We started the Pangaea Project to overcome language, cultural, and geographical barriers using the internet. And we believe that the Pangaea Webcam Activity is one of the most comprehensive and effective tools to beat those barriers. This is why people often give us a comment after their initial experiences of the Pangaea Webcam Activity - "I was thrilled and fascinated with the Webcam Activity. What's more, it gave me goose bumps!" I received similar feedback yesterday right after we wrapped up our Webcam Activity.

Because Malaysia is a multiethnic country, we have been working with culturally diverse participants, such as Malays who are Muslim, Malaysians of Chinese descent, and Malaysians of Indian descent, at the UNIMAS activity site. Yesterday, all the Malaysian participants were divided into four multi-cultural groups - red, blue, green, and yellow - to play games, "Matching Game" and "Nazoren," with their Japanese friends via webcam. We had meticulously selected those two games while planning this Webcam Activity in order to help children to learn to put themselves in other people's shoes with fun.

During Matching Game, two groups at the UNIMAS activity site drew pictures of "Doraemon" - a Japanese "anime" character - to describe the word that they thought of about the given word, "blue." I was blown away with their drawings because they scratched pretty accurate pictures of Doraemon. I wondered if Japanese participants had the same reaction as I had...

Nazoren is our new word association game. Excitingly, the game made its first "public" appearance yesterday. To play this game, using a cool translation gadget, "Language Grid Playground," is essential to deal with language barriers among our children. In fact, the Language Grid Playground played a vital role in helping our participants yesterday. Some Malaysian Chinese participants don't understand English very well. However, they could communicate with their peers by translating words from and into Chinese through the Language Grid Playground.
(*the Language Grid Playground)

At the end of the activity, we had a free Q & A session, in which participants exchanged their questions and answers through webcam. Japanese participants asked, "How's your school life in Malaysia?" "In Malaysia, schools operate two shifts a day. The morning shift starts early in the morning and ends around noon. The afternoon shift begins at 12:30pm, and students are dismissed after 6pm," Malaysian participants replied. The answer really surprised Japanese children. And then, they asked another question, "So how about lunchtime?" Well, the answer was that those who go to school in the afternoon don't need school lunches because they eat lunch at home before leaving for school.

Overall, we had a fruitful Webcam Activity. Our participants spent an hour and a half playing together. I believe it was a great opportunity for the participants to build emotional bonds with each other by identifying their similarities and differences. I was very happy to know that Malaysian children created their own greeting cards to send their messages, "I enjoyed meeting you," "I love Japan!" and/or "I want to see you again," to their Japanese friends. I've packed all the greeting cards into my suitcase to deliver them to our children in Kyoto.

This is our "behind the scenes" information. Toshi and I taught our Malaysian children some Japanese before connecting our webcam. They easily learned to speak Japanese fluently. They picked up Toshi's Japanese, "Gooooooood!" Now they know how to say "I like it," "I like it very much," and "That's correct" in Japanese. I was amazed at how fast they learned Japanese and how easily I forgot Malay phrases I learned. Shamefully I needed to practice over and over again (more than 30 times) to learn how to say "I will do my best" in Malay. As the children learned "cute" in Japanese, I asked them a question, "who is the cutest here?" "Of course, Yumi!!!!" they replied. The answer made me smile. At the same time, I telepathically overheard what Toshi said: "They just know how to respect the "pre-elderly"..." I didn't care what he thought because the tenderness of the children had touched my heart already.

By the way, the Pangaea Project is to be launched in Bario next January.

This month, a message from a mother whose son is our participant is featured in the Pangaea Ring. Her son joined our program three years ago and loves to create computer animations. In Kyoto, he has been our teacher and "onsite technical support" in the field of computer animation.


Yumi