It's September. The maximum temperature in Paracas today is 17 degrees (C) and the minimum temperature is 13 degrees. It's a bit cold. A man in my neighborhood said that spring has arrived, but it’s still cold and the cherry blossoms aren’t blooming. In other words, I sure don’t feel like saying “Ahh, it’s spring!” I wear my museum jacket to work every day, partly to promote the Paracas Museum.


I'm going to the Peruvian capital Lima on JICA business for about a week next week, and I’m debating whether to wear the jacket to promote the museum, or, seeing as I’m going to the capital, maybe I should be a little more fashion conscious?


Now, a little about what’s going on at the Paracas Museum, where I work. Recently, Paracas Museum has been buzzing with elementary school students visiting on school excursions.


In addition to seeing the exhibits, the elementary school students who come on school excursions also participate in programs in the workshop where they learn about Paracas culture while they do coloring-in with us. More than 600 of them paid a visit today, and we handled that by dividing the students into different grade groups with about 30 students in each group.


We have a lot of colored pencils and crayons for students to get involved in coloring-in, and it's really interesting because they work on it in different ways depending on the grade level, the class, and the person. Some do everything with a single color, some spend a lot of time selecting colors and thinking about combinations, some are more absorbed in chatting than coloring-in, some don't care about the borders and color-in with great enthusiasm even outside the lines, some carefully color-in each item one by one within the borders, some produce very colorful pictures, some single-mindedly sharpen their colored pencils with a pencil sharpener, some work silently without saying a word, some bring their own colored pencil sets, and so on.


Something that I really felt was very different from Japan is that both teachers and parents worked seriously together with the children. The adults weren’t onlookers.


Listening to the students, most of them said that it was the first time in their lives visiting a museum, and that they really enjoyed it. I was very happy to be able to be present at a moment like that, and I think that working at the museum is a wonderful experience. Since coming here, I’ve been reminded of the importance of museums, where you can discover new things and see real exhibits that you’ve never seen before.

Also, most of the children said it was the first time in their lives to see a Japanese person, and I wondered if it was a good thing that I was their first Japanese person. I also wondered if it was okay that "I = Japanese people", but there's no point in thinking about that, so I interacted with them as though I were a representative of Japan!


Then they asked for an autograph from the first Japanese person they had ever seen in their lives and asked to get a photo with them. When I was in junior high school, I had too much free time during the term-end exams and I kept wondering whether my signature should be like this or should it be like that, so I now have a rather respectable signature, and it has been very useful since coming here. Nothing in life is wasted, right? To all my readers in Japan, it seems like a good idea to think about your signature before you move to South America! Well, here’s where I say “Adios!” This has been Shoko Yamamoto from Paracas, Ica Province, Peru.