Saturday, May 24, 2008.

Hi everyone!

I’m sorry I haven’t blogged in a while.

I actually arrived in Montreal late last night. (Arrived home late Monday night) and I woke up today at 3pm. I must have slept more than 15 hours! I guess that shows how draining the week in Japan was. However, as draining as it was, it was an amazing and unforgettable experience.

Saturday was basically the last day of the week in Japan.

The Indians were actually leaving on Saturday night and the rest of the countries were leaving on Sunday, so it was basically our last day all together.

However, we didn’t have much time to be sad and think about our separations that night because we actually had our presentation in front of the G8 + 5 meeting later on tonight.

So, seeing as Saturday was quite an important day, I’ll try to give you a detailed run through of what we did that day.

First thing in the morning, we went to the closing ceremony of the youth summit in Kobe. Because it was a closing ceremony, the youth delegates got their certificates and numerous individuals gave closing remarks.

As we saw the youth summit come to a close, it really gave me a distinct impression that our week was also coming to a close very soon.

However, because we had a meeting with Hillary Benn also in the morning, we weren’t able to stay for the entire closing ceremony.

Hillary Benn is the UK Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs.

During the Climate Champions prep week in London earlier on, we had had the opportunity to present Hillary Benn with all three of our Kobe Challenges (Because they hadn’t been voted on yet!) And he had been kind enough to meet with us again in Kobe for a good 45 minutes – 45 minutes is a lot during these G8 + 5 meetings.

This time, we presented him with the Kobe Challenge that had gotten the most votes.

Seeing as our presentation at the G8 + 5 meeting is over, I can clearly say that it was third Kobe Challenge – the one dealing with the carbon cap-and-trade system – that got the most votes.

Hillary Benn was really in support of our Kobe Challenge.

He told us that he personally believed in the cap-and-trade system, in education of Climate change and in the importance of helping out developing countries with the hardest hit regions of the inevitable effects of Climate Change.

All the Climate Champions felt honored to have met him and it felt great to know that Hillary Benn was for our Kobe Challenge.

After our meeting with Hillary Benn, we made our way to our new hotel. We were actually going to staying at a different hotel tonight because it was closer to the airport.

Then, we had our lunch on the bus. Most of the foods were new, so at first we were a little wary, but our lunch ended up being quite tasty. Have you ever tried curry bread? I found it quite delicious!

After our lunch, the ICCCs separated. Some of us had been voted in as Ministers of different departments for the Youth Summit events. Those ministers would be participating in an event inside the mall that was attached to the hotel (It was supposed to be an outdoor parade but it was raining on Saturday)… and the rest of us took time to investigate the same mall. We actually stumbled across a 100 yen store (The Japanese equivalent of the dollar store…seeing as 100 yen = $1 Canadian). I’ve never seen such cute stuff at a dollar store before! I actually got tons of candy for my brother there. I couldn’t recognize any of them and neither could I read the Japanes so I chose based on the pretty wrappings!

At 3:30, the people who would be presenting the Kobe Challenge to the Ministers - So one person from each country - left the hotel.

I was the one presenting the Kobe Challenge for the Canadian group so I was super excited for the evening when we would get to meet our Ministers.

Later on in the evening, we had a practice one with the youth Summit delegation (They would be presenting something too) and we arrived at the venue where we would be presenting the Kobe Challenge at around 7:00.

Just to get to the room where we would be presenting the Kobe Challenge, we passed so many reporters and cameras on the way.

After preparing us in the back room, we walked into the room where the Ministers were having dinner and walked onto the big stage set up for us – Each of the Climate Champions holding a big board copy of the kobe challenge (which their national language on one side and the Japanese version on the other side of the board). Nearly all of the Climate Champions also had a youth Summit representative from their countries. So each country had two representations – one from the youth Summit and on of the ICCCs.

