SISJAC Exchange

Recently I had the exciting opportunity to take part in the Sainsbury Institute Winter Programme 2019, lovingly called SISJAC Exchange (Sainsbury Institute for the Study of Japanese Arts and Culture). This involved 5 Students from British Universities (Bangor, Cardiff, Durham, and UEA) and 5 Students from Tokyo University visiting a variety of heritage sites in England. This was a fantastic experience that allowed me to meet people from all over the world and visit some fantastic places.

We began our programme in London, visiting a variety of heritage sites over four days. We visited the British Museum a number of times for self-guided tours, tours led by the staff accompanying us throughout the programme and even behind-the-scenes access to the Britain, Europe and Pre-History offices. The curator, Neil Wilkin, guided us through the objects and let us handle some of them (including a rare gold bullae from Shropshire that was stunning). Whilst in London we also visited the Mithraeum, London Museum, the Tower and National Gallery - hitting all the major heritage sites and exploring a wide variety of periods and presentation of history.

We then spent two days in the South West, exploring the heritage offered by Somerset and Wiltshire. It was wonderful visiting Stonehenge, Avebury, Wiltshire Museum and Bath - taking us from pre-history to the modern-day.

Our final seven days were spent in Norfolk, based in Norwich where the Sainsbury Institute resides. We explored a wide variety of heritage sites from Upton House, a walking tour of Norwich, Caistor Roman town, the Sainsbury Centre for Visual Arts, Castle Acre Priory, Kings Lynn, Gressenhall Farm and Workhouse and Cambridge.

Whilst here we had the pleasure of meeting Ancient House Teenage History Club who gave us an LGBTQ+ tour of Gressenhall - they were lovely young people and I was honoured to answer their questions about studying history at university in the U.K. I also thoroughly enjoyed the experience of throwing spears and shooting arrows pre-historic style! We also decided to forego our dinner one night in favour of an extravaganza of Britsh, Japanese, Slovak and Dominican Republic food to introduce one another to our traditions. This included miso soup, scones, pasties, platano crisps and Colin the Caterpillar.

This was a fantastic experience and I cannot express how much I learned throughout the programme. Thank you to everyone who took part and I would encourage everyone to apply if you can.

You can find our full report including daily diary entries, pictures and thematic reports in English and Japanese here: http://www.l.u-tokyo.ac.jp/assets/files/program/h30winter-report.pdf

h30winter-report.pdf

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