I hear that eleven staff members got together every week to plan and prepare for this Retreat.　I imagine it was no easy matter to make

preparations for several months, and I think it deserves praise.　I, together with the other participants, would like to thank them for it and appreciate their effort.

As one of the results of their effort, we had fifty-six young participants including several youths from the Kansai district as well as foreign students from Shinshu University.　It was a particularly noteworthy phenomenon that our e-mail advertisement began to work.　

What came out as a result of their preparations was a “pocket guidebook” for the participants and a “list of participants”.　The former has fifteen contents: the schedule, matters that require attention in the camping village, menus, “What is UNESCO?”, the meaning of each national flag( with blanks for fifteen countries), poverty and food problem as one of the international problems we now face, discrimination, common sense, the pride of one’s country, happiness, a constellation map, lists of participants in each group, a world map, a want ad for the next year’s staff members.　And each had its English translation attached.

　In this guidebook we saw quite new subjects that had not been in the past guides, and also the traces of their hard work and painstaking effort in giving an explanation of the problems of the world.　However, the subject “common sense” did not turn out convincing enough to make us see why it was taken up.　The English explanations attached to the guide were fairly good except one particular page, which was hard to understand.

　It seems that in the future we will need to include the summary of the lectures (with its English translation attached) in the guide, or print it separately to give to the participants.　That will resolve at least half of the communication problems we usually have during lectures.　It was a good idea to prepare a constellation map, but the map was rather indistinct and there were no English explanations, which will need future improvement. I think that the world map printed on the last page would have been more useful if the location of the country of each participant had been indicated on it.

　The problem of the languages used in the Retreat - It is difficult to deal with both participants who understand Japanese and those who don’t, when we, first of all, explain to them how to carry out the Retreat and also during lectures.　If Japanese is to be used, English interpretation will be necessary, and if only English is to be used, Japanese interpretation will have to be provided.　In any case, we need various ideas to carry out this kind of international gathering.　There will be complaints from either side if both sides are not treated as equally as what has been done in printed matter both in Japanese and in English.　We will have to take care of it in making preparations for our future Retreats.

　I would prefer that Japanese students took more active part in discussion, speaking more frequently.　That was the feeling I also had when they reported their results.

　In connection with the conclusion of Prof. Hattori’s lecture, one participant suggested that we should cultivate an opportunity to study environmental problems.　It seems to be the suggestion that Meguro UNESCO should take into consideration.　What do you think of it?

　In general, things didn’t really go on schedule.　There were unavoidable circumstances in some cases, but there were other cases of ten to twenty minutes’ delay with no good reason.　We should realize that such lack of punctuality would make us feel ashamed on the international stage in the 21st century.