Po Ching, Hsu
4th year, School of Commerce
Digging up the bamboo shoot was very interesting!
Last month, I got an e-mail from the ICC informing me that there was an event at the Waseda University’s Tokorozawa campus. I scrolled down the page and discovered that there’s a bamboo forest there where students can dig for bamboo shoots by themselves! What an interesting event I thought! In addition, I really wanted to visit the scenic Tokorozawa campus because I thought it would be quite different from the Waseda Campus in the Tokyo metropolitan area. So I immediately applied for the event online!
Bamboo shoots and us. (Author on the left end)
Luckily, I was selected at random. However, the weather report said it might rain on the day. As I was worried, I woke up early the next day and was relieved that it was not raining. It took about an hour for us to get to the Tokorozawa Campus. The participants were separated into several groups after arriving. I was with 3 Japanese students from the School of Human Sciences. So it was a good opportunity to practice my Japanese! Firstly the ICC staff taught us how to dig for the bamboo shoots. I thought it wouldn’t be too difficult but soon found I was totally wrong! It took so much strength to dig the bamboo shoots and I had to be very careful not to cut them with the shovel. The difficulty of the task made us feel a great sense of accomplishment when we finally dug up four really big bamboo shoots!
ICC prepared delicious lunch for us!
After we finished, it was time for us to have lunch in the students’ dining hall of the Tokorozawa Campus! Since it was a bamboo shoot digging event, the ICC prepared boiled rice mixed with sliced bamboo shoots and bamboo shoot soup just for us. It was very delicious! I took a school bus to the train station with other participants and chatted in Japanese with them. I also talked much about food from my own home country, Taiwan. It was a lot of fun participating in this interesting event. I not only enjoyed digging for bamboo shoots but also made lots of friends! Thank you ICC for holding this wonderful bamboo shoot digging event!
