UHS Students Treated Like Rock Stars During Their Visit To Japan

Japanese language students from Ulladulla High School had the opportunity to travel to Japan for two weeks during the school holidays. They visited Tokyo, Kyoto and Hiroshima and were great ambassadors for UHS. They were able to participate in cultural activities including Kendo and Archery and were immersed in language classes at Mikawa Junior High School which has been our sister school for 23 years. The students created friendships that will last forever and reinforced global connections to UHS.

An exhausted group of Ulladulla High School students negotiated Australian customs on the last Friday of the school holidays.  They should be congratulated for their dedication and commitment to their study through spending their holidays overseas improving their Japanese language skills. Outstanding!

Most of the students had only been studying the language for just over a year so to be immersed among Hiragana and Katakana characters for their eating, travel and shopping was a wonderful opportunity offered by their Japanese teacher Mrs Louise Morgan and Mr Armati.

Highlights of the trip included watching with inquisitive disbelief at the food that rolled out on a Tokyo sushi train, some of the outfits on the mannequins at the Tokyo Gucci shop, and the sombre reflection on the horrors of the Hiroshima bomb by a survivor from the day.

Foremost, was the delight on the faces of the students when they reconnected with their exchange students whom they had originally billeted at their home in Australia.

The generosity of Mikawa High School and Kosei Gakuen High School was humbling. Students were treated like rock stars, with Kendo instruction, calligraphy lessons, a typical morning tea and archery exhibition and finally the whole school stopping to escort us to our bus at the end of the day.

Witnessing the joy UHS students  felt when seeing their friends showed the depth of the relationships that our students had maintained and the importance of the opportunity offered by this international relationship that has spanned nearly a quarter of a century.