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This summer, NCU Service-Learning Office and Vision YouthAction (VYA Taiwan) cooperated and selected ten NCU students to visit Sansonjuku in Fukuoka Prefecture in Japan. Students had their service learning there for 13 days and followed the spirit of “Satoyama,” a spirit of harmonious coexistence of human and nature. It is a place without Internet, so people are getting closer to each other. With the organic agriculture project, human beings are getting closer to the land. Sansonjuku at Kurogimachi in Yame City of Fukuoka Prefecture is one of the important bases of ecological conservation in Japan. It is also a place that promotes LOHAS and environmental sustainability; therefore, young people around the globe are attracted and visit Sansonjuku to have service learning and international exchange. The major events of NCU students’ service learning in Sansonjuku are participating in local ecological preservation and organic farming projects. Volunteers from NCU worked together with the local volunteers to help with biodiversity recovery in the forest, lumbering, growing mushrooms, wet rice cultivation and so on. “The locals promote the idea of organic. It is not only limited to the crops; they’ve thought of the whole nature. They insist on not using chemical fertilizer and try to live together with the nature. They even use handmade natural soaps when they take a shower, reducing the environmental pollution to the lowest level,” said the participant You-Xiang Chen, a freshman from the Dept. of Chemical and Materials Engineering. “It is really worthwhile learning from the Japanese ‘Shokunin’ attitude. When they are farming, safety is the top priority. They have various tools and explain in detail the different purposes of those tools. They also pay great attention to taking a rest and never overwork. Besides, there is no Internet there and the place is away from any disturbance. I think people are thus getting much closer, showing their genuine affections, and enjoying the great peace and harmony of nature,” said another participant Qing-An Lee, a junior from the Dept. of Information Management.