Once we walked on stage, the youth delegation gave their mini presentation. Then, the Japanese ICCCs (All three of the Japanese ICCCs had been able to attend the meeting with the G8 + 5 Ministers because Japan was hosting the meeting…) gave a speech presenting the Kobe Challenge in Japanese. Then, the translator gave the same speech in English and the Ministers who had been smiling and nodding absently during the Japanese speech immediately snapped back. Then the Japanese Minister came up to the Stage and received the huge board copy of the Kobe Challenge in English and in Japanese. The Japanese Minister was in full support of the Kobe Challenge, including the part about the cap-and-trade system. I wonder what is to out of this Challenge. Then, all the G8 + 5 Ministers were invited to walk onto the stage and stand with the youth from their countries.

For a couple of minutes, we just stood there for the cameras. There were soooo many cameras in the back of the dining hall that all the cameras were just a blur. On top of that there were so many flashes that you got used to the lights constantly blinding you.

Then, we had time to descend from the stage and present the boards and talk to our Ministers. I got to present the board with the English Kobe Challenge on one side and the Japanese version on the other, to the Canadian Environment Minister, John Baird. Because, we didn’t have that much time to meet with the Environment Ministers, I said that I hoped that we could meet again to talk about the Kobe Challenge in more detail. Minister John Baird was actually quite genuine and persistent to meet with the Canadian Climate Champions and to talk about our Kobe Challenge.

Though we weren’t able to meet him in Kobe due to the timing, we are looking forward to presenting him with the Kobe Challenge in Canada. Therefore, we have the British Council trying to set up a meeting with him in the near future.

After our meeting with the Environment Ministers, we walked to the press room where there were reporters waiting for us. In the press room, I was actually asked this question, “Do you think that something will actually come out of the Kobe Challenge.”

I answered that I believe that we can. What makes the Kobe Challenge unique is the fact that it comes from the youth. The reality is that the present adult generation will not be the ones hit by the effects of Climate Change. It will be us - the youth - who will have to deal with the consequences if we don’t act now. There have been studies that have proven that even if we stop emitting carbon right now. There will still be consequences. If we continue emitting carbon, it will be us that will have to deal with the inevitable and aggravating consequences. Therefore, the Ministers have the obligation to listen to us. Any politician’s fundamental job is to look out for its people and keep the country healthy for the next generation. Through the Kobe Challenge, youth are crying out loud and clear. We are declaring what we want to see done. Our voice is not some static that the politicians can turn off at their will. We have the right to ask because the future that will be affected by Climate Change is going to be ours. As a result, I believe that the Ministers to whom we presented the Kobe Challenge must deeply and wisely consider our demands.

(As a Korean, I was actually quite excited to talk briefly with the Korean Environment Minister. I was able to communicate in Korean which made me really proud of myself! Lol! Seeing as I have never actually lived in Korea!)

Once we got back to our hotel, it was quite late in the evening. However, although we were all quite tired, it was going to be our last night all together so we decided to make the most of it. There was thanking, singing, crying and last minute bonding. During the good-bye party in London, we were all sad but optimistic because we knew that we would meet again in Kobe. However, this time, we were all completely down because how many times did an average Canadian travel to South Africa or to Brazil. Although we only spent two weeks together, living together, laughing together, talking together and just being with one another late into the nights and early in the mornings, made us so much closer than we could have possibly believed.

These two weeks in London and in Japan are memories that will rest with us for the rest of our lives – Weeks that we will look back on when we are in our 80s and tell our grandchildren what happened. Hopefully, by then, we won’t still have to worry about the extravagant amounts of greenhouse gases that we are emitting and will not have to worry about how our children will deal with the consequences.

*            *            *            *            *            *            *            *            *

The next day the Canadians woke up to find that we had not woken up to the alarm and had missed the 7 o’clock bus that had carried most of our friends to the airport. This put us in a rather bad mood. We had really wanted to say goodbye to the Italians, the British, the French, the Germans etc.

All the ICCCs except for the Canadians and the Mexicans would be leaving that day. Therefore, after breakfast the Canadians made our way to Kyoto where we would meet with one of the Japanese friends, her name was Midori, that our Country Leader, David, had met while he was in Bali as a Canadian delegate for the UN Climate Change Bali Conference in December last year.

