プロジェクトについて
誰しも皆、あの出来事、あの人のとの出会いがあったから今の自分があるということがあるのではないだろうか。
私達が考える「きっかけ」とは自己形成の過程において一番大きなインパクトを与えた出来事。できるだけ沢山の人に、そんな「はじまり」のきっかけを与えたい。そんな思いで立ち上げたのが本プロジェクトである。
「はじまり」書籍
プロジェクト第一弾としてリリースするのが「はじまり」書籍である。自分たちの近くにいる名も無き人はそれぞれ唯一無二の「きっかけ」を持っている。著名人や歴史上の人物でなく今を生きる、この名も無き人の「きっかけ」にこそ、本当の価値はあるのではないか。ならば、その沢山の人の「きっかけ」をアーカイブ化したい。そして、一冊の書籍にまとめたい。そして、その本を読んだ人が沢山の名も無き人の人生に触れることでセレンディピティ（偶然出逢いによって起こった幸運）を起こすきっかけを掴んで欲しい。
はじまりプロジェクト青木佑介
Undergoing Project
FDI in Japan and Uzbekistan
By Dior
Japanese Foreign Direct Investment in Uzbekistan: What are the main obstacles to
bring Japanese investment and how to attract lucrative projects.
This project intends to explore investment opportunities in Uzbekistan and discusses its business environment for Japanese investors, particularly in the manufacturing sector. After breaking up from Soviet-Union, Uzbekistan started a new era through transforming from socialistic system to open capitalistic market and it possesses enormous investment potential. Over the last few decades, major industries such as automotive, agricultural machinery manufacturing, biotechnology, pharmaceutical industries and information technologies have been stepped into a new development stage. Since Uzbekistan is rich in various types of mineral fossils and reserves of gold, uranium, copper, silver, lead, zinc, tungsten, natural gas, and other mineral fossils. It is required to attract the investments as much as US $3.7 billion just within the next three years for modernization and technological re-equipment of the enterprises specialized in processing industries. On the other hand, Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) attractiveness of the industries is pre-conditioned by relatively low costs for production factors (power, natural gas, labor force), significant domestic market (over 31.3 million people of permanent population), free access to the CIS markets (280 million people of population). In recent years Uzbek government relaxed its restrictive commercial policies such as temporary closure of the border, increase in customs tariffs, heavy import procedures and implemented new rules which related to fiscal exemptions and administration reforms. This change in investment attraction policy has been bearing results, and Uzbekistan gained sixteen places in the 2016 Doing Business report of the World Bank. The country now ranks 87th out of 189 countries. In 2013, FDI reached USD 1 billion. The majority of FDI is directed to industrial sectors and commodities. In the meantime, Uzbekistan announced its goal of attracting USD 3.5 billion of FDI in 2015. Cooperation with China gained new momentum in 2011 with the launch of a construction project to build a pipeline extension linking the country to the Central Asia-China gas pipeline. The new extension will have an annual capacity of 25 billion cubic meters. China also pledged to invest USD 5 billion in infrastructure and in the mining sector. South Korea has also been an important partner since 2011, investing over USD 2.6 billion for the construction of a chemical plant. However, many Japanese companies are lagging back from their neighbor counterparts and very limited numbers of Japanese companies are doing business in Uzbekistan. My goal in this project is to explain to Uzbek managers how to attract Japanese FDI and talk with Japanese investors about the potential feasible business environment and opportunities in Uzbek market. Meanwhile, I will try to find out the major bottleneck in the current investment environment which could be a barrier to Japanese investors. Alternatively, I will also take interview from Japanese companies and other foreign companies in Uzbekistan in order to find out factors, decisions, and risks they took while doing FDI. Eventually, my research project brings 3 major outcomes on the table, such as; firstly, issuing a sophisticated and updated Business and Investment Report for Japanese companies, secondly, establishing comprehensive website in order to enhance transparency of investment opportunities information, and finally organizing a large seminar in Tokyo with the support of Uzbek Embassy and partnership of JETRO and PwC or organizations.
