Under the sponsorship of the Embassy of the Czech Republic in Tokyo, University of Fukui (UF) held an exhibition of panels titled ‘The Czech Republic and Japan: Diplomatic – Economic – Cultural Relations,’ at Project Learning Space, UF Student Central from May 10 to May 20.
Taking advantage of this opportunity, UF International Center hosted an Online Cultural Exchange Event with Palack? University Olomouc (PU), a UF partner university in the Czech Republic. The total of 56 students, and faculty and staff members from both universities participated.
In his opening remarks, Professor Vít Ulman of the Department of Asian Studies, Faculty of Arts at PU, in fluent Japanese, described the significance of the exchange between the two universities in the midst of the severe global situation, and all participants shared the importance of this event and went through the presentations.
From PU, Radek Pazderka gave a presentation on the history and landmarks of Olomouc, the ancient capital of Moravia, and its relationship with Asia, and David Grant gave a presentation on Czech and Japanese traditions in holidays and festivals with beautiful photos.
In UF presentations, Yves Petemoya, a third-year student in the Department of Architecture and Civil Engineering in the School of Engineering, explained the features of the castle and traditional architecture of Fukui, using a video of his coverage of Maruoka Castle created with Snr. Assis. Prof. YAMADA Takeharu in the same department. MAEDA Risa and KAWAI Haruna, third-year students at the School of Global and Community Studies, spoke about Fukui’s culture, including tourism and cuisine, and the happiness ranking in Fukui, while ICHIKAWA Miu, fourth-year student at the same school, presented on the uniqueness of the Japanese language, including the use of katakana for onomatopoeia in the Japanese language.
All of the presentations attracted a great deal of interest from the participants, who engaged in an active Q&A session. In closing, AKASHI Yukio, Director of the International Center at UF, said, “We would like to continue this kind of student exchanges, and also extend to research collaborations in the future. To this end, we need to continue the online exchange meetings” and closed the online student exchange meeting.
UF will utilize online and other means to continue international exchanges actively.