Gabriel De Leon
Graduate School of Creative Science and Engineering
One of the icebreakers I use when talking to people is “Can you rank bread, noodles, and rice?” I love this icebreaker because it lets me talk about my favourite thing, which is rice. I signed up for the rice harvesting event last year when I entered Waseda, but sadly I was not accepted. So, I am very happy that I was picked this year. My experience with this event not only left me satisfied but exceeded my expectations. This will remain one of the highlights of my time at Waseda.
We started off the day by meeting up at Tokorozawa campus, getting off at Kotesashi Station. This was my first time on the Tokorozawa campus, and my thoughts are that it is filled with nature, maybe too much nature. The number one thing I noticed was the number of bugs on campus. Many, many big spiders. I think above every hedge or under every tree there is a big spider. Coming from Australia, however, maybe it was a welcome sight. We were given a brief explanation of the event and the conservation efforts on campus. It was nice to learn about these efforts, as I think being connected with nature and knowing where our food comes from is a very important part of life.
Photo by the author
After the explanations, we suited up in our gumboots and overalls. Truthfully, when I saw the overalls, I was a bit disappointed, as I had expected us to be in the rice paddy with just our bare legs. At the rice paddy, we were given a demonstration of how to cut the rice stalks. Seeing the instructor in the mud made me excited to try it myself, and when I finally did, I was hooked. Farming was actually very fun and satisfying. I enjoyed it so much that I thought I would’ve been a good farmer in the far past. My family in the Philippines has an agricultural background, so playing in the mud and getting dirty made me feel right at home.
Photo by ICC
It was also very fun interacting with everyone during the event. That is the one thing I love about ICC: they give you such a good environment to talk and interact with people you would have no other opportunity to talk to. Talking and mingling while harvesting rice was such a fun activity, even though some people accidentally fell into the mud. It was actually very hard and tiring to walk in the knee-deep mud!
I had the opportunity to help bundle the rice, but I chose to harvest more rice instead. Looking back, I wish I had helped bundle, as I could have had the full experience of everything that goes into rice harvesting.
Photo by the author
After the rice harvesting, we went back, washed our gear, and had a little rest. The ICC staff prepared one more event for us: a game where you find something you have in common with someone else at the event, and the person with the most wins a prize. ICC does many of these types of games, and I always enjoy them because you can find a new friend by talking about things you like. For example, I met someone who also does SCUBA diving, and without games like these it would be very hard to find out something like that.
Overall, I feel so fulfilled that I was able to participate in such a unique event. I have already had one whole year of going to ICC events, and I will have one more year of events. I recommend that anyone who is apprehensive about going to an ICC event sign up and try to go to as many as they can!
Photo by the author
