Activity Report
2020.02.19
Great experience in Moscow
Masumoto Ren
International Studies/Kanazawa University
Cultural Exchange Program
Moscow, Russia
I had great and new experience in Moscow everyday. At Sergiyev Posad, there are many monasteries. There, many people were kissed to some pictures or painting of Maria. In Japan, at art museum it bans to touch or approach to the work, but Russian did that. It surprised me as well. Some monasteries were very traditional and strict that any women who did not have things which covered their head were declined to enter to the buildings. Also, the day we visited was the opening ceremony of school and many students who wore kinds of uniform lined up and headed to monasteries and then took group photos. This situation is very rare to me because in Japan, we had that in a school. Also, when we went to Moscow University, they did Opening ceremony very grandly. Japanese style is that just listening long speech of principal and sing a song of the school. But there, they had a sport festival and some performance shows. That was very exciting. On the other day, we went to the place where we could see various things such as houses or goods around the world. There, we made ocarina with Russian traditional pattern. And when we entered a Russian house, I found some toys which we have similar thing in Japan as well such as KENDAMA. I felt it is interesting that we have similar toys even though countries are different. In addition, we visited the place where animals and nature were living together. There, I heard interesting things. For example, animal who raised by human can live twice longer than wild animals. But, wild animals are also very clever. They eat tree bark but they know if they eat all tree bark of a tree, it will rot, so they eat only half surface and go to eat other tree’s bark to prevent the tree from dying. And after the half surface are recovered, they eat that tree again. I was surprised with that knowledge.