Summer Camp in Japan

Published 11/02/2022 in Scholar Travel Stipend

Written by Nhi Ho | 11/02/2022

Ever since grade school, I was fascinated with Japanese culture. As a poor immigrant still learning English, reading Japanese comics and watching Japanese cartoons were my main source of entertainment. This childhood hobby sowed the seed for a lifelong fascination with Japanese culture.

In August of 2015, I finally set out to learn the real Japan. I came to Japan to be a teaching member of HLAB. HLAB is a liberal arts summer camp run by college students for Japanese high school students. Its first mission is to offer a residential based liberal arts educational environment in Japan for high school students to learn from a set of diverse peers and role models. Its second mission is to provide opportunities for non-Japanese students to explore Japan.

My goal was to design and teach a seminar of my own topic, to build lasting friendships, and to inspire and be inspired by the members of this program.

Two years ago, I was inspired at a hardware hackathon at MIT to promote the spirit of innovation abroad. At the hackathon, teams were given 16 hours, limitless food, materials, and mentors to develop a product that would serve as a solution to a problem of their choice.

My team, comprised of only biology students, decided to tackle the problem of patient adherence to medicine.

The day started with a blank brainstorming poster board, and by the end, we had built a device that could dispense pills (M&M’s™) and send a text message to the user in the event that the user failed to take the pill. We named this device the “VINHIRY.”

Upon returning to Harvard, I not only applied for grants and the Dean's challenge to get the resources to continue my hackathon project, but I also became enthused in spreading this message to younger students. I wanted to promote the wonderful feeling of innovation and planning that I experienced with creating the VINHIRY to the students at HLAB.

Over the two weeks as a seminar leader for HLAB in Japan, I was often impressed by my students’ drive to learn from their peers and mentors. The amount of growth that I’ve seen in these students demonstrate that more students in Japan should be exposed to the liberal arts model, practicing peer mentorship and networking skills at an earlier age. Providing these opportunities would help young students make informed decisions about their interests and careers while making lasting connections to those in varying fields.

Soon, these changes would lead to more interdisciplinary projects and rapid innovation.

On the first day of HLAB, the staff welcomed the students during the opening ceremony. Each HLAB participant, including both high school and college students, is divided into a house. As each student entered the ceremony hall, the staff cheered and shouted the student’s house. From the first second, the students have a special sense of belonging in these small knit communities.

The Welcoming Ceremony as students entered the hall.

 I was in House 1. On the picture above, you can see my cohouse leader, Harune, holding the welcome sign for our house. Harune helped me lead house activities and was a co-teacher and interpreter for my Innovation seminar.

There are six high school students and four college students in each house. The members of a house eat together, sleep in the same room, and go to social events together. Most importantly, a house does daily reflections together. During these reflections, students shared their highs and lows of the day, their struggles, and their ambitions.

In the beginning of the program, I asked the students to share their goals for HLAB. At the program’s midpoint and end, the students reflected on whether or not they have met these goals and what they can do to continue the HLAB experience beyond the length of the program.

I helped my students reframe the obstacles they faced as privileges, leverage their HLAB network and resources, and led discussions on how they can pave the way for future students from disadvantaged backgrounds. One student was particularly shy and seldom participated in activities. I talked to him personally on a regular basis.

I also restructured group meetings to encourage less outspoken students to share their opinions. I encouraged him to lead a house reflection. At the end of the program, I was ecstatic when I saw him chanting the group’s mantra and smiling as he presented his final project.

We did many silly things like dress up and take pictures in photo booths, a favorite pastime of many Japanese teenagers.

I quickly learned that the core of the program is not the seminar that I designed or any that my non-Japanese peers designed. The most meaningful aspect of HLAB was the relationships that HLAB participants—both high school students and college students—formed.

In addition, I attained great insight from the many professionals that gave talks at HLAB. Professor Hiroshi Oguri, a professor of Theoretical Physics and Mathematics at CalTech who his Ph. D at the University of Tokyo, gave a talk on theoretical physics and the failures and obstacles that he experienced. He talked about his proudest moments and missed opportunities, about the struggles he triumphed over while pursuing what he loves. His talk inspired us to continue working diligently toward our goals.

In the evening, the students had an opportunity to interact with the speakers and other renowned professionals in the area in an informal setting.

Back to my seminar. My seminar was titled “Realizing Ideas.” I wanted to teach the students the process of entrepreneurship in a very concrete and practical way.

During the first day, I split my students up into teams. The teams brainstormed and chose one problem influencing their lives. This brainstorming process was where I aimed to teach the importance of effective communication. On the second day, the teams designed a product that will solve this problem. I facilitated an environment where every idea was worth putting on the table, where there were no wrong answers, just a room of peers on equal footing trying to add something to the world. On the third day, the teams pitched this product to other students.

The aim for this day was to show them the commonly overlooked step of product design was the ability to effectively communicate the goals and usefulness of the product to a larger audience. It was also to reinforce an environment where constructive criticism is appreciated, and to inspire the iterative process often involved in product design.

Saying goodbye was difficult. The relationships that I developed at HLAB helped me better understand how to promote positive change within both Japan and the United States. Often times, we learn the most when we are in uncomfortable positions. Many of the students at HLAB were, for the first time, away from their class and communities. In addition, these hotspots of cultural interactions will increase our awareness of our cultural differences.

I believe that both countries should have more programs such as this to help people help themselves. Through liberal arts programs like HLAB, we can get young people to get outside of their comfort zone and share different opinions and cultures to better our world. 

Originally written in 2016