We met our way to Kyoto and to commemorate our last day in Japan, Katie, Meagan Ayaka (a friend David’s friend), and I decided to use what was left of our yen. We looked around and went shopping for most of the day and took sticker photobooth pictures. It was a great load of fun and an amazing way to end a rather busy week.

Then later in the afternoon, we had a little meeting that Midori had put together. It was great to meet with Japanese University students and talk to them about how youth got involved in Canada and in Japan.

One of the University students actually told us about a cross-Japan bike ride that had taken place in Japan. Haha. I thought about it happening in Canadian! Imagine biking over the Rockies or the Appalachians! Brutal!!!

Later that night, we returned to our hotel in Kyoto via train and packed and had the ultimate girls night out Japanese style, eating Japanese instant noodle cups …

That brings our amazing week in Japan to a close.

I hope you have enjoyed reading about our trip!

I know a lot of my blog entries got quite lengthy but I hope I was able to give you an idea of what we did!

If you have any questions….feel free to leave messages on this blog site.

What I can tell you after my trip is to never give up on the whole idea of combating climate change.

I know a lot of the time, we can feel a little down by the lack of inertia that we perceive in fighting climate change. But I just want you to know that through my amazing experience, I have learned that there are a lot of dedicated people out there who are more than ready to give tons of their time and energy to fight for the cause.

Stay optimistic.

My trips may be over.

But this is only the beginning.

As International Climate Champions, all 39 of us in Japan had to make commitments. After all, we said. How could we possibly ask the Ministers to dedicate themselves to our commitments if we weren’t going to do our share of the work.

All the commitments varied.

Each country had to come up with one.

Some of the countries said that they would start an entire eco-network.

Some of the countries said that they would try to impliment climate change education into their school programs.

We, as Canadians, didn’t believe that awareness of climate change was a problem in Canada. Most Canadian youth knew what climate change was.

What the problem was that these Canadian youth weren’t taking action upon their knowledge.

Therefore our Canadian commitment was to start a big-scale garage-band competition promoting climate change in the next year.

Yea…it’s going to be a lot of work…but we’re ready for it.

Xoxo

Caroline

Hope you enjoyed this extremely long entry!

Talk to you soon! 

This was the tea ceremony that we went to…This is a roof with solar panels in it. Except the solar panels look like the roof tiles so they don’t even stand out.  A typical Japanese lunch! It looks delicious doesn’t it? TTThere was a bike attached to this screen. This screen shows how many seconds you could use an appliance for by pedaling for a minute. TThe Canadians with girls we met near one of our lunch destinations. 

Hi everyone!

I can say straight away that Friday was quite a tiring day.

First thing in the morning, we went to visit a local high school.

The good thing was that the high school was actually a special English high school so we were able to communicate pretty well with the students.

One thing I can say right of the bat is that the kids at the school were so kind, generous and loving.

I mean, as soon as we had gotten off the bus. A couple of students were holding posters which our names on it as if we were celebrities or something! I mean one student at the high school had been assigned to being kind of a guide to each country. These students had made this super cute posters with our names on it with our country name. It was so sweet. Then as we walked through the gate to the school, we realized that there were posters on the gates welcoming us to the high school.

As we were actually going to the auditorium, we actually saw kids walking passed in their Judo uniforms. Apparently, it’s one of the options course and most of the guys take Judo.

Isn’t it cool?

Then, when we got to the auditorium, we realized that there were presents for us! Each of us got a beautiful fan and some other little trinkets like pens and snacks etc.

Then to welcome us, they gave a little presentation that included their brass bands (I was super impressed. They sounded amazing!!!), their choir and a martial arts presentation. We were all blown away by their discipline and their talents.

They also liked our presentations even though unfortunately there were quite few technical difficulties because we were presenting through their computer.

Then after the presentations, we had discussions with the Japanese students and we talked about what they were doing at their school or in their local area to fight climate change. In response, they said that they cleaned up beaches, recycled and etc.

As we were leaving, they made a human arch gateway kind of thing for us.

They were all just so sweet and nice.

One ICCC champion was so touched that she even started crying.

