Ship For World Youth (SWY): The basics...

The Nippon Maru , otherwise known as the Ship For World Youth (SWY)

It's difficult to comprehend, but throughout the past 2 months of the Ship For World Youth program I've had no internet access.

No internet access, that means none. Not even one single text message. Our free time at ports of call (Japan, Singapore, India, Kenya and Mauritius) was extremely limited - we're talking 2 hours in each city - and I simply couldn't spend this rare time documenting the adventure instead of living it.

Because of this there's a big discrepancy between what I know about the adventure I've just returned from and what everyone else knows - people know that it was action packed, that I was busy every second of the day, but they don't know what exactly I was so busy with.

Thus, I've got to fill you in on a few of the basics before we can proceed to details and images that have filled my past few months. This post may be kind of dry, as it explains all of the basics of the Ship for World Youth program, but it will help put some of the other SWY related posts in context.

First off, each participant is known as a PY - Participating Youth.

There are JPYs, OPYs, and XPYs - Japanese, Overseas, and Ex-Participating Youth.

The ship had 120 JPYs and 150 OPYs, the overwhelming majority of participants being female.

The purpose of the Ship for World Youth program, aside from public diplomacy for the Japanese government, was to "promote mutual understanding" between different cultures and broaden international horizons of participating youth, and that it did.

Each PY is assigned to one of each of the following:

Course discussion - seminars / workshops on topics such as Economy, Education, Youth Development, Volunteerism and Environment.

Letter groups - groups having one member from each overseas delegation for various activities and administrative functions.

(holding a tennis ball between our foreheads - a letter group activity)

Letter groups met each day and took turns coordinating the daily wake up call, morning assembly, and night patrol.

I was in L grupu. Leadership, Life, Love.

Club activities - clubs coordinated by PYs and held during 'official time' - the majority of these were focused on dances from different cultures, including Japanese Geisha, Soran and Sansa-odori, Polynesian and Mauritian dance, and Japanese drumming.

I joined La Faya, the Mauritian club, and learned to swing my hips like you wouldn't believe.

In addition to course discussion, letter groups and club activities there were:

Voluntary activities - diverse workshops, seminars, films and activities coordinated by participating youth and held on our own time.

Through these I learned about Sho-doh (Japanese calligraphy), photography, group facilitation, trauma psychology, crosscultural sexuality, philosophy for children, the atomic bomb and its aftermaths, yoga, bahraini weaving, the list goes on...

and

Delegation responsibilities - Delegations from each country were responsible for a national presentation and an official party.

Leo (Brazil), Adam and Carlo (Brazil) at the Canada party

The national presentations were very large undertakings, more like shows than presentations. The parties were usually held on the pool deck, with free alcohol, food and dance and games.

The Ship we were on, the Nippon Maru, had 7 floors and was nicer than I expected...

Among amenities were a pool, observation decks, bar, piano lounge, sportsdeck, japanese room, library, store, a 2 story concert hall complete with fancy lights, the grand baths (more on these later) buffet style dining room (unlimited ice cream each lunch) and a stadium-seating style theatre.

(L-grupu celebrating a birthday in the dining hall)

Daily life on the ship...

Started with a wake up call broadcast over the ship radio by a letter group (or sometimes pounded into your door by a letter group) at 7:30.

Breakfast is served from 7:45 - 8:30, and generally slept through by the majority of participants. We eat in a buffet-style dining hall, and the food overall is pretty good for what you can expect on a cruise ship, though 5 out of the 6 selections were usually fried, as they were feeding 300 people 3 times a day.

After the morning wake-up call, the letter group on duty is in charge of creating a Morning assembly, just like elementary school with all of us in the dolphin hall and lined up in tidying little rows. Aside from raising a flag and singing the national anthem of one of the participating countries, they can do whatever they like - play games, do excercizes, break ice, watch videos or slideshows...

(Dolphin Hall - where we had our morning assembly)

Morning Assembly starts at 8:45, and if you aren't there by 9:00 your AGL (assistant group leader) has the undesirable task of waking you up - they did this every morning to make sure no one went missing over night. Marika and Papa, my two AGLs, had this undesirable task on a few occassions. Did I mention I sleep in my underwear?

After morning assembly the schedule for each day would vary, but usually we would do something along the lines of course discussion - for me, Economy. Course discussions were sometimes difficult because of the range of language skills but we played a couple of cool games in my course, which I'll talk about later on.

Following course discussion we would have 2 hours for lunch - most days I would spend the first hour in the pool upstairs and then tanning outside, and then go to eat. If we were lucky there was pizza, and every day there was unlimited ice cream.

After lunch I'd head outside onto the 4th floor deck, an oval that goes around the perimeter of the boat, and share a few Salem lights and lighthearted moments with my smoking friends...

On the 6th floor sports deck

Stomachs and lungs full, it would be time for a club activity. 3 hours of drumming and dancing with the Mauritians for me. I learned to play the "marvanne," a washboard type instrument that has beads inside of it that sound like waves on a beach if you tilt it just right.

After this we would have a letter group meeting, for administrative & social purposes, at the end of which an announcement about "Time Collection" would come on - the Japanese always mix up L and R, so the time correction announcement came across as "time collection."

Everyday the announcer would make this same mistake, so it became a bit of a running joke, culminating in the appearance of The Time Collector at a costume party.

Then came supper, again more fried things but sometimes cool stuff like sushi or spicy french fries... Always a piece of fruit and some kind of square or cake for dessert. Water, coffee & tea to drink. Round and square tables, silk green tablecloths, easy-listening music, constant philipino staff in the background, waiting for a chance to steal your tray away as soon as you leave to refill your tea.

Following supper I'd head to the grand bath, stopping only to whip friends in the hallway with my towel, just in time to watch the sun set out the window as I had my daily cleanse and soak.

(sunset in the middle of the indian ocean)

Evening was generally our free time on the ship, yet there were so many different clubs and presentations and rehearsals and meetings and people that you never really had an evening off, and never really wanted one either.

After going to a presentation, or having a delegation meeting, or watching a film, or teaching an English class it'd be time to hit up the piano lounge, have a few bottles of Asahi and perhaps some sake leftover from a sake tasting, chat things up, eat bland potato chips and dance the night away, smack in the middle of the ocean.

Jenny (Sweden) and Sofia (Greece)