Cultural Exchange with Lebanon

May 24th, 2017

Today we talked with students in Lebanon on Skype.
The students were 15 years old.

<Question>
Do you border the Meditteranean Sea? - Yes
Are you in Africa? - No
Does your national flag have red? - Yes
ARE YOU IN LEBANON? - YES!!

Lebanese currency

Traditional food in Lebanon

Lebanese flag: the red part represents blood, white represents snow in the mountain and the tree in the middle shows the cedar tree.

They showed me their traditional dance cheerfully.
They taught us how to write our names in Arabic. We wrote their name in Hiragana.

They knew Japanese things well. We learned about Lebanese culture.

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(Teacher's Comment)
Like Israel, Lebanon is not familiar with people in Japan.
Hoever, we were impressed that Lebanese students knew about our country very well.
This was our first Skype call with Lebanon. They prepared a lot of questions to us. Here let me answer some of them again.

- How do you feel living in a place threatened by natural disasters?
  Honestly we do not feel anything specially - of course we do some evacuation trainings for earthquakes at school, you can spend usual daily life here. We know not only how tremendous the nature in Japan is, but how beautiful and how we are blessed with it.

- We suffer from a huge pollution problem. In spite of the fact your country is much bigger, how do you manage to keep it clean?
  In our country, it is a kind of social rule to deal with the trash / garbage we made by ourselves. For example, if you go somewhere with something to drink in a plastic bottles, we usually bring the empty bottles home. We regard it rude to leave/throw the trash away outside. Also, Japanese students clean their classroom after school every day. This is to grow the spirit to cherish the environment given to them.

- Do you always sit on the floor when eating? Why do we see this more often in Japan?
  Honestly we do not sit on the floor when eating nowadays - more and more houses are westernized and less and less people eat on the floor. But in traditional ceremony we often do it. This is the tradition not only in Japan but among some East Asian countries.

I especially feel grateful to Yusser Chidiac, the Lebanese teacher I met in Toronto and who organized this call with me this time. Hope to connect with you guys again. :)