Then, later on, after lunch, we gave our presentation to the youth Summit.

Fortunately, we experienced no technical difficulties and our presentation was super smooth and a great success.

After our presentations, we came back to the hotel at around 3pm.

The people who were going to go to the G8 +5 Environment Ministers meeting had another crash meeting on how to present the Kobe challenge to the ministers.

The other people had free time. (Something that we have really been lacking on this trip! hahah! I mean, we’ve all been in Kobe for around a week now and we still have never really gone downtown!)

Seeing as I will be going to the G8 + 5 meeting, I needed to stay for the meeting.

I am so excited for the meeting.

Not only am I meeting the Canadian Environment Minister, but according to the information so far, I will also be meeting the Korean Environment Minister for a while too!

I’m really excited to meet John Baird.

We weren’t able to meet with him, unlike most of the other ICCCs who got to meet their Environment Ministers, so I am excited to see what he thinks about the Kobe Challenge.

In the evening, we had the closing party for the Kobe Youth Summit.

The food was very delicious and the entertainment was also quite extraordinary.

I mean there was the Chinese lion dance (I hope that is what it is called!) and etc.

Today was an amazing/exhausting day.

I’m actually writing this at 6:12 am on Saturday morning and I must have collapsed to sleep last night because right now, I’m actually wondering as to how I even got to my bed! Lol! Hahah.

Talk to you later!

Can’t wait for the meeting.

Hi!

So on Thursday, we went to the Youth Summit in the morning to listen to presentations. A couple of countries’ youth participants gave mini presentations on the state of the environment in their country.

It was really interesting.

Then, there was also a famous Japanese actress, Norika Fujiwara, who is renown for being a climate change advocate who talked about her trip to Tuvalu (a South Pacific island that is predicted to sink because of rising sea levels in the next ten years).

But what is even more incredible is that the actress actually gave a presentation with one of the girls that she had met in Tuvalu who came to Kobe for the Summit. What struck me the most was how the Tuvalese girl said that she didn’t believe her island was going to sink. Then she said the main reason why she didn’t want to believe was because she didn’t want to and because it was scary to think about her family, friends and neighbors all losing their homes. 

It was really awakening to see how imminent the problem was on a personal level.

Later on, after lunch, we had our intensive practice/run through for our presentations.

Each country prepared a three minute presentation to present to a school that we would be visiting on Friday and to the youth Summit in Kobe.

It was very very intense because we needed Japanese translation and needed to get over technical difficulties etc.

(The Japanese Climate Change Champions have been phenomenal by the way. Whenever we meet people here, there is always a language barrier and the Japanese ICCCs are always there for us to do translations alongside our presentations! They work extremely hard. Trust me. Translating nearly 13 presentations is not much fun!)

I believe that they are going to try to put the presentations on our youtube site.

The presentations were all really good.

There were all these different types of presentations.

For example, the Mexicans had a Flash movie. Then the Russians made a really cute movie with themselves acting in it. The Germans had a mini skit that went along with their presentation etc.

If you get a chance to watch them. Please do. You won’t regret it.  

Talk to you later~ 

Caroline xoxo 

Hi everyone!

I’m sorry that I didn’t update my blog in a while.

So I’ll try to catch up to the days that I missed!

So on Wednesday, we looked over the Kobe Challenge all day.

We found out which proposal we would take according to which proposal got the most votes.

Laurie from Futerra, the Communications company that helped us draft the proposal, came to Japan to help us. With his help, we first started by listing things that we liked about the proposal and things that we had problems with.

I think that everyone quite liked the proposal that ended up being the most popular.

Then, we went about and fixed extremely minor details.

I think we changed two words in the proposal – it was just to make the message clearer.

Then later on in the afternoon, we came up with our commitments.

Basically, we came up with promises as to what each of the countries ICCCs would be doing in the next year.

This was basically so that the Ministers weren’t like, “Ok, so what are YOU going to do about this?” J and also so that we have a concrete plan as to how to help fight climate change.

