Life is adventure: February 2016

My impression and life experience in Japan

First I would like to show my feeling on life experiences in Japan. I was very excited for a country that I had for years dreamed about seeing. During my research period in Japan I am hosted by Nadaoka lab under Mechanical and Environmental Informatics department of Tokyo Institute of Technology. In the lab, all members are actively doing their own research in fields of science and engineering on coastal environment, hydrologic environment, physical process in ecosystem and many other related areas of research. Professor Nadaoka-Sensei has plenty of ideas on these fields of expertise and his English is very good that makes convenience for foreign students. All students are friendly and helpful in the way of respectfulness. The lab’s rule is one of the important management strategy to be adapted in Cambodian lab to improve the institutional capacity and research quality. We have seminar every week and each session there are two students to present and discuss on their research progress. All the questions from Sensei always becomes the hot question for the presenters. The participants can comment or ask the question directly during seminar in the affordable time or they can write down in the comment sheet which distributed in the beginning of the session then it will be handed to the presenter at the end of each session. Even though, sometime it took us over night in the week of our turn to prepare the presentation, but we very proud to present own work. Everyone works very hard not only in the lab but also in the field every day and night in order to successfully graduate with a fruitful degree. However, we have some time to enjoy party together especially for welcome and farewell to the new and old student.

For my impression to the people of Japan, I have many things to say but let me highlight some. Faithfulness, respectfulness toward other and detailed oriented works are something I really impress about people of Japan. For the younger Japanese sometime they really hesitate or don’t dare to use pronoun “YOU” as subjective or objective when talking to older people. They prefer to say first name with –san (e.g. Kong-san) as the subjective of objective pronoun instead of “YOU”. Most of men are so gentle and calm. Regarding to education, I observed that the people of Japan keep education as the most priority rule of life. It made me surprise to see many small Japanese kids in the city travel by train alone to school every day without accompanying from their parents. It is the indicator of very safe place as well as independence encouragement of Japan people from even small kids.

Furthermore, this country impresses me so much on clean and fresh environment. It is ordinary for the people of Japan to take care of waste because they have good habit to store the waste correctly since they were young. I'd like to change from hart of young people in my country to have good habit on waste separation and storage so that my county will become clean like Japan in the future. Move to the management of water resources, Japan have very good system on water storage and allocation for domestic and irrigation. While I was experienced in Ishigaki island, I interested in the local water allocation through the pipe that people can buy at many stations in the field. To me this idea is very useful and I think it can be adopted in some areas in my county. I think that the hidden wisdom of Japan people is that everyone has willingness in loving the nation and commit for the best of the world.

In my opinion, Japan is on the stage of modern research and sustainable advancement. It is not research and development anymore. The accuracy of data and information has been very much improved because the uses of expensive and modern technology as the important tools in research method. I don’t know the other developed countries, but until now I am surprised to know government of Japan as well as research institution invest very big amount of budget for research not only within their country but expending their work to others especially ASEAN countries. I found that a lot of my imagination based on the theories have been proved and demonstrated while experiencing life in Japan. So, this research period in Japan provided me a lot of knowledge and lesson-learnt and the program is of course very fruitful and important.

Let me take some lines to express my gratitude to Professor Nadaoka for accepting me to be a young researcher in the lab and his expensive comments on my research works that upgraded me to another step before going back to continue in University of the Philippines-Diliman and I thank to everyone in the lab for helping and facilitating me. Very special thank to JICA Tokyo staffs especially Ms Ide-san and Ms Sugiyama-san for coordination and arrangement of the SW3 program. Last but not least, on behalf of 15 million people of Cambodia I would like to deeply gratitude to the people of Japan as well as the government for continue supporting as in financial or technical work to the development of Cambodia in every sector through Cambodian government. We will never ever forget your kindness and we wish for much better and permanent cooperation and relationship of both nation.

I hope to come back again. I loved Japan!

Kong Chhuon

Enjoy video through the link and some photo!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CPorZo_0l5g