Nara JETNet 18th Event
International Treasure Trail II
On Saturday, April 21th, 2007, International Treasure Trail, the 18th event by Nara JETNet was held at the Nara Prefectural Comprehensive Social Welfare Center in Kashihara City. The JETNet council, which is comprised of the 4 Coordinators for International Relations and one Assistant Language Teacher at the Nara Prefectural Board of Education, has been planning international events in Nara since 2001.
The event included 44 citizens of Nara Prefecture and 41 JET Programme participants, representative of various countries, including France, Canada, New Zealand, Australia, China, Korea, the UK, Ireland, South Africa, Norway and the United States.
The International Treasure Trail was designed to be an adventurous day where Japanese and JET participants alike could interact while looking for famous and less famous places in Kashihara, guided by clues and solving mysteries.
The event included some ice breaker activities that greatly helped all the participants to know each other and later on act as a team. Each team (total 8: monkeys, llamas, cranes, rabbits, squirrels, frogs, kangaroos and hedgehogs), led by a JET participant able to speak both English and Japanese, then headed outside to Kashihara Shrine Park, taking with them a set of clues and questions, with the objective of finding all 6 locations if possible, but in the very first place to have fun. The 6 places to find included the main Kashihara Shrine, the top of Unebi mountain but as well peculiar sights like a blue elephant fountain or a big anchor. Each team was then to answer questions about the place they were, and also had to take a group picture to prove they found the right location. A scoring system was later used to tell the wining team. Artistic and funny pictures as well as children’s artwork were taken in account too.
The JETs arrived at the venue at approximately 9.30am and began setting up the room, before the participants began to arrive. Each participant received a nametag upon which was written the name and logo of the team they belonged to. The event culminated while participants were looking for the goals following the clues. Surveys revealed that all the participants, JET and Japanese alike, felt that the event was very interesting, as it provided participants with the opportunity to discuss and discover a wide variety of cultural places while walking outside as teams.
The JETNet team would like to express its appreciation to everyone who participated, and we hope to see you again at a future event!
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