More info: http://www.fdiuzb.com
OB/OG Project
Graduation Project -Introducing Slice of Life in Japan and the World-
BY Akira Hashimoto
This graduation project is coming from my realization that stories of Japan conveyed through digital media were often misleading. If you typed in ‘Japan’ on Youtube, for instance, what you can access is mostly those illustrating uniqueness or something novel about the country such as “10 weird things in Japan”. Considering the immense impact on fixing our image of a thing, I wondered these representations would probably create a strongly biased impression about the country on people.
After studying filming in UCLA in 2015, I decided to approach this problem with digital media, which at the time was my strong interest. I came up with the idea that I can represent Japan more authentically if I can make a digital platform that shows what I see everyday- not otaku-culture or tea ceremony but a slice of life of people. I started to learn coding to make a website on my own while I was taking pictures and filming some events for contents on the platform. Overall, with the decision to include some photographs taken outside of japan yet stick to the concept ‘slice of life’, I could create my website called Akira Hashimoto (my name) showing what I have documented to convey true-Japan. Here below is the link to the website.
I would like people to experience this website as a virtual museum, so I created a mini-booklet explaining the contents. Please take a look and hopefully enjoy the creations more.
_
THIRD CULTURE KIDS (TCK) IN JAPAN
BY SELINA WELSH & SAYURI SHINOHARA
A Third Culture (TCK) is someone who has spent a significant part of his or her developmental years outside the parents’ culture. The TCK frequently builds a relationship to all of the cultures, while not having full ownership in any.
In today’s world, it is getting harder and harder to make assumptions about a person’s background based alone what we see. The realities of culture, identity and like-mindedness are changing. TCKs are becoming even more common in Japan, and it’s no surprise. With the ongoing globalization and Japan’s positive attitude towards being more open to the international community- be it cultural exchange, trade, and business- there is no bound to be increase in the number of expatriate children being sent abroad.
We believe, TCKs are the citizens of the future. They are the international nomads that process the cross-cultural views and diverse experiences that are necessary in an ever-shrinking world. The leaders of tomorrow, who are perfectly positioned to help others navigate this globalized society. Unfortunately, TCKs struggle with identity, relationships, and career paths in their own unique TCK way.
Japan has a tendency to lean towards homogeneity, with a particular desire to keep their country relatively, “Japanese”. In the eyes of the Japanese public, the children needed to be “saved”- they needed to be reintegrated back into Japanese culture. The languages they have learned overseas, the ideas, norms and values they became accustomed to do during their time abroad was seen as “unfit” for children to have if they were to return back into the Japanese society.
TCK may be a different batch of kids within the Japanese youth, subject to pros and cons of being “different” in one way or another- but as Japan learns to actively interact globally, perhaps such dilemmas that these kids face when returning to their motherland won’t make them feel pressured to “fit in”, instead being able to live in an environment where they can embrace being different is a good thing.
–
REGIONAL DEVELOPMENT
BY HIROSHI SASAKI
It was the end of first year in SFC when I went to Indonesia for an internship to teach local senior-high school student about culture of my country. I was impelled by this curiosity to know more about other ASIA countries and their culture. I traveled a lot in Indonesia. I saw many similar and different things compared to Japanese culture. There was still people that their daily meal was not guaranteed.
When I came back to Japan, I thought about putting this experience and learning to practical use of my research. Then I came up with doing a research to help other countries, a regional development.
Although, regional development is not easy as it seems. As Gustavo Esteva says, the general idea of underdevelopment came out in Jan 20th 1949. Until then there was no idea about underdevelopment. It was the “developed” countries that created the modern idea of underdevelopment.
But thanks to many researches that been done over several decades, now many countries cooperate whats known as International Cooperation. Countries help other countries to have better environment and better economy.
My research will focus on Bali Beach Conservation and environment problems. I have done a field work at Indonesia Bali and gathered that information as a case study and wrote a thesis. Here is the link to my thesis. Thanks!
