金沢国際交流ラウンジ

Promoting a multicultural society in Kanazawa ku

　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　Kanazawa international exchange lounge
　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　Representative Michiko Takeda

The theme for our “Talk Show” event, held on 24th October, was “Feelings about the Japanese” which explored the change of views on Japanese after coming to Japan.

Our key speaker was a member of the Chinese Embassy. Now in his thirties, he came to Japan as a youngster and has experienced rural and urban living here.

Fluent in Japanese, he frequently travels between Japan & China. From hearing his experiences in Japan, I gained new insight into the Japanese people.

He talked about the positive values of Japanese people, including their work ethic, ability to study, and the harmony between people.

I had the strong impression that he believed the solidarity of Japanese people was influenced by our history.

To better understand ourselves it helps to study from an unfamiliar point of view.

It may be difficult for an embassy employee to express his own opinion, but I am very impressed by his suggestion that we must be objective and encourage diverse ideas.

The benefits of diversity became clear from having lived both in Japan and China.. Some other guests were international students from China and a Korean officer studying at YCU.

The guest from Korea spoke about the Japanese history of maturity and decay. The international student from China, with some difficulty, made a good speech.

Her words: “I want to make my parents happy” echoed our feelings. I was very moved by these speeches. Through this event, we learned to appreciate the value of foreign ideas.

“Looking back on my life in Japan,” our guest Mr. Bakusei, told us: “I had a valuable experience exchanging ideas among Japanese people.”