Students Explore the Japanese Presence in Hong Kong

A request from the University of Tokyo (U Tokyo)
to the Faculty to co-organise a summer exchange inHong Kong for its students has blossomed into an
experiential learning opportunity for HKU students,
too, and deepened the Faculty’s engagement with thecommunity.
The HKU-U Tokyo Joint Summer Programme brings
together students from different disciplines to focus
on a specific theme relating to Japanese business inHong Kong. In 2016 their theme was the production,
distribution and consumption of food – a topic ofparticular relevance because Japan exports moreagricultural and marine products to Hong Kong than toany other territory or country in the world (althoughmany of these products are re-exported rather thanconsumed locally).
The HKU and U Tokyo students lived together at Shun
Hing College during the two-week course in Augustand spent their days visiting and meeting with senior
figures of such companies as Japan Airlines, Yakult,
Nissan Infiniti, city’super, Ajisen Ramen, and Nippon
Wealth Bank.

appeal to Hong Kong people.
This was the third time HKU and U Tokyo haveorganised a summer exchange and the intake included
students from disciplines as diverse as aerospaceengineering, biomedical sciences and JapaneseStudies. The main requirement was that participants
were proficient in Japanese and English. HKU students
had the option of doing extra written work so they
could earn six credits for the course.
“The Japanese Consul-General also met with thestudents and took questions from them. It is a veryrare opportunity for university students to get thechance to do this and to meet with business leaders,”
Dr Nakano said. “The Faculty is benefiting, too,because this is a good way to interact with the business
community and communicate with students fromdifferent disciplines.”
The HKU-U Tokyo Joint Summer Programme 2016 was
supported by the Shun Hing College Endowment Fund.
The Programme will be held for the fourth time from
August 1 to 12, 2017.

They learned how seafood brought to market at
5am in Japan is ready for consumption in Hong Kong
restaurants by 5pm the same day, how Yakult has
become so ubiquitous in Hong Kong that some people
are unaware of its Japanese origins, and how Ajisen
Ramen is a bigger phenomenon in China and Hong
Kong than in Japan.
“They talked to people dealing with localisation andglobalisation at the same time,” said Dr Yoshiko Nakanoof the Department of Japanese Studies in the School ofModern Languages and Cultures, who co-organised theprogramme with Professor Shigeto Sonoda of U Tokyo.
“It’s good for both Japanese and HKU students thatthey are exposed to that sort of adaptability while they
are young.”
The students were required to produce grouppresentations on Japanese business in Hong Kongand the topics were wide ranging. One group lookedat the gender differences in customers at Yoshinoya
restaurants, which specialise in beef rice bowls and arepopular with working-class men in Japan, but appeal tofamilies and university students in Hong Kong.
Another group looked at how to boost Hong Kong
tourism to provincial Japan by improving WiFi andphoto opportunities because Hong Kong tourists like topost frequent photos of their travels on social media.
Other presentations looked at the variety ofways Japanese soy sauces are used in Hong Kong
restaurants, the use of the name “Hokkaido” onproducts here, and the reasons why Japanese ramen

Ambassador Kuninori Matsuda (front, centre), Professor
Shigeto Sonoda (front, left) and Dr Yoshiko Nakano (front,