On the day before the last day of San Diego, I had a small get-together party from 9 pm with young Japanese who study at UCSD and work at other places.
Among those who came, 5 people were undergraduates at UCSD, 7 were students at the graduate school, and the rest were those working at venture businesses. Several of them were the same people as those who came in February when I was here (Ref.1), but for those who were not able to make it then, it was a good opportunity for us all. We had so much to talk about that time just flew to midnight..
Students came from various backgrounds. For example, the 4 out of 5 undergraduate school were exchange students from Keio, Gakusyu-in, and ICU, and the remaining one student came to U.S. after high school.. All students were wonderfully energetic. By the way, 4 of five were female.
On the other hand, most of the graduate students were enrolled in the Master’s course. They were originally from the Japanese government and public offices. A few ‘independent’ PhD course students joined us, too. One whom I know for some time was an American from CONNECT, also joined our last gathering of February.
So, we used as the common language ‘broken English’, but actually all spoke pretty good English (many of them lived some time overseas in their childhood ? it would be hard to get along with all the classes without a reasonable command of English). Everybody had lots to say. Half of the students were female. They were all very energetic.
For your information, Maki-kun posted a report about this gathering with a photo attached on his blog (in Japanese). Thanks.
The topic naturally included the recent quake and tsunami disaster, including the ways how the Japanese government and TEPCO responded on Fukushima nuclear power plants. I noticed that the students had many points of views which only “independent observers from ‘outside’” will have. This is no wonder, since they are all living away from Japan as an ‘individual’
As I have been pointing out repeatedly in this blog and elsewhere, the best way to have eyes and senses to see and feel Japan objectively in the global context is to go ‘out’ as an ‘individual’, and better while you are young. It is very important to do so if you wish to develop good sense of ‘global citizen’ and own career.
That being said, however, the largest concerns of the undergraduate students were the anticipated handicaps they risk for ‘job hunting in Japan’. This doesn’t make any sense. I have to say that they are being mind controlled. Isn’t this awful? Tomorrow’s world is a world where the values are very different from the values of today and the past. In a ‘flat’ world (and the world is inevitably going to increase the speed of ‘flattening’), ‘uniqueness’ or ‘being different/distinct’ is a positive value, that would be considered as the strength of each individual. There is no sense in limiting ‘field of work/actions’ to Japan only. Such were the points I made.
Then we had various discussions on how to build careers, and I think we succeeded in sharing some specific images.
I carried several copies with me of my book with Yoko Ishikura, ‘How to Build a Global Career’ to distribute. Also, I informed them that her new book ‘Global Career ? How to Find a Unique You’ (published in Japanese only) will be coming soon, but actually, the book was published precisely on that same day.
I look forward to seeing how the future of youths such as they will be. These people are truly the big asset of Japan.