The Fountain

Tran Cao Bang Trinh practicing in karate club (third from left)  Hiroko Fujimori (The Fountain staff) "I really love this club, I would kill for my club." Tran Cao Bang Trinh says quickly without any perplexity. A third-year Vietnamese student in APU,Tran is the leader of APU karate club. Tran wanted to do a martial art when she came to APU because she had done taekwondo since she was 15, and she wanted to do martial art in some forms. Karate was the only martial arts club with a teacher, so she decided to join it.  Since she joined the club, she has gotten help from the other members  not only inside the club but also outside. For example, when one of the members became sick, all the other members went to see the member. Everyone helps each other, and she feels her club members are like family.  In the karate club, the members have some strict rules which they should follow like the member cannot be absent from the practice without an...

Dancing by the Servant in front of King and Queen Hiroko Fujimori (The Fountain staff) Grand Show of Myanmar Week started with pleasant dance and music performed by APU students wearing traditional costume. It took place in APU millennium hall on the last day of Myanmar week, Dec. 22. The main performance of the show is drama including dances to convey Myanmar culture and traditions whose theme is Golden. This is a story of two siblings who were forcefully killed by the selfish king and queen, but because of their pureness, they turned into spirit guardians with golden faces. In the show, there is no romance and horror, which is different from the general show. Visitors sometimes laughed for example when the king's advisor made fun of the queen while there were some serious situations that he tried to help the sister of the Black Smith who is a villager when she was caught by the king and queen. "I wanna make something right.", the advisor said to the s...

Isabela Contreras and Ashley Neira are looking for the apartments Ayaka Okamoto(The Fountain staff)  After APU students spent wonderful time  in AP house for a year, students have to  move out. Some students can be a resident  assistant (RA) and they can continue to live  there but others need to find a new apartment off campus in downtown. Real estate Usually, students start looking for the house  before two months of moving out. Before looking  for the house they need to choose real estate  and contact with them. There are three real estates  agencies in Beppu: Betsudaikosan, Apaman shop,  and Creotech.  Betsudaikousan is in front of the  Beppu post office.  Some students make a contract with them and  Teerawat Sukhanonsawas, APM, 1st, said that  some clerk in Betsudaikousan real estate can speak  English. Apaman shop is in front of Marushoku supermarket  in Mochiga...

People's Song ～Les Miserables～ Hiroko Fujimori (The Fountain staff) The audience heard a girl practicing singing her solo song at the passage of the hall until immediately before the opening of the performance. The Japanese performance preview of a musical, Les Miserables took place at Beppu Communitycenter on Jan.1. This stage was performed by about 20 people of Musical Company, a musical organization composed of APU students and citizens in Beppu. The musical has two parts, and the first half is various musical songs, the latter half is the short version of Les Miserable performed in the way of a concert for visitors to enjoy a lot of musical songs and be interested in Japanese Performance of Les Miserable which will be held later. The form had many ways to delight the audiences. It was not only singing but also what was worth to watch as performance. When the member were behind the singers and not singing, their bodies were shaking matching the...

 Miyabi By Kinya Uchida(The Fountain staff) APU is located at an altitude of around 330 meters. If you are hungry, you must eat something in this university. Fortunately, our university has many shop, CO-OP, Pacific-Cafe, and Cafeteria, and these shops give us variable products and dishes. So, you can enjoy eating “to some extent” However, you will get bored against their unchanged menus in a year. Although there are ethnic menus and they change frequently, these foods sold out soon. Is there anything to solve this situation? You can find one solution near the fountain. That shop is Miyabi, people call it Cheese Chicken. What is Miyabi? Miyabi is the first shop which began to sell around the fountain six years ago, and it is also known by the name of Cheese chicken . Masahiro Fujiwara is the owner of this shop, and he prepares products by only himself. He said, “At first I couldn’t sell so many, but now I sell 180 kg of chickens by two days. When it comes to Cheese chicken...

