In April 2019 The Diocesan Classical Gymnasium hosted fifteen students and two teachers from Kanto Daiichi High School. The same number of Slovene students and teachers spent a week from 11th – 19th November 2019 in the capital of Japan.

We were staying at our exchange students’ homes. The first day in Japan was a big cultural shock for everybody. Everything is so clean and nice over there and people are extremely polite and calm. At school we prepared a presentation and Kahoot quiz on Slovene culture. After that we presented some of the Slovene cuisine: potica (Slovene holiday cake) and Gorenjka (most popular Slovene chocolate). After the program, organised by the Japanese school, every Japanese student took their Slovene guest to various tourist attractions around the capital. In a span of a week all the students got to see Tokyo’s best attractions. We have visited some of the more iconic sights Tokyo has to offer. A day trip to Kamakura was spent exploring one of Tokyo seaside resorts, different shops and temples, the other day we were enlightened by the digital art museum in which a beautiful display of lights created a unique artwork. Once we were already settled into the way in which Tokyo operates, we were brave enough to explore the city on our own. After getting lost and walking around for some time we finally found the famous Shibuya crossing and thus our adventure was complete. A few days were spent listening to Japanese lessons and learning how their school life differs from ours. On the last day we even made a Japanese dish called Udon. We made it all from scratch along with noodles. This exchange helped us become more culturally enriched, but most importantly, helped our hosts acknowledge the importance of learning English and motive them to study harder and improve their speaking and writing skills.

Katja Gorjup, English teacher, and Milan Zeman, Math teacher from the Diocesan Classical Gymnasium, were in charge of the Tokyo exchange 2019. /Meta Jesenko & Ana Marie Gradišar, year 3/