–
–
Bitcoin System
BY Chang Jin Jeon
When I was in high school, 2009, I heard the news that Bitcoin has been developed and it can be a game changer of the current currency system. At that point, since I should focus on my college, there was no such time to give my interests to Bitcoin. Moreover, without Bitcoin, there was absolutely no problems in my life. However, currently, still many people don’t know exactly what is it, its influence on our society is getting bigger and more nations are trying to adept the Bitcoin as a new way of payment.
Though I am not sure whether the Bitcoin will replace the current currency, still, it looks very attractive and worthwhile to research and investigate about it. Though Bitcoin has many attractive features that current currency doesn’t have, Bitcoin also has many problems that must be considered and overcome to become a mature and stable currency.
As for my Graduation Project, I will first broadly describe features of Bitcoin, focus on disadvantage points of Bitcoin, and what should be done in order to Bitcoin become a more mature and stabilized asset in the future.
–
HUMANS OF MEIJIN
BY SAKI KITAI
Tourism industry in world wide is growing more than ever and we have to admit that it is one of the most important income source for every country. In Japan, the prime minister Shinzo Abe is aiming to double the number of annual foreign tourists coming to Japan to 20 million by the 2020 Olympic Games. Mr.Abe is also planning to make Japan a more tourist-friendly country and thus he asked his cabinet members to review the restrictions and obstacles that exist for foreign travellers. As a person who is working at one of the official JNTO approved tourist information service centre in Odawara station run by Odakyu Electric Railway, I do feel this is a very important matter.
Previously, I researched history of Japanese inbound tourism and had a aim to create a media such as website in order to introduce people of Odakyu and how Railway company such as Odakyu will be able to approach towards 2020 as a representative in Tourism nation country.
While I was looking for ways to present my research, I was able to get a hint from Humans of New York (a blog and bestselling book featuring street portraits and interviews collected on the streets of New York City) and conduct small scale version of the practice at SFC Open Research Forum and called it “Humans of ORF”
“Humans of ORF” project gained popularity among the audience at ORF and soon I developed an idea to collaborate with my inbound tourism research.
My goal for my graduation project 2 will be to create a media that attracts foreign visitors to be interested in Japanese local hidden talents to deepen their understanding of Japanese culture.
Humans of ORF Project URL: http://sckitai94.wix.com/humansoforf
The Potential Entrepreneurship in Japanese Business Cultures
BY RYUTARO KATSUTA
Why isn’t there more entrepreneurship in Japan?
It is human nature to want security in all aspects of our lives, in terms of jobs, housing, safety, education and so on, but some people value it more than others. Contrary to my previous statement there is in fact a entrepreneurial culture in Japan, but it is far too miniscule to be of any significant impact on the Japanese economy.
I believe that there are indeed a generous amount of great entrepreneurial thinkers in Japan, however, most do not dare risk security over starting any kind of venture. Disregarding the financial aspects to this problem, I think this is due to the cultural barriers that Japan subconsciously develops in its people from an early age. Most Japanese students grow up thinking that we have to get into a good school to ultimately land a good job. This competitiveness for top-tier education is seen as early as kindergarten and continues all the way up to college where there is an actual period where students from all around Japan apply for major and more importantly “stable” companies where you are more likely to continue to succeed.
In other words, take the beaten path rather than risk anything. I would like to concentrate on the cultural aspects of why Japan’s startup scene is not as prominent than our western competitors and how we can improve on it.
–
Exploration and Practice of English Teaching as an Amateur
By Misato Kubota
It’s generally said that Japanese people are not good at learning foreign languages, but there are several reasons for that such as the school curriculum, our nationality and motivation. This research will be exploring what we could do towards the attitude of English learning from the perspective of not as professionals, teachers or native speaker, but as people who experienced being students. I was born and raised in Japan, but had a special occasion to learn English — a school with an English Immersion Program – which did not make me a fluent English speaker, but kept me to challenge things by using English which is a great help in my daily life and personal basis. Present research will be introducing some alternative ways of learning English based on the writer’s experience from the past, and from practice and fieldwork.
