From 24 June to 1 July, about 110 university students from Viet Nam and Indonesia are visiting Japan as part of a programme on the theme of “Science and Technology, Manufacturing, Advanced Technology” under JENESYS 2.0.
Participants first visited Tokyo to observe an advanced technology facility. Then they were divided into groups to visit Gifu, Aichi and Kumamoto Prefectures. In order to have a first-hand experience with Japanese science and technology and Japanese culture that are highly acclaimed and attracting a large attention, the participants will have an opportunity to feel the attractions of each prefecture on various aspects through visiting a local government, a local company and popular sights, having cultural experience as well as exchanging views with local residents.
This programme is expected to enable youths from Viet Nam and Indonesia to deepen their understanding of and interest in “Japan brand” and Japanese values including its strengths and attractions, and to disseminate their experiences in their respective countries.
International University – Vietnam national university (IU) nominated student who name is Nguyen Minh Tri school of Electrical Engineering to join this program. Below is his review aobut program.
REPORT OF JENESYS 2.0 18TH BATCH
Topic : Science and Technology
Student : NGUYEN MINH TRI
I/ Expectations before the trip
I haven’t been in Japan before this trip, but I’ve heard many things about Japan: The country with highly developed technology, the homeland of great technology empires such as Sony, Sharp, Panasonic, Honda, and Toyota…, where people are famous with their hard work, disciplines and nation pride. Before this trip, I was so excited to discover the nation considered having the second largest economy of the world.
- First of all, I want to discover more about Japanese people and culture.I also want to know deeply about their science and technology, the reasons why a small country with many disasters can be comparable with Europe and America.
- Try Japanese food, their raw food cultures was recognized as Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity.
- About my major-electrical engineering, I expect to learn their cutting-edge technologies, from that I can form my research; want to apply technology to reality in Vietnam.
- The trip was really meaningful and was a good opportunity for me to make friends with students from ASEAN countries and Japan, as well as to learn about Japanese and their culture. I would like to express a deep thank to Vietnam Nacentech (National Center for Technological Progress), Office of Students Affairs of VNU and Office of Students Affairs of International University for choosing me and supporting me so that I can attend to this amazing trip.
II/ Experience and Discoveries about Japan:
1) Experience in Tokyo
Vietnam delegation arrived in Narita airport at about 6h according to Japanese time, and then moved to Tokyo on highway. I was really impressed by the infrastructure there: the maximum speed in highway is120km/h, the highest way has 4 layers. Transportation system are well planned, despite of dense high-rise buildings here, there are always space for subways.
The groups then visited Japanese Royal Palace, the tour guide provided many interesting information about history of Japan, general Nobunaga, the influence of Royal family in modern Japan.
In the evening, they hold the orientation with present of delegations from ASEAN: Vietnam, Indonesia, Singapore and Cambodia.
In the next morning, we visited the National Museum of Emerging Science and Innovation, watched the show of famous ASIMO robot, and many other interesting things.
The group was separated into two small groups, moved by Japanese high-speed rail-shinkansen, into two different locations. The tour guide said that shinkansen has the speed of approximately 300km/h and total delay time of a year is not greater than 3 minutes-very impressive.
2) Experience in Gifu
After 1h56m (accurate to the minute), my group arrived Gifu province, my first impression there is the development of the city: modern as Tokyo, but having less high-rise building than Tokyo. I saw a helicopter on his parking place on the roof of Gifu main police station. The roads there are also very clean; I couldn’t see even a can. However, people seem to be stay home earlier at night than in Tokyo, there were only a few cars on streets after 8h p.m.
On the following day, we had a meeting with people from Gifu City council, visit IBIDEN Company and Haiku Okunohosomichi Museum. One remark of mine is that the local government did very well in conserving, developing, and promoting their traditional values: fresh ground water, forestry, ancient villages and fishing with cormorants; all of these became shimmering and special by their presentation. The IBIDEN Company has long history-more than 100 years; they always changed their form and products to fit with the conditions at each period of time; currently, they are manufacturing substrate for integrated circuits, and are the provider for large companies such as Intel, IBM. Visiting the factory, I feel the professionalism of them: almost everything is operated automatically, there are only a few worker in the factory, most of them control machines; transporting products and checking security are done by automatic robots moving along lines on the floor. The Haiku Museum showed me the unique type of Japanese poem, I also knew about life of Matsuo Basho-the greatest poet of Japan and his grand journey around Japan.