There were various commitments that ranged from raising awareness, to holding awareness campaigns. (I don’t think I should reveal what they are yet until we present them to the Ministers on Friday and then I’ll tell you all of it in detail!)

Then, later on in the afternoon, we all got ready and left for the Kobe Youth Summit’s Opening party. This youth summit is something that brings together kids, from around 11-13, mostly from Japan but also from all around the world. These kids all come together and have speakers, give presentations etc.

The Gala was a blast.

It was really truly amazing!

They had traditional Japanese drummers playing and a Japanese princess was also there! J

xoxoxo

Tuesday, May 20, 2008.

Hey guys!

So today, we were all put into different groups and in these mini groups we each visited different places. The places we visited were: The Kaneka Solar Tech plant, the Sharp Kameyama Factory, the Kansai Electric Co., the Mitsubishi Kyoto Plant, the Sekisui House and the Itsukushima Shrine.

My group visited the Sekisui House. Essentially, it’s a housing corporation. I took quite a few pics and we actually made a movie for a group presentation in front of the other ICCCs so I’ll try to get that on the blog.

It was around an hour and a half to get there. I thought the bus ride would take a while, but it went pretty fast because we just had an amazing time together in the bus. Because we split the ICCs into 6 groups, we only had around 5 or 6 people in each so it was really great. This way we got close to people that we hadn’t had the opportunity to get together with yet. So, in my group there was an Indian ICCC, a South African ICCC, a French ICCC and two Japanese ICCC. We had a great time together.

In the morning, we learned more about energy efficient and heat insulating material that really helped to decrease carbon emissions. We saw efficient window glass materials and solar panels that were actually made to look like tiles, so they didn’t stand out to much.

Then in the afternoon, we got to go in a model carbon negative home. It was really amazing. The best part was that it looked like any other house. There were beautiful carpets that we later found out were actually made of recycled plastics. Unfortunately, we weren’t allowed to take pictures in the model house…

I have to go now, but I’ll explain in more detail a little later.

Xoxo

Today, we were able to have an amazing time looking around Kyoto. We visited temples and had photoshoots, and overall had a really good time.

In London, our main ICCC picture was of us standing with our umbrellas that had “Our Climate, Our Future, Our Voice” written on them.

This time, seeing as we were in Japan, we actually had scrolls that had the writing on it.

It was so beautiful. It actually might be on the ICCC website now!

The temples were also spectacular. Actually, we ran into a lot of Japanese students our age who were also visiting the temples with their schools! It was overall just an amazing experience. Later on in the day, we even went to a tea ceremony and everyone thought it was an amazing cultural experience. Personally, I never knew how complicated it was so serve and drink tea. There is actually a whole set of etiquette regarding how you are supposed to turn the beautiful ceramic cups before you drink!

I’ll try to upload some pictures tonight so that you can also see how beautiful every thing is. The presentations of the Kobe Challenge is coming up!

I’m so excited.

Xoxo

Your ICCC

Hey guys!

I’m sorry I couldn’t update it yesterday.

So today we were part of the Kobe festival. It’s this big festival that takes place in downtown Kobe with all these tents set up. We had our own tent and it was really cool. I mean inside our tent we even had this bike set up so that it makes cotton candy using the energy generated by the people biking! Cool eh?

And we also had a table with all these art supplies so that we could draw posters.

We also had these little green paper leaves that we had cut out and that people passing by could write down their wishes pertaining to climate change and then paste the leaf onto a poster in front of our tent.

But, one of the major things that we were trying to do was to get votes for the Kobe Challenge.

I was part of that team.

Basically, we would stand in front of the tent and recruit people to come and vote for their favorite challenge. Apparently, we got around 500 votes through the Kobe Festival! Isn’t it amazing!

Trust me, by the end of the day, all the Climate Champions who had been part of the “getting people’s Kobe Challenge Votes” group, had all this Japanese written down on their arms. Of course, we also wrote the words down in our respective phonetics. For example, I wrote down what the Japanese words sounded like in the English alphabet! Through the course of the day, we all learned how to say, “Excuse me”, “please vote” and G8 (which is pronounced exactly the same way in Japanese as in English.)

