On the last day of our trip, and i have to admit, seemingly everyone was feeling the effects of the past few eventful days. Our destination was Shizuoka and we were to be picked up by a bus at our accommodation. To our surprise, our teacher was not the only one there to greet us – Fuka was also waiting with a warm and welcoming smile. We were all confused as to why she was there, but she quickly explained that she had prepared 19 handwritten cards for each of us individually that morning. This girl’s kindness knows no boundaries.
On our way to Shizuoka we took a short break and observed a dozen of Japanese workers attending the sidewalk. At first we thought they were repairing something, but it turns out, they were just trimming the grass, albeit with a huge amount of workforce.
In Shizuoka, we were given the option to either attend a company tour or explore the city on our own. Since the company tour had limited spots, the group had to split up based on preferences which we originally talked about the day before. At first, I had decided to explore the city, but I ultimately changed my mind and decided to join the company tour, since this was a unique opportunity. The company we visited was called Kentem and specialized in IT software for civil engineering. With over 400 employees across Japan, Kentem had a significant market share of around 3% of all civil engineering bureaus in the country. Their Shizuoka office, which was built in 2018, was designed with modern office concepts such as open spaces, flexible workstations, colorful decorations and indoor plants. They also had ergonomic chairs, comfortable hangout areas, and well-equipped meeting rooms and isolation booths.
Since i split up from my original group, i could only listen jealously how they surprisingly found the first blooming cherry blossom trees. Even though the forecast had predicted blooming in March, I suppose this could be due to the changing climate.
When we returned to Yamanashi University, we made one final trip to Lawson before heading back to our accommodation. We would head back to Tokyo tomorrow in the morning and wanted to get a good night’s sleep – so we thought. However, we suddenly came up with the idea of creating a postcard for our teacher, with signatures from all the students and some farewell messages. However, finding an appropriate postcard proved to be a challenge, so Celine and Antonia drew pictures of significant events and experiences, such as calligraphy, furoshiki, and drinking together. Meanwhile, I gathered everyone to sign the card in secret. Although our teacher needed to leave for Cambodia at 3 am, he stayed up late past midnight to organize return trips for us students and sort out the trash. This made it a bit awkward to gather signatures, but we managed to finish around 1 am and personally handed him the card. He was slightly confused as to what “Arigatou noshi” means since he had never seen it before. We tried to explain that we observed it in a taxi as a way of saying thank you from the heart. It turns out that the picture quality was quite bad, and what was actually written was not the hiragana character “shi” (し) but the kanji character for heart (心, pronounced as “shin”). Despite our sleep-deprived state and that little blooper, we were proud of our effort, and our teacher seemed genuinely excited and grateful.
