Day 17, Brief presentations of one's selected theme as study program summary

 

PC station to put slides onto the white board LCD screen 
The usual study room setting rotated 90 degrees to double the seating space so that audience members from the city hall and several of the chief lecturers during the past three weeks could attend. Each of the 13 participants provided a set of slides to show and to tell the audience about one particular topic or comparative study connected with the program's subjects of Ise and of Japan. Separate from the live presentations today, a bilingual 1-page summary of the seminar experience (Japanese and one's own first-language) will be submitted, together with a spreadsheet that records daily social media postings by each participant in the study program. This requirement is one way to make sure that the program and the things covered these three weeks can find larger audiences online. Topics included religion, poetry, history, youth culture and the elderly often found sustaining the history and culture facilities around the city and prefecture.

One of the characteristics of this study program is to look into all things pertaining to Ise in the national and the local context. Much of this hinges on the pilgrimage sites of the Ise Jingu collection of shrines. Since there are so many facets and so many centuries of events and personalities across time, there is a lot of information about these things: the volume of online, electronic, printed, and lectured material for the course is vast. It touches on many subjects and each participant brings their own particular interests and expertise. Therefore, as a practical matter, there is too much information to choose from: what to read, to take notes about, to photograph, to make a visit, and so on. Hearing the range in topics presented today is one way to take the universe of possible subjects and see a manageable set of only 13.

And yet, before closing the seminar and sending everyone their separate ways into the wider world, again, it is still worth capturing a few more pages, downloads, or links that so generously were prepared for participants to engage with. When there is no time to write or type notes, then snapshots can be an expedient solution.

screenshot of the day's pictures with book pages to record, too

In summary of these three weeks, the program design and staff & student volunteers who smoothly coordinated everything, along with the many speakers and field trip guiding faculty and community experts all combined for a very fine experience for all participating international researchers. The weather was no obstacle to daily activities, either. And the capstone study tour into the Kumano mountains and Grand Shrines was a highlight on top of all the previous highlights. No doubt the uploaded seminar essays will reflect all of this, too, http://ise-japan.kogakkan-u.ac.jp/report/   

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