Tujuan “PRIC”

In order to meet the challenges of globalization, The Pacific Rim International Student Camp’s purpose is to promote cultural appreciation and international friendship through mutual understanding. In uniting people from countries of the Pacific area, PRIC creates a multi-cultural environment reflecting the diversity of modern international relations.

The camp’s goal is to encourage active involvement in the development of society and personal contributions to complex multinational affairs. However, as the camp’s host country, Japan has a special opportunity and obligation to present itself. Therefore a section of the camp’s program is designed to reveal the country and let the campers experience both traditional and modern Japan for themselves.

Additionally, in the tradition sense of a summer camp, PRIC endeavors to provide a character building experience encouraging friendship, leadership and fellowship.

Through 56 years of experience, it has become evident that the most effective way to promote such ideals in a short period of time is for the participants to live together.

Furthermore, the camp strives to educate the campers about nature and to deepen their appreciation for the environment.

In sum, PRIC’s programs and activities are designed to train the body, mind and spirit towards creating young international pioneers, the leaders of tomorrow.

Mengenai “Camp”

The camp, which is free of charge, is conducted both in English and in Japanese in Tokyo and the Takato Youth Center in Nagano Prefecture.

The program consist of outdoor activities, country presentations and intercultural programs conducted in surrounding mountain and lakes at Takato facilities.

The Japanese culture program is designed to give all campers a chance to learn more about the host country through touring, visiting factories and meeting business leaders.

Mengenai “Fee”

The host organization will bear all necessary expenses of room and board during the camp programs including one round-trip ticket to Japan and all the program expenses within Japan.

The participant, however, shall be responsible for the travel expenses within localtransportation in his country, expenses for obtaining entry visa to Japan and any other personal expenses.

Mengenai “Kewajiban”

The participant, once selected, must prepare all necessary preparation to join in the camp. These include presentation materials, souvenirs, and administrative requirements (visa, etc). The committee will aid participant in guiding to prepare all necessary items for camp.

Essay of Pacific Rim International Student Camp 2006
by Jourdan Khalid Hussein, CFA – Indonesia

“We came there as strangers and left there as best friends”

I got the quote after seriously brainstorming all my memories and concluded the experiences gained during PRIC with that sweet remark. Such sequence of words embodying a delightful and meaningful sense is as significant as the international friendship all 11 CFAs and 18 CFJs bonded in an intercultural context throughout the camp. All the entire activities squeezed into a tight schedule had encouraged me to write them all down into a memorable report.
Here, I will retrospectively recall some of experience which is worth publishing to be shared with others.

Disembarked safely at Narita Airport, Japan had already made its first impressions: efficiently sophisticated, neatly clean, and equally modern in its authentic traditional atmosphere. I was quite amazed by the adroit arrival procedure I had been through from disembarkation to the kind and punctual fetch up by Japanese staff. Tsuyoshi was already there with his benevolent yet tiring look smile holding my name tag. After having Jay Sern from Malaysia come to us, we continued our long journey to NOMYC by taking bus whilst I had been busy proving my first impressions; not-found-in-Indonesia vending machines, separation of specific bins, and a warm welcome by the driver of a sophisticated look bus. Overall, the bus journey was actually taking us to the preparation in facing culture shock they may call, but actually for me this was the start to get insights from a distinctive culture I had admired for long, the orientation of Japanese culture.

Visit to Edo Tokyo Museum was a head start and had been quite compulsory each year in PRIC. I found this initially boring but ended up enjoying it after found solace of taking some Japanese background photos. Nonetheless, I still learnt some quite basic knowledge of Japan and its history; paying attention in some Japanese lifestyle displays for my home-stay self-preparation. The Orientation continued to an entertainment-encompassing small city named, Kamakura. Combination of its beautiful beaches, mountainous scenic view complemented with some holy Shinto and Buddhist temples depicted a balance of Japanese expertise and concern to the aesthetic environment, culture and nature. My trip of educational camp was furnished by visits to Daibutsu (the biggest Buddha bronze statue), Tsurugauku Hachimangu and Kencho-Ji temple. I also had a so-called unintentional Islam discussion on the bus, way back to NOMYC which everybody seemed to be a bit enthusiastic towards the mostly-talked issue worldwide and coincidentally with the terrorism plot ambiance at Heathrow airport that time, my religion.

