{"id":3992,"date":"2020-03-26T11:23:01","date_gmt":"2020-03-26T02:23:01","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.waseda.jp\/inst\/rlc\/?p=3992"},"modified":"2020-03-26T11:24:21","modified_gmt":"2020-03-26T02:24:21","slug":"factory-tour-sumitomo-electric-industries-ltd-february-2016-2-2-2-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.waseda.jp\/inst\/rlc\/other-en\/2020\/03\/26\/3992\/","title":{"rendered":"WISH Domestic Study Trip -Minamiuonuma, Niigata Prefecture- (February 2020)"},"content":{"rendered":"

On the morning of February 18th, six students and myself boarded the bullet train that would take us on a 5-day study trip to Minamiuonuma, a city in the Niigata Prefecture of Japan. Though famous for the gargantuan amounts of snowfall recorded every year, we had been told that this year, remarkably enough, there was no snow in the city. Many of us who had been looking forward to playing in the snow, skiing, and all manner of snow activities, were disappointed. Winter and snow holds a particularly special place in my heart, having been raised in the harsh winter regions of the United States, and I was looking forward to experiencing what I considered the first real \u201cwinter\u201d since coming to Tokyo.<\/p>\n

\"\"Not knowing what to expect, we settled ourselves into our seats on the train, watching dejectedly out the window as the bare fields and hills flashed past. We enter a long tunnel, the last mountain range we have to cross before we arrive at our destination. We\u2019re left in darkness for quite a while, five minutes at least, before we emerge \u2014 into a beautiful world covered in white. The students, who\u2019d been on their phones or talking quietly amongst themselves, surge up as one to crowd around the windows to plaster their faces on the cool surface as if to feel the falling snow on their cheeks. It was like entering one world from the next. From what the locals told us, snow had begun falling the evening before and kept snowing the whole day and night we arrived as if to welcome us to Niigata.<\/p>\n

Throughout our five days there, we had many amazing and unique experiences. Despite hearing about Japan\u2019s super-aged population, in Tokyo it is a distant problem that many of us are aware of but don\u2019t truly comprehend. Seeing tiny villages in the mountains of Niigata comprised of only 50 or so elderly people who have to rise at the crack of dawn to shovel 3-4 meters of snow from their roofs and roads, only for their back-breaking work to be buried by midday. How the local elementary school has less than 20 students total where teachers are forced to combine grade levels and teach integrated courses because of how few children there are. Visiting the Echigo J\u014dfu weavers whose population has dwindled so much that it is a dying craft that very few still know how to do. All of these things amounted to the stark realization that Japan\u2019s shrinking population is a very real issue that is pushing the cultural richness and tradition of the rural regions to extinction.<\/p>\n\n\t\t