Kiki in Pangea By Kinya Uchida Naparin Prechachaisarut is a third-year student majoring in Finance and Accounting. “I want to study in Asia, and Japan is a good place to live”, she said with a smile. Now, she is active in AUA which is one of a student organization in APU and has a purpose to connect APU students to companies as Leader. Kiki, which is the nickname of Naparin, joined in AUA when she was a first-year student. The reason was simply that her friend invited her. “Members of those days gave me great welcome, like family, so I could enjoy doing a job in AUA. Now, she is one of the executive members in AUA and has been planning to hold Camp for AUA member now. “AUA has three division and normally they work separately. So, I want to give them an opportunity to cooperate beyond division.” She said the reason for this camp. Kiki and her friend Many people may think that she has smooth sailing about AUA, but she has faced many difficulties. First one is time schedule....

by Makiko Akita (The Fountain stuff) Do you know the word "Hafu" ? In Japan, most people call the person who has parents from different races or nationalities "Hafu" . In other words, “Hafu” means mixed-race or biracial.  Maya Osakada "I don't like the concept of hafu . I mean, everyone is hafu , right?" Maya Osakada,1st-year-APU student said so. She is half Japanese, half Indonesian who was born in Jakarta, Indonesia but brought up in Saitama, Japan. "I think there is no one who is 100 percent pure race," Osakada said. She also said that the benefits of being a hafu is that she has a wide perspective because she shares connection to two countries and values, although sometimes she was concerned about herself being a hafu in the past. She said, "I can enjoy being different from others, I never felt embarrassed that I am different from other people." She said that's one of the reasons why she doesn't h...

by Makiko Akita Radoslav Tsvetanov Tsvetkov "HPGC for me, simply said, is a Life Internship." The silver haired man continued to explain that Honor Program for Global Citizenship (HPGC) teaches students how to communicate and work with people from different countries, and also it teaches how to manage both academic studies and social activities. For him, HPGC is a big internship for life. Second year student Radoslav Tsvetanov Tsvetkov is from Bulgaria, and he joining HPGC. HPGC commenced in fall semester 2016, and Tsvetkov explained that it is for cultivating students and becoming role models for APU community by contributing to the APU and local environment Beppu and Oita. Honored students live in special floor in AP house 1 or 2, now Tsvetkov lives in AP house 2, M building. The number of honored students is 42, they are separated three batches, and most of them living in AP house 1, C building 3rd and 4th floor. Tsvetkov, sitting on the sofa at the C-3rd...

Janina Anni-Maria Lehtinen by Ayaka Okamoto(The Fountain staff) When Janina Anni-Maria Lehtinen went to  Youme Town to get an iron.”I asked where  is airon but they couldn’t understand. I said  Tetsu and they understood and showed me  where they had it.” (Airon means iron for  clothes and tetsu means iron) They showed  so many different irons but she didn’t know  which one would’ve been the best.  “They  couldn’t really help me because they didn’t  speak English and I cannot speak Japanese,” she said. Lehtinen from Finland came to APU in Sep. 2016.  She lived in AP house for a year and she moved  out of the dorm. When she moved out in June, her  new life in downtown began.Now she lives in Kamegawa.  “My house is little old and cold but it’s not bad for  me”she said. In AP house many students are living  together but now she lives alone. She said, “Living alone is carefree but...

By Shiina Adachi “I love teaching. I have been doing a lot of teaching activities. Even before I came to Japan, I used to teach to Cambodian students English and mathematics. So, yeah, I really love teaching,” he said.  Disovankiri Boung, Cambodian, is in the third year right now, supporting freshmen with multicultural cooperative workshop, (MCW), as a teaching assistant this fall semester.  MCW, is a class offered to all freshman. First-year-students work together with people with different culture background. Kiri, his nickname, said that there were two big reasons why he wanted to be an MCW TA. The thing is that he loves teaching. He would teach his friends and lower-class students mathematics, English, and science at his school.  He has a dream of becoming a teacher someday. He said, "I wanted to use my time to help other people because I believe, in my life, I have been receiving a lot of help from other people." He also continued, "I might not have come ...