Today, the students had their club activities which we have twice a month. I visited the Nature Club and the Manga Club.

In the Nature Club, the students went down through the path, to the Tengan River, to observe the lives of aquatic creatures. It’s great that we have a river nearby, especially for these kinds of activities. We also cleaned the river by picking up garbage. We found various kinds of garbage carried by the flow of the river. Once we pollute our river and ocean, the flows and currents, will spread the pollution across the world. We were strongly reminded by the students’ activity today that we need to be aware in our daily lives not to pollute our precious nature around us. Great thanks to the students of the Nature Club!!

Next, I visited the Manga Club. Today we invited an Okinawan cartoonist “Momo Kokoro” to our class. He has been putting his work, the “Gajumaru Family” on the Ryukyu Shimpo Newspaper for more than 10 years. He was here today, to teach us some of his professional techniques on how to draw manga comics. Accordingly to Mr. Momo, cartoonists pay attention to many things around them. Then they put it into pictures as they look at the pictures from many different directions. He also taught us how detailed their work becomes when it comes to using backgrounds, because backgrounds control the impression of the main picture. We don’t really think about these things when we read the comics as readers, but it was a great experience for students that they got to look at manga comics from the cartoonists’ perspective.

By the way, this year is the memorial year for Mr. Momo, for having his 5000th publication of his “Gajumaru Family” on the Ryukyu Shimpo. Congratulations Mr. Momo!! We can’t wait to read your next episode!!