The next day, our group went to Gifu University, had a meeting with Japanese students there and also Vietnamese students studying in this university. They told about their academic life and their researches. The highlight I can say is that extracurricular activities had focuses of all students there: every student joined at least one club.
On the evening, we have a trip to software center SOFTOPIA and technology institute IAMAS (at the same place) and listen to the presentation about their projects: applying technology to art. Particularly, I had a chance to tried Arart application on IPhone: just scan an image by camera, the image on the screen will become live, as you are see a real movie by camera- so amazing. But what behind this interesting application is a big research project, and the hardest part is image recognizing and image real-time processing
3) Experience with Homestay
In the evening, I met my homestay family, with a teaching assistant from Ha Noi University of Technology and Science. The house I stayed was not so big, but it was very neat and clean. The enthusiastic welcome of the family made me feel cozy and intimate. My first with homestay family was beef sautéed with onion-the dish we usually had in Vietnam, maybe they know about that and want to make us feel like as home. During meal, we had a joyful talk, they also tried to pronounce Vietnamese form the handbook provided. I feel happy and proud to hear my native language from Japanese. At night, I had a gift for them: coffee-specialty of Vietnam, they seem to be very interesting.
The next homestay day, the father took us the Shinkansen Museum in Nagoya City. The museum exhibited all about Japanese high-speed trains, from the very first version to the latest version. The first shinkansen ran at speed up to 210km/h. This is so amazing, after only 19 year of development from the ruin of war, Japanese was able to construct a great train system operating at a very high speed, considered at that time.
After two days stayed with the family, I had many beautiful memories. They said they would visit Nha Trang in the future. Hopefully at that time I would have time and be their tour guide, introduce to them beautiful sceneries in Vietnam.
Workshops take place ebulliently. There are three parts of the workshop discussed: Japan before the trip, discoveries about Japan and personal action plan after the trip- these are expressed in this report. Everyone discussed heatedly about their opinions. We had 1h30m and discussed in three different groups. After that, each group chose a person to present their works. I was the presenter of 2nd group. At the end of the workshop, we summarized all works of three groups and a person would present it at the report meeting on the following day.
The report meeting was hold with the presents of all delegations of this trip. I proudly noticed that Vietnam delegations’ suit were the most formal with tuxedos for gentlemen and Vietnam traditional dress- ao dai, for ladies. Vietnam A and Vietnam B had their own presentation. However, the representative of Vietnam Department of Foreign Affair was late about 30 minutes since the start of the meeting. Maybe he had been busy with more important jobs before, there was no explanation. I wondered what other people in the meeting though about this. Fortunately, the presentation of my group and Vietnam B group were good and received applauses from audience.
4) Discoveries about Japan
a) Culture and Education
_ Japanese are very friendly, and always willing to help foreigner. The shop staffs are always smiling to customer, make them feel comfortable.
_ The extracurricular activities are greatly concerned in Japanese universities.
_ People are seriously obey traffic laws in Japan. Bicycles are very popular there; you can rarely see a motorbike on the roads. Moreover, bicycle riders have their own lanes- very safe compared to our country, sadly.
_ However, I see that Japanese are seemingly not good at English; this can be explained that due to their nation pride, they always want to use their native language and pay little attention to foreign language.
b) Environment
_ Roads in Japanese are very clean, people have great environmental awareness.
_ Garbage categorizing are done well and seriously in Japan, there are always for kind of waste baskets at each garbage dump.
_ Tokyo is one of the modernist city in the world, however, I didn’t feel stifling as in Ho Chi Minh City; on the contrary, the atmosphere there are fresh due to large amount of green parts among building in the city.
c) Science and Technology
_ Japan has a top developed technology in the world, with ASIMO robot, shinkansen, and many other achievements. Many of them are applied in people real life in Japan, such as automatic light system in their bathroom: the lights will turn on automatically as people enter the room
After the trip, motivated by excelent life condition in Japan, all people have the common though: Trying to work/study hard, contribute more to Vietnam; hope that in the fuure, our nation would be strong and respected by the world, as Japan in the past and now.
III/ Pictures
Statue of General Nobunaga near Japanese Royal palace
Japan Royal Palace as outside view
With Indonesian delegation
At Shinkansen museum
Gifu university and their lab of Die engineering Department
