A Documentation of the Philippine-Japanese Friendship Day 2014 ~ SMART AND CASUAL

About the Authors

The Unstoppable 16 are all political science students majoring in International Relations and Foreign Service (IRFS) at the University of San Carlos, whose creativity and initiative must be contained or else there will be a seamless burst of activities outside the 4 walls of the classroom. The batch refers to the track as the House of Slytherin, in reference to the Hogwarts Houses in the Harry Potter universe. The brave and witty intelligent team is inspired by the academic and life teachings of Atty. Archill Capistrano. For the IRFS Senior from the House of Slytherin, there is politics in everything.

Integrity! Resilience! Fraternity! Sagacity! Viva IRFS!

Monday, August 18, 2014

A Documentation of the Philippine-Japanese Friendship Day 2014

@ American Corner, Downtown Campus, Cebu City

Ariel Mercado

On July 22-23, 2014, Team Optimizers organized two events in celebration for the Philippine-Japanese Friendship Day. These events are the talk on the Philippine-Japanese Relations and a Japanese film showing (Eiga Sai). The first event covered the background of the Philippine-Japanese relationship, current issues, cultural diplomacy, and Japan’s soft power. It was only an event for IRFS fourth year majors during the IRFS 141 class.

The second and last event was a Japanese-film showing. It started at 12 o’clock and ended almost 5 o’clock. We were supposed to show the films “Harakiri (1962)” and “Japan Behind the Mask” but they were too tragic and too serious (respectively) so we improvised. I played two films from my collection which were RurouniKenshin (Samurai X) and Chakushin Ari: Finaru (One Missed Call: Final). RurouniKenshin (Samurai X) is about a wandering samurai named HomuraKenshin who has an X scar on his left cheek and used to be a vigilant called HitokiriBattousai. The film is a live-action movie of the popular anime series Samurai X. Chakushin Ari: Finaru (One Missed Call: Final) is the final movie of the Chakushin Ari franchise and is about a group of students who went to Korea for a school tour. They were cursed by their classmate who committed suicide because of bullies. They receive the call of death.

The first filmdrawn more audiences, other than Political Science majors. The attendance sheets are attachedin Annex A and pictures of the students present are attached in Annex B.The American Corner, which was the venue of the film showing, was full when it started. More and more students were coming in and we had to add more seats for them to use. When the film ended, we had an improvised trivia game. A photo of the prizes are attached in Annex B, which were all Japanese food sponsored by Gail Padayhag. The audience was very cooperative and they ended up requesting for another movie, which was the last movie played, Chakushin Ari: Finaru. Although not the same audience stayed until the event was over, there were still a lot of students coming in and out of the American Corner. We didn’t have a game after the film since we ran out of prizes.

The aim of the team was to celebrate the friendship day in two ways: one for IRFS majors, which was the talk, and non-IRFS majors, which was the film showing. For the IRFS majors, we decided to have a talk or a tutorial report since this is our forte and a necessity.We had to adjust for the non-IRFS majors because they may not find the films previously chosen to be interesting and we wanted to celebrate the friendship day with positivity. The films played were not randomly selected. They were chosen because they also portray the culture of Japan.

Phil-Jap Friendship Day Attendance Sheets