Healing art for Fukushima’s miracle kids

[yuiyoshida]

Five years after the nuclear disaster, 20 Japanese schoolchildren are in Singapore for fun therapy, at a unique art camp to help them deal with the trauma of 3/11 and their disrupted lives.

SINGAPORE: It’s the school holidays in Japan and for 11-year-old Ayumi, it’s the best time to simply enjoy being a kid.

“I wake up around 8am, eat breakfast, then I play quiz games. Then it’s time for lunch, play some more games, have dinner, then sleep,” she says, animatedly describing in Japanese a normal day.

Her friend, Nagomi, spends her days catching insects in the countryside; she's also learning a bit of calligraphy and karate. “There are not a lot of girls, and there’s a boy in my class and I always lose to him!” she shrugs.

It seems like a perfectly ordinary Japanese childhood, growing up in a perfectly ordinary Japanese small town — until you ask if they like where they live.

http://www.channelnewsasia.com/news/asiapacific/healing-art-for-fukushima/2990722.html