I first arrived in Japan at the end of March 2003 as an invited engineer at ATR Spoken Language Communication Research Laboratories.
At that time, I only knew some simple Japanese words (i.e., "Ohayou", "Arigatou", "Sayonara"), and I couldn't read Japanese characters at all.

I learned only a little part of  Japan'shistory in high school.
I also heard only a little about Japanese society from newspapers and television programmes, and some other Japanese culture I learn through watching Japanese drama (i.e., "Oshin", "Tokyo Love Story") or Japanese Cartoon ("Candy","Ikyusan", "Doraemon").
What I learned was Japanese society is very strict in manner, and I was so afraid about this.
I tried to practice bending my body over and over, but never be sure how many degrees were appropriate. My parents really worried about me, but they still let me go. They said "It may only be once in your lifetime, so just go there, have an experience, and in case you can't survive you can always come back anytime".

Today is June 2008. This means I have been living in Japan for more than five years. I started to speak Japanese in easy
conversation. I can read hiragana, katakana, and a very few kanji. The people here are very nice.

They are always helpful whenever I have a problem, and they really understand if I can not do some certain things correctly in the Japanese way.
The place where I live is called "Kansai Science City". It is a place for research science,
where many local and foreign researchers work hand in hand to develop high technology systems, for a better life in a future.

So there a lot of foreigners who live here too that make my life very colourful. Although the place is still quite suburban, it is located somewhere in the middle of three big cities: Nara, Kyoto and Osaka.
So it is very convenient to live. I can enjoy my relaxing time in Nara park, experience Japanese culture in Kyoto, and have fun with vibrant night life in Osaka.

If I think back again, I realized that what I learnt from news and television in my home country are just only a tiny piece from a whole puzzle of Japan.
Sometimes they are even far away from reality.

But that tiny piece is what I believe to be the truth but may not be the truth at all.
And this may not only have happened to me, but also to many people around the world. This may even have happened as well to Japanese people and the way they think about other countries.

So besides all the great technology that people here are working on, I think there is one thing that we can really benefit from Kansai Science City: the cultural exchange. By exchanging information more and more, about Japanese culture to other different countries and vice versa, it may help to open our eyes into the real truth of the outside world, and to broader our way of thinking. Hopefully, someday we can live in harmony with different characters of people, not only in Kansai Science City but in our
peaceful earth.
 

情報通信研究機構 [NICT] /国際電気通信基礎技術研究所 [ATR]

音声言語コミュニケーション研究所　研究技術員

けいはんなオブザーブ１５号より出典