Student Voice: My Experience with the AIU Kanto Team – Nicolas Hall, University of Northern Iowa, U.S.A.

Nicolas Hall, University of Northern Iowa, U.S.A. is participating in our exchange program for Fall 2025. We would like to introduce his experience at AIU.

When I first arrived at AIU, I was not sure which club to join. There were so many options to choose from, whether it was something uniquely Japanese like Kyudo (Japanese archery) or Kendo (Japanese fencing), or something more familiar and comfortable, such as the Board Game Club.

The one club that was not on my radar at the time to join was the Kanto Club (an Akita tradition that involves a performance of balancing long bamboo poles with paper lanterns to pray for a good harvest), because while I was really impressed with Kanto, I thought that there was no way I would be able to balance a 20-foot-long pole with 50 lanterns on it. However, after being invited to one of the teams tryout practices by one of the members, I thought I might as well try it and fail spectacularly before moving on to another club. I failed just as spectacularly in the beginning as I thought with it being more accurate to say that I held onto the pole as it fell over rather than me balancing it in any meaningful way, but the same could be said with everyone else trying it for the first time.

In spite of this, I was immediately hooked because every time I would hold onto the Kanto, I would get ever so slightly better at it, creating a very strong drive in me to keep practicing. After that first tryout, I knew I wanted to become a full member of the Kanto team. And in the time since I’ve joined the team, the desire to get better at it has only gotten stronger. Along with this, I also got to experience the camaraderie that comes with Kanto, because even though holding the Kanto is done as an individual, everything leading up to that, such as the assembling and setting up of the Kanto, is done as a team.

In addition to that, the senior members of the team work hard to support the more junior members, offering advice and being at the ready to take the Kanto when the junior members lose control to prevent the Kanto from crashing and hurting someone. This camaraderie, along with the feeling of self-improvement that it provides, is why I would recommend the Kanto team to anyone who has the opportunity to join.