The ICT Club at St. Ignatius College undertook a trip to Japan from Thursday, 6 June 2024 to Saturday, 15 June 2024.
The places toured included Tsukuba Space Centre, AIST Research Centre, Nissan Yokohama, Tokyo Metropolitan Building, Geological Museum and Zambian Embassy in Japan.
The trip was an eye-opener to the students on how Japan is strong on problem solving, innovation, collaboration of humans and robots. Japan is technologically advanced, and students were able to see robots at work in a real-life environment. At NISSAN, the
robots were assembling the engines from start to completion.
At Tsukuba Space Centre, the students were able to see Space Scientists in the control room, at Japan Exploration Agency (JAXA) on the ground, communicating with astronauts at the International Space Centre (ISS). we also visited AIST which is a research center in Tsukuba and the geological museum of Japan. At AIST the researchers are solving problems that affect day to day human problems.
A visit to the Tokyo Metropolitan building helped students understand capture memories of Japan from the 45th floor. The students met a lot of tourists from other countries including Britain and United States of America. A guided tour was facilitated where a lot of information about Japan and the political structure was shared to students.
We had a chance to visit the Zambian Embassy in Japan where the Ambassador Mr Tobias Mulimbika and his team encouraged the students to be challenged by the mindset of Japanese people and to change their mentality towards innovation and manners that should help build a better Zambia.
Observing and interacting with some Japanese helped the students to learn about Japanese culture, the food and their practices. The team learnt about the discipline of the Japanese in terms of their social life, academic life and corporate world. It was observed that there is bus/train etiquette where you do not disturb the quiet or peace of the next person by talking loudly on the phone. Overall, the Japanese are quite procedural and have respect for rules.
We hope and pray that the students were inspired by what they learnt to become magis in their life. We also had a just to attend mass at St Ignatius Parish church and visited Sophia University which is also run by the Jesuits.
We wish to extend our gratitude to parents who allowed their children to travel, the school through the management for making this trip possible and the embassy of Zambia in Japan for their welcome and generosity.
#learning for the service of God and others
St. Ignatius College welcomes Brophy Jesuit College from Arizona, USA. The students will be in Zambia for the next 2 weeks and will visit various Jesuit apostolates in Lusaka and Monze. They will be hosted by families from St. Ignatius college.