Why Love Japan??...??

Kimono( Japanese traditional robe)

A piece of good news

The date was 7^th June 2012. It was 12p.m that I received a piece of good news from my school that I was selected to participate in an international event called “2012 World Youth Meeting” at Nihon Fukushi University, Japan. It was an amazing moment. I couldn’t believe what I heard; I thought I was in a dream. But it was the truth.

“Japan? It’s the country in my dream. I have a chance to go to my dreamed land,” I thought to myself with great exultation. To tell you the truth, there was a wish lurking at the bottom of my heart since I entered my high school life. It was to go to visit and study in Japan.

But now I have a chance to go to Japan. However, the program in which I am going to participate is not an academic study program, but it is an international event celebrated in the aim of arousing the awareness of youths all around the world the significance of international cooperation. I am supposed to stay in Japan for ten days, from Wednesday 01 August to 10 August 2012. I also have to make a presentation in cooperation with a Cambodian student from Royal Univerisity of Phnom Penh named YOU Ratanaksamrith and two other Japanese students from Nihon Fukushi University, Hotaru Takazawa and Yuki Isoguro.

I decide to participate in this program in the hope of broadening my perspective on the world, understanding the importance of youth participation in social activities, building up relation and developing mutual understanding with all participants from different countries and those from Japan, making friends across borders, building up tolerance to different people whose world we share, gaining knowledge and enjoying diversity in a unity, exchanging good experiences with people, improving my interpersonal skill, and discovering the unknown.

According to the aforementioned objectives, the benefits of this WYM event are priceless for us who are prospective young leaders. The knowledge and skills I gain from this program will benefit not only me, but also my fellow men. When I return from this program, I will share what I have learnt during my stay in Japan, especially the significance of international cooperation, to my friends and other youths who wish to develop their perspectives on the world.

The above mentioned objectives clearly show that it is really beneficial to join such an event. I will be communicating and trying to find a good resolution to avoid mutual misunderstanding with youths from various countries in Asian region.

  Amazing Japan

This might be a difficult question for some people but not for me because I have my reasons.  Since the very beginning, I have told you about my dream, but I do believe that you may be doubtful that why I want to study in Japan so eagerly. If asked this question, I will tell you that there are various reasons why I want to go there, several of which are to be illustrated as following:

I was fascinated by Japanese culture. The passion to know about Japanese culture started to germinate and to become so ingrained in my heart when I first saw it on TV. Actually, I was born in the countryside, proximity to Vietnamese border (Prey Veng Province). But I moved to live in Kampong Cham, which was not far from my homeland, at the age of four; it was in 1995. My family was not a rich one, but we, at least, had a black-and-white color television. I like watching TV very much. Everyday, I stayed around the television watching program after program. One day, I came across an interesting program talking about Japanese culture. At first, I was about to switch it off—it’s normal that children at my age don’t like watching anything besides cartoons and child-like program—but my father said that he wanted to watch it. At that time I was 12 already.

Because of having nothing to do, and probably nowhere to go, I compellingly forced myself to sit and watch it with him. From second to second, I started to enjoy it. I was very surprised that that program could keep my eyes looking at the wave-like screen.

One of the things I saw for the first time and liked the most about Japan was the architectural style—the temple and shrine surrounded by great view together with the sound of Japanese traditional music—whose images infiltrated deep into the bottom of my heart. The temple and shrine looked so different from what I used to see in my village. It had sloping roof and upturned corners. More interestingly, what caught my interest the most were the wooden columns that could support the temple for a very long time. I, who was always curious about something around me, asked my father incessantly the reasons why Japanese architects did not use the stone as the columns instead. “Stone is stronger and more long-lasting than wood,” I asked, but my father just smiled and told me that there were also some kinds of wood that were stronger and more long-lasting than stone. I didn’t believe him at that time, but, as a small child, I didn’t take it seriously besides focusing on what was going to be screened next. 

What mentioned above was just one of the many things I was interested in about Japanese culture. Japanese costume was another thing that lured my heart away. I remembered watching one program on TVK, Cambodian National TV, talking about Japan. The program was sponsored by Japanese Embassy—the program subtracted from NHK TV, Japanese television. Women wore multicolored, flower-patterned robes—I said that they were multicolored because at that time I watched color television when I was in Phnom Penh—and handled umbrellas walking languidly in the street. How amazing it was!

       
There were many other things about Japan that I was interested in such as Japanese food, life style, technology, festivals, music, and the like. One day, I went to Self-Access Center ( SAC) at Institute of Foreign Languages(IFL), Royal University of Phnom Penh. I went there to read books because I like reading very much. On that day, I wanted to read about foreign culture such as Korean, Chinese, and Japanese culture. I went to the shelf where those kinds of books were kept, and found an interesting book entitled “Mount Fuji”. I opened the first page and read the introduction. Having read only 2 pages, I started to become interested in it so much. I, then, took that book and sat reading it silently. Do you what?? It was so intriguing that I could not believe.   

As I remembered from what I had read, Mount Fuji is the highest mountain in Japan, and can be seen from Tokyo and Yokohama on a clear day. I can see that Mount Fuji is a seasonal magic thing because it changes its appearance all the time. During winter, it is the ice-caped mountain, while in spring it becomes a garden with multicolor flowers.The following attached file is the photo of Mount Fuji that I downloaded from the internet.

 

 If you want to see how amazing Mount Fuji is, you can go to Google image and type Mount Fuji.

If I am to describe all of what I am interested in about Japan, I’m afraid that I may not have  enough time. I recommend you read books talking about Japan if you want to discover the enigma of diverse Japanese culture, art, music, food, landscape, and the like.