds." The theme of our activity is "Creating Inroads into International Exchanges.
 
To create a place where Japanese and international students at Okayama University of Science can interact with each other on a long-term basis, we built a garden from scratch. We used the vegetables to cook a dish together. We started by weeding the field, tilling the soil, and planting the vegetables. None of us had any agricultural background or knowledge of cultivating a field. However, we learned a lot through our activities and research, and an international student we worked with knew about farming because his parents were farmers in his home country, so the project went more smoothly than expected. In the cooking exchange program, we were divided into four teams and cooked four different dishes from the international students' home countries. The dishes were mainly from Sri Lanka, and although they were very hot and spicy, they were delicious.
 
We plan to make further improvements to both the field and cooking projects.