スクリプトは事前提出されたものですので、ビデオの音声とは異なる場合があります。

The Most Important Thing to Become Good Ambassadors

TOYOSHIMA, Karen (Nagaoka National College of Technology)

Hello, everyone. Today I would like to share with you something I realized during my experience of living in Germany. Before going to Germany, I was not sure that I would be a good ambassador. But while in Germany, I learned three important things that helped me become a good ambassador. You will hear about them in my speech today. Can you guess what these three important things are? I hope, as you listen to my speech, you will be able to understand these important keywords.

What is going on in Fukushima? Why don't you stop using nuclear power?

These questions were what I had been asked many times by German people while I was studying in Germany. I couldn't answer them well. Why not? Because I had little information about the problems in Fukushima and also I didn't know any specific German expressions about disasters.

I lived in Germany for one year. I had many chances to meet new people and introduce myself. Almost all of them asked me “How far is Fukushima from your city? Can you eat harvested products from Fukushima?” Why did they pay such big attention to Fukushima? Can you imagine the reason? It is because their area was dangerously affected by the Chernobyl nuclear accident. It happened about 30 years ago, but it is still causing bad effects. They were worried that Fukushima's problems would be like Chernobyl's. For example, German people cannot eat mushrooms from their forests even now. The radioactive fallout polluted their nature. Germany is located quite far from the accident site, but the mushroom problem has had a powerful influence on German people's trust of the safety of nuclear power. I received such disaster' questions, but I couldn't reply.

Before I went to Germany, I was not interested in Japanese politics and social problems. But I thought that I was going to be an “ambassador” so I wanted to show off the good aspects of Japan to Germans. Therefore I had prepared a presentation about Japanese tradition and culture. But in reality, they wanted to know about “current Japan”. They were eager for more information about Fukushima, Japan's reconstruction, anime and manga. Everything related to recent Japan. I didn't anticipate that. For that reason, I was not able to explain anything at all. I realized I had better find out more about recent Japan and become more aware of Japanese politics, nuclear power problems and Tohoku's reconstruction.

I also found German people good at voicing their opinions because they learn how to give their opinions about something in class from elementary school. In Japan we don't have that style of education.

Now I have learned many things and can comprehend much more than before. It is because I have started checking both Japanese and international news on the Internet. I also use some news apps for cellphones and they are really useful. After getting information from them, I consider which news is important to tell people around me. So I can understand “current Japan” better than I used to. But I still don't have enough confidence to discuss these topics with other people. I have to not only research carefully but also understand deeply and explain simply. But when explaining something, we have one more important thing to remember. That is our “opinion”! To get deeper into a subject, we must form our opinions and share them with others. That makes it possible to see things from the other side.

Sharing information and opinions with others has become important lately. We are able to share many things across countries. Using social network services like twitter or Facebook, we can share both information and our opinions about the news at the same time. We all should pay more attention to news around the world, share information and learn more about other countries. These are our tasks from now on.

Because of my experience of living in Germany, I can now get information and disseminate it in German, English and Japanese. I will not let my experiences just be mine alone. I want to share them with other people as well.　I'd like to keep explaining and promoting beautiful Japan to the world. To do this, the three keywords I hope you heard today; researching, understanding and explaining are so very important, as I have mentioned throughout my speech.

I hope we can share a lot of information and our opinions. Shall we start by getting to know what is happening around us? Let's become ambassadors to the world together.