The 5 delightful Keio students from Japan are returning home this weekend. They have written the article below on their experiences while in Dunedin.

Hello everyone! We are international students from Keio Girls High School, Japan. We would like to share with you our experiences in New Zealand.

We have stayed here since February 22nd and we are going to leave this Saturday. This is the first time we have visited New Zealand and we have learned new things everyday. We have had many first-time experiences and we’d like to share some of our weekend activities. 

On Saturday February 29th, we watched Albatross in Otago Peninsula with our teacher, Ms.Stirling. None of us have ever seen them before, so it was really exciting. There was a fluffy baby albatross. It is called “Ahou-Dori” which is a popular name in Japanese. “Ahou” means being funny in Japanese.

Ms. Stirling also took us to Larnach Castle. That was interesting, because it was so different from Japanese castles in terms of appearance and structure. Japanese castles have complex and sometimes very dangerous structures and usually contain few ornaments. In the time of constant conflict, they built complex castles to avoid attacks. Compared to those castles, Larnach Castle has many ornaments from the Victorian era. They were so beautiful. This is a big difference between Larnach castle and Japanese ones. We were surprised to hear how elegant the life of the nobility was. Also, Ms. Stirling gave us very detailed explanations in each room. For example, she taught us why there is a round mirror in the dining room. It was for servants to see the whole room wherever they stood in the room. We climbed to the top of the castle as well. We could see gorgeous views down the harbour and of the city in the distance. We were lucky to have such fine weather there. Next, we went to the garden. It was so beautiful that we took a lot of pictures. With various flowers, we felt it was like the world of “The Secret Garden”. It was also attractive because there were a lot of big plants we cannot see anywhere else. We had so many first-time experiences throughout the day; not only seeing Albatross but also we enjoyed high tea in the afternoon. We had an exciting time during our outing to the Peninsula. 

On Saturday March 7th, we travelled on the Taieri Gorge Railway. This time, we travelled by ourselves. The train left Dunedin for Middlemarch in the morning. We were on the train for five hours. Ten minutes after departure, the scenery around us changed from the town view to the rural view. The train passed through tunnels and we saw various sceneries. They were all amazing and also surprising to us. To give an example, we had seen sheep, but we hadn’t seen such a large flock. There were several photo spots that the train stopped at. We could get off the train and walk around. We took many beautiful pictures in this trip as well. The bridges and the gorges were very amazing. We were really happy to feel the magnificent nature like the world of the “Hobbit”. And not only the scenery, the train itself was also tasteful. It is made of wood just like the train in “Harry Potter”.

There are a lot of things here that are different from Japan and we loved experiencing them. 

We feel so sad to leave here on Saturday, but everything has been such a good experience and we have made many precious memories. Thank you.

By Yukako, Mayu, Miyu, Maori and Tamaki