14 Japanese Undergraduates Excited Over Village Lifestyle

BANDAR BAHARU (Kedah, Malaysia), March 13 (Bernama) -- For 14 undergraduates of Japan's Kyoto University, it was a memorable experience participating in a 'gotong royong' (mass cleaning) to understudy the traditional Malay lifestyle in the local village of Kampung Lubuk Buntar here Sunday. The students comprising eight males and 10 females are on a five-week stint at the Universiti Sains Malaysia's (USM or Science University of Malaysia) School of Humanities to learn English. USM Japanese Cultural Centre director Soeda Masatoshi said the undergraduates joined over 100 villagers to clean up and paint a surau, as well as participate with the 'kampung' (village) folks in a mass lunch. "One of their assignments is to understudy the lifestyle of the villagers here which is still thick with a traditional way of life, practice of 'gotong royong' and respecting one another between the young and old people. "Prior to this, there were five groups of students from several Japanese universities, often turning to Kampung Relau Homestay here as the suitable location to understand the real lifestyle of villagers in this country better," he said here. Meanwhile, Soeda said such a culture in Japan had disappeared over 30 years ago and the young people in the 'Land of the Rising Sun' seemed to lack the values. Kampung Relau Homestay chairman Abdul Razak Abdul Hamid said the foreign students were given hands-on experience on rubber tapping, batik-making process and other handicraft works. --BERNAMA