Students' Olympic Project Reaches Fruition

There are now about 4 months to go until the rescheduled Tokyo Olympics. Last year, local governments across Japan had arrangements to host training camps for visiting national teams. But most plans were affected by the pandemic. This left a group of high school students waiting for their efforts to bear fruit.

A full tray of red ripe tomatoes, it's a present from a group of Japanese high school students themselves for South Sudanese athletes who have been training in the city of Maebashi. They're studying agriculture neighboring Nagano Prefecture. This project was a plan of Matsuura Akari, in hopes she could bring a smile to the athletes by sharing the tomatoes.

4 years ago, the school came up with an idea of giving tomatoes grown by the students to athletes visitng their hometown ahead of the olympics. They cultivated the tomato plants in contdition as close as possible to the natural environment, even using bees to pollinate them. Sadly for them, the Tokyo Games were postponed, dashing the stundents hopes for the meeting with the athletes visiting their hometown. Then Matsuura hold about the team from Sudane, they've been in Japan since 2019 because it is hard for them to train from their homeland. At last, Matsuura was able to achieve her dream of presenting her tomatoes to athletes from abroad.

The athletes claimed they plan to participate on Tokyo Games to bring hope to their homeland and encourage people there to work for peace. Matsuura said that by cheering the athletes from different nationalities give them an opportunity to think about each others' countries, and might change the perspective towards the olympics.

Source: https://www3.nhk.or.jp/nhkworld/en/news/videos/20210315101228371/