Japan Group Study Blog

My name is Katherine Gusztak. I am 24 years old and I am just finishing my Communications Degree by going on this Group Study Program. I grew up loving anime and didn’t think much of it as I was a child. After giving my life to God and becoming a Christian, I really started to feel a strong desire to understand Japanese culture more, so I started learning the language and meeting lots of Japanese people through the club on campus. Now, almost 2 years later, my heart has grown in love towards Japanese people in a way that I have never felt towards anyone in my life. I really look forward to going to Japan for the first time and seeing how I am affected by it. For my research paper, I will be looking at religion in Japan and how it has changed over the last few hundred years. I have heard many Japanese people say that their religion is part of their culture, but they do not actively participate in their religion other than maybe going to a temple or shrine at the start of

History: Castles in Japan - Matsumae Castle We chose the historical topic of castles because we do not have castles in Calgary. No one in our group has ever visited a place that has castles before so we thought it would be interesting to understand the history behind them. It turns out that Japanese castles were originally built as fortresses for military defense to guard important or strategic sites along trade routes, roads, and rivers.                                                               We will focus mainly on Matsumae Castle because it is the only traditional style Edo period castle in Hokkaido. We will research this in the field by visiting Matsumae castle and exploring the castle ourselves. There are also tours offered in Japanese so we will try to understand as much of the information as we can. Another way we plan to research this in the field is by conducting surveys to see how many people actually know the history of Matsumae Castle. The story of importa