The most memorable and full of enjoyment orientation was living together for 3 nights with an old couple who even did not speak English at all initially yet their big effort to start learn one. My lovable Kobayashi family made it all complete to live daily in a real traditional Japanese culture. Being welcomed with a big washoku (Japanese meal), I straightforwardly caught the idea of hospitality. Not only did my family offer me with sumptuous food, suitable facilities at home and a surprise trip to Fujiku Highland but also their appreciative and respective attitude toward my religion and Indonesia had allowed me to perform my 5-times prayer smoothly and held vigorous discussion of my lifestyle back home.

Japan Forecast Weather Dome Station did also amaze me with their advanced technology in doing their tasks to forecast, much enough to inspire me with the Mt. Fuji’s summit temperature simulator as well. The core of the program to exchange culture had successfully been accomplished with a visit to Nishikatsura Junior High School where we were welcomed with an astonishingly marvelous instrumental music performance and taught Shoudo (Japanese Calligraphy) as well as Kendo (Japanese fencing). I also managed to introduce how to write my name in Arabic calligraphy as I learn at school and their enthusiasm prospered my pride as a Moslem.

Home-stay program really did enhance my adaptability to a very strange circumstance of which PRIC had set on their requirement. Not only personal development did I get here, but also a real and warm cultural exchange or even family bond with the Kobayashi which made us hard to say Goodbye to continue my trip to the Takato Youth Centre, off to the real camp.

Just arrived at the front car park, I would say Takato as a venue for elite camp instead and I already sensed a pleasant campsite unlike a-real-tent-built Indonesian one. Much to argue, are we going to have a camp surrounded with this nice building? The answer came not later than 1 hour when we dragged our luggage to the Cabin passing by the surrounded green forest while diminishing the sense of elite camp. There were some manly activities involved, namely Orienteering, Hiking and Canoeing and Outdoor Cooking; not to forget the cultural one, Cultural Exchange. Before recalling those aforementioned, Iʼd like to share an experience being a very proud nationalist. PRIC had allowed me to boost my nationalism by holding my countryʼs flag tightly during the opening ceremony as a symbol of representation and presented it with accompany of the national anthem in either morning or evening gathering. What surprisingly impressed me was the sense of pride and burden of good representation during all activities at the camp afterwards.

Such manly activities aforementioned engrossed friendship, leadership and fellowship. In orienteering for instance, we were indirectly required to hone those skills by building solid teamwork, motivating each other to endure, cultivating leadership in terms of leading the adventure to the right way and solving the miscommunication with efficient body language whereas not all CFJ could speak English well. Hiking and Canoeing did also develop our friendship as a group and PRIC family as a whole. Rousing each other, helping to get out of the boot and lending hand when almost got capsized were truly the basic elements of our young brotherhood. We were also trained to “survive” in terms of basic needs to cook with the nature-based cooking utensils in outdoor cooking. We worked together to chop the wood and set up the fire, peeling the vegetables and always cooked the best rice amongst the other groups as Kikuta-san often said. All those activities indeed brought of more sense of manhood and togetherness from us in dealing with any circumstance in the future, realistically conscious how to solve problems together as one people living in one world thanks to PRIC providing the facility to blend our varied nationalities into a sweet friendship.

The Cultural Exchange deepened our mutual understanding to each country. What all the CFAs presented during the day did actually bring my sense of respect and outline a rough plan inside my mind how to unite this world geographically, culturally and politically sometime in the future or I call it attainment of global peace. I also got along to present a video depicting my life in Indonesia as a youth and short-informal-drama of Indonesian puppets (wayang) talking the other side of Indonesia. Our perspective was further expanded by what I call as “Cabin Tales” where we always shared our life, taboo, custom, culture and hobbies every night before sleeping. I was really glad that there were no difficulties to mix with the CFJ and dragged them to join our talks and jokes despite the communication barrier. There I found that language is not a hurdle to preclude friendship or even brotherhood.

