This study tour to Estonia has been held every year since 2016 thanks to the effort of Prof. Maruyama, who has been to Estonia several times for research on sustainable education. This year marked the 6th time and it was for the first time in the last three years after the cancellation in the academic year of 2020 and the online program in the academic year of 2021. The students who participated in this year enrolled from 2019 to 2022, so that they were forced to experience constrained campus life. I, currently working for university, also experienced the pandemic as a university student over the last two years. That’s why I know their craving for having “real” experiences. Due to the hardship, they were eager to visit real places, meet people in person and touch “real” things. Therefore, every moment in Estonia must be vividly engraved in their memory. The icy chill outside, the silence in woods where we could hear only the crunching sounds made by stepping on snow, the warmth and the cracking sounds from the lovely fireplace, warm people and their smiles, and the tricolor flag and people’s choral singing on Independence Day. These things that we saw, heard, felt, and learnt are still vivid in our memory of five senses.
Diving into the snow
During our stay, exactly one year had passed since the Russian invasion of Ukraine on 24 February 2022, which is ironically Independence Day of Estonia. Walking around Tallinn and Tartu, we found the impact of the military invasion on the small, ex-Soviet country through the blue-yellow flags and anti-war messages every corner in town, and Russian signs erased deliberately. Unexpectedly, we had an opportunity to talk with university students who evacuated from Ukraine and currently live in Tartu. Even though we didn’t talk about the war directly, the time we shared with them urged us to give more thoughts to “the reality” of the war, which we wouldn’t have considered if we spent time in Japan far from the battlefield.
Through this study tour to Estonia, I strongly believe that learning essentially means to feel something using all your senses.
Visiting and interviewing professionals working for different organizations in Estonia