Japanese students from Ikubunkan Global High School visited TUFS to meet Thembo and Henri. They have known each other since the students of Ikubunkan visited PIASS before Thembo and Henri came to Japan. They finally met face to face in June after they had to wait an oportunity under COVID-19 restrictions.

The following is his essay.

Before I came to Japan, I had met some of the Ikubunkan Global High School's students during their visit to Rwanda at my home university. During their visit, they presented about Japanese culture, and the African students presented about the Rwanda genocide against the Tutsi.

The Japanese students seemed very concerned about war and nuclear issues. Since then, I maintained my connection with some of them and they were looking forward to seeing me in Japan. After reaching Japan, we had some pre-meeting on Zoom with their student leaders and agreed on the date, time, and topics for discussion. They asked me to prepare a presentation about Ugandan culture and nature. I also asked them to prepare a presentation about "who is considered as a Japanese".
We thought to have this meeting online but the need to have physical interaction was too high and thus we finally agreed to meet at TUFS.

It was a very interesting moment to reunite with these students. I could remember some of them whom we had met in Africa and we were both excited. At the reunion, they presented about Japanese culture, I presented about my country Uganda and Fabrice (Henri) san presented about his country, Burundi, as they had requested. We later had a session for questions and answers. From this session, I could learn more about Japanese culture, especially about food and dressing styles. I could see how they were interested in African cultures and nature too. They seemed to have liked the Burundian and Ugandan traditional dances as well as food. I could see how much they were interested in knowing more about Africa just like how I was curious to learn more about their Japanese culture too.

At the end of the discussion, we played some games together and later took pictures. We promised to visit their school too before returning back to Africa.