Japanese singular cultural exchange introduced more insights of Japan: food, festivals, flags presentation, cultural games and national anthem. We were also pleased to experience the magnificent structure of elegant movement of Japanese traditional tea ceremony. It might have been odd for some CFAs to kneel down for quite long but it was something that gave a sense of cultural understanding thus everyone attempted to remain appreciatively calm. Tea ceremony also taught me Japanese custom to respect guest and the art of graceful patience. Moreover, I, as an Indonesian found the similarity abide within the Asian culture, Japanese particularly, to the extent where we share politeness. The other thing which supplemented the leadership skill was the long-term knack as well as consciousness of the environment. Environmental seminar thoroughly embraced my conscience towards anything surrounding; heartened my motivation to preserve the environment as a leader for tomorrow seeing that Japan has shown its commitment to the environmental sustainability (one of them is the host for Kyoto Protocol) run smoothly with economy development, taking that for role-model. Environmental seminar productively encouraged all the participants to have pretty intense discussion regarding solution for the global warming and will be provisions for these young leaders to act wisely balance with the nature in the future.

Last but not least, the other highlight of the camp was the camper fire. The frantic time we had during the meeting to prepare and variable behavior from 12 countries I witnessed, setting up an atmosphere of a so-called congregation I would likely to see in the future if I want to work in the international scale. I emphasized again what I saw from couple days ago, that we came from different country with of course, different type to lead, argue, and attend a meeting in this case. But here was the challenge, how would you tell someone to agree with you or even to end up disagree but eventually and inevitably you have to work with him to run the event smoothly. This really challenged everyoneʼs leadership and patience, thanks to PRIC to prepare us as multi-nationalities young leaders get down to the reality that World is not just what you see back home.

But our cooperation, understanding, creativity, patience, leadership and fellowship paid off when we saw everyone really enjoyed the camper fire and all the staff looked satisfied and happy with all we had done that night and I went to the cabin with smile of proud.

The day after was the last day to enjoy together where we had our last breakfast and lunch at Takato. Prior to the parting moment was a closing ceremony which was almost similar as the opening one. During the parting, all the campers were a bit sad when we had to say goodbye and did not know when will meet again, regardless some CFJs who would come to the farewell, but we managed to exchange email and address so we could keep in touch and maintain this longlasting friendship hopefully. Then we continued the bus trip with some hilarious shouts to Tokyo and enjoy our post-camp.

Although I was still able to shop some souvenirs and explore a very little side of Tokyo with a very little time too, I was still not fulfilled to really experience and discover this modern city and its other sides during the post-camp. But I still thanked to witness the Japanese style of electronic market, Akihabara and Asakusa, a Japanese traditional market with its superb existence amid the modernized-look shops in the town. Exhausted with the heat and some shopping bags to carry on, we went back to NOMYC and dress up to attend the Farewell Party.

The farewell was really enjoyable and fun where we share our excitement looking at slide-showed photos and saw the NTV’s video records as well as met again with our host-families from Nishikatsura. We cheered the night and be prepared to face the next day after, leaving Japan!

It was really hard to knock on each of the CFAʼs door and drag them out to say goodbye. I, Yuan, and Anantchai got the earliest flight so we had to off to Narita very early in the morning. There was sort of burden and clash of feeling to go home and stay which almost drop my tear of friendship. After all, I had to leave, abandoning the physical beings of my new brothers but taking on their real beings with me; there is technology that can help maintaining our newly formed international brotherhood.

In flight, I deduced that we had many similarities that outweigh our differences; we could change the predicted gloomy international outlook to be brighter because we already built the basis of international understanding through living together and get across each other. I went home with smiles and believe that only with youth and children we can imbibe the importance of peace and start to create serenity, thus preventing conflicts.

“Because we are one people living in one world; only brotherhood and understanding that will keep the cements of peace remain united and hold the world together”

Jourdan Khalid Hussein
CFA – Indonesia
PRIC 2006

Poster sosialisasi PRIC 2009