On April 4, my first trip as Managing Director, I was invited to speak at the new semester staff orientation and staff training at Ai-No-Gakuen Agricultural High School in Iga, Mie Prefecture. https://ainogakuen.ed.jp/

Ai-No Gakuen High School is the smallest Christian agricultural high school in Japan (25 students per grade), a boarding school that started as a private school right after WWII.

Upon entering the open grounds with no gates or walls, you find a wooden school building, cafeteria, library, staff housing, and a row of fields and livestock barns a little further back. It was as if you had travelled five hours from ARI and then returned to ARI.

Ai-No Gakuen High School has been in contact with ARI for a long time. Still, in the past 10 years, personnel exchange has been active; ARI Participants visit Ai-No Gakuen during Western Japan Study Tour in the Fall, and several Ai-No Gakuen graduates have become long-term volunteers at ARI. This year, ARI will be welcoming a student of Ai-No-Gakuen’s advanced course (where students live with a farmer’s family for one year after graduation to learn about the farmer’s work and way of life).

Photo: Teachers at Ai-No-Gakuen High School. Currently. Four former long-term ARI volunteers are currently working as teachers. I am truly happy to see these young people who have left ARI playing such wonderful roles!