Change the Educational System of English in Japan
By Takayuki Kato
As the society is becoming more internationalized on daily basis, English as one of the most main stream languages, is essential for our usage in communication. The average level of Japanese people for TOEIC Test is the 44th in 48 countries, even though Japanese people learn English for 6 years among 12 to 18 years old(currently 12 years among 6 to 18 years old) as one of compulsory education for a long time. English skills in South Korea, China, Thailand, Singapore, the Philippines are higher than Japan.
Staying in San Diego for 7 months in the last year, I got to feel that Japanese students live for their social position in comparison to the foreign students from a variety of countries who individually have their vision for what they would like to do and be in their life. I would like to be internationally how I would like to be, and the society should be environment that young generation could be internationally independent in Japan.
What I will do for Graduation Project
○Research of the history and current educational system of English in Japan
○Comparison between the Japanese and foreign countries’ English educational system
○Survey regarding popular opinions on the current system
○My hypothesis on the most efficient way of learning English in Japan
○The system in foreign countries
–
Business Models & Engineer Roles in Japanese IT Industry
By Nami Sato
Living in Seattle, I had an opportunity to meet Japanese engineers working at some of the well-known IT industry, such as Microsoft, Google, and Amazon, and many of them have worked Japanese companies before. They claimed that there is a huge gap and issues in working environment for engineers in Japanese enterprises as follows.
1. The design of software structure is made by the top management, not by engineers 2. The low wages →There is not desirable environment for Japanese industry to grow/expand 3. The companies’ main frame systems are individually made while all most all advanced countries have introduced internationally standardized system. →Difficulties to compete when it enters international business.
On my project, I plan to research current situation by multiple interviews with engineers and people from management side in IT enterprises, hoping to present a solution to the listed issues.
–
Rickshaw Tourism Guide
By Masaki Honjo
The inspiration for this graduation project on the Rickshaw Business was brought upon me through my experience as a driver. Actually being a part of the business for four years, since my freshman year, made me realize how tourists surprisingly do not know about the rickshaw business and its services.
I have been blessed with the experience of serving so many customers. However, it was not often that I would have a customer who had already been on a rickshaw or even knew about its services. The vast majority were customers who told me they had a wonderful time as well as it being their first experience. Therefore, I have chosen this topic because I could see how the lack of recognition was being a setback for the business, as well as how improving that problem could lead to more people adopting Japanese tourism activities, and also how this topic would be compatible with this study group designed to research Japanese culture. Japan is frequently referred to as ‘the nation of subculture’, with various traditions and services, and it is important to have as many of those as possible to be known the Rickshaw Business being one of them. Through discussing this with Professor Freedman, I have come to the conclusion that it would serve its mission best to be created as a website for the world to see.
I used the webpage style in hope of my project to be opened to everyone on Internet. It’s important to know the background as the tradition, but also important to see the information of service of now, so I tacked Trip advisor, and Instagram on the website. In terms of service industries, especially a voice of customer would determine the fate of their business. On global internet society, customers see impressions, and they decide whether to do or not. With these reasons, I selected the contents of this website.
Website URL : http://s12762mh.wix.com/gppg
–
Exploring the World of Kayokyoku
By Shunta Sudo
While living in the U.S and Canada for 7 years, I have noticed that Japanese culture was well respected and appreciated outside of Japan. This experience sparked me to do cultural studies at SFC.
Being a big fan of music in Showa period ever since I was little, I have decided to do a research on Kayokyoku, for the purpose of introducing this culture to the foreigners who may be interested in learning about the roots of modern Japanese music, as well as to personally gain an in-depth understanding of this particular genre.
The ultimate goal for this project is to raise the awareness of kayokyoku globally via my website. Kayokyoku is an entertainment, but it is also considered as an important historical document. Therefore, I believe that it is significant for the people who are interested in Japanese history or culture to discover and learn about kayokyoku, in order to deepen their understanding of the Japanese historical background.
Freedman lab. 