I would like to start my page with introducing myself. My name is Irina. I am 21 yers old. And I am from Moscow, Russia. I study culture and languages at Moscow state linguistic university. The languages I study are English and Japanese.

You might wonder, what a Russian is doing in Japan? Volunteering. Experiencing the life of a completely different country, its people, exploring its culture, testing myself actually for my abilities to adapt to new surroundings, to overcome difficulties, to go through challenges and to lead a life in the area surrounded by nature with a few people living around.

Why Japan? As I study Japanese, I have a great interest in Japanese culture, as I suppose it to be the key to understanding and developing the language skills. And I suppose I couldn`t find a further and a more different country to go to.

Why volunteering? First of all, it`s great life experience, an opportunity to try yourself living and working with people of other cultures who have different habits and traditions. Moreover, you experience a country "from inside", not just like a tourist.

Why Taiyou no Ie? The House of the Sun - sounds nice, but seems to have a terrible meaning, doesn`t it? NO, it doesn`t! Choosing a project from the list of NICE organisation I doubted whether I would be able to stay up to the very end. I could go to work with children, to do some field works or to go to the House of the Sun. I decided to choose the most challenging one to try myself, to see how social welfare institutions operate abroad, how people live being not able to lead a life of a usual citizen because of some health/mental problems and to live in...the Samurai house! And you know, I can assure you: this was the right choice to make!

So here and further on about my volunteer job, about my country and something more about my story.

Read, enjoy, watch my photos and come to volunteer to this great warm place!

Let`s make our world a better place together!

e-mail to: aquabella@mail.ru