台湾出張など色々【A trip to Taiwan and a few other things】

I have been to Taiwan for a week. Collaborations with Asian countries have not really been on in my team so this was a good opportunity for me to get to know each other, in relation to our agriculture and environment related issues. Similar to us in Hokkaido, Taiwan has issues of nutrient loss from farms to rivers and oceans, traditional culture and the land use and the evaluation of organic farming systems. It was a very interesting experience.

Hualing and Taichung were the main cities that I traveled this time. Hualing was more like a rural city while Taichung city was big and lively. I hope to visit there again to see more.

Changing the topic, I have been hosting visitors related to our Zambian project, for a month. We planned well to make sure they visit many places and experience a lot of things while in Japan. I hope they had enjoyed the stay. I was very busy last month but it was all worth it. I hope my students experienced Zambian culture a lot too.

It is extremely important to expose ourselves to different type of thoughts/people/culture when we are young. I really hope that I should invite more and more people from other countries for my students. Students should think what they want to do in their future, from the wider view/perspective. Also they should know what type of people are needed by the world. This type of experiences is essential to achieve that.