We actually had shifts in the booths, for when I was not on my shift, I walked around the festival. At one point we came across a chocolate fondu booth! Oh my gosh! That was just delicious. There was a whole chocolate mountain and everything!

One thing that we have all realized is that it can actually get quite humid in Japan!

In the afternoon, the people in my shift actually participated in the Kobe festival parade. Essentially, we had our own banner and we walked a good couple of miles. There were so many other people participating in the parade. There was a section dedicated to what I believe is the Kobe pewee soccer team! Those kids were so cute. The cool part was that we were actually walking with the kids of the youth environment summit that is also happening in Kobe and they had a whole marching band!

Overall, today was an amazing first day. We got a lot more votes and it was just really nice to look around the city while we weren’t in our shifts. Once we came back to the hotel, we had dinner and some ICCCs gave the rest of us what they have been up to since London. Everyone has been working super hard. People have been encouraging people to vote, been planting trees, been cutting down on their carbon emissions and encouraging others to do the same and in some cases have met with their environment ministers. Leila, the Brazilian ICCC, was actually was able to convince her local radio station to play an announcement regarding voting for the Kobe Challenge, 5 TIMES EVERY SINGLE DAY! Isn’t it amazing?

A thirteen hour time difference is not a joke.

This morning, I woke up at 4am and I really just couldn’t get back to sleep.

I knew I was tired, I mean I was yawning and all, but I couldn’t sleep at all!

Maybe it was because I was so excited…J

We were the first ones to actually arrive in Japan and all the other country champions would be arriving today, so we were super excited. I hadn’t seen everyone since the end of March, and I’d been so busy, so I had unfortunately lost touch with a lot of them.

So it was so exciting to know that we’d be seeing everyone soon.

But, in the meantime, we left the hotel at around 8 and just walked around the hotel neighborhood.

It was so beautiful. I mean there’s actually a beach that we can walk to and the weather has been amazing. It was hot enough for us to go around in shorts and cute little skirts. It was just us Canadians though. The Japanese people were still going around in jeans and sweaters. We Canadians are definitely good with the cold! Lol

The beach was beautiful, but on the coast, instead of sand, it was all pebbles. It was actually quite painful, especially since I was wearing high wedges! Lol

Anyways, we soon realized that a big factory outlet was close by, so of course we decided to raid the factory outlet while we waited for the other climate champions to arrive. Let’s just say, that at this rate, I will be broke by the end of this trip! Lol I mean the clothes are so nice. Obviously, there is kind of a different sense of style here in Japan – they are really into cute little dresses, and ribbons, and bright colors. It’s really cute though!

Anyways, on our way back, we met up with the Brazilians, the British, the Americans, the Mexicans an the Chinese. It was simple amazing. It was just great meeting everyone. And it was as if we had never separated because we were at such ease with one another.

So, now then, with a couple of the people who had arrived during the day, we went to the beach together and it was a lot nicer this time because we actually went in the water. Last time we only took pictures. We definitely made it really clear that we were tourists! But this time, we actually just sprawled on the beach and some of us actually ended up having pebble throwing competitions with the Japanese kids on the beach. The Americans lost in the end. Those Japanese kids were really able to throw the stones crazy far into the water!

Then on the way back, we dropped by a tech store. OH MY GOSH. They have amazing gadgets. All of their cell phones are actually quite big but the screens twist so that when you are watching TV on it, you are actually watching a screen that is longer on the horizontal. And then there were camcorders that were absolutely tiny are so cute.

Then, we made our way back to the hotel. Originally, we wanted to go to downtown Osaka, have dinner and do some kareoking, but we soon realized that our jet lag was catching up to us.

Overall, today was just an amazing day. The weather has been incredible and it was good to relax before the hectic program schedule started! We start the program tomorrow. Tomorrow, we will make our way to Kobe and participate in the Kobe fair. I’m so excited and it has been great meeting up with the people so far. I will meet up with the rest of the people tomorrow. I can’t wait!!!

Talk to you soon!

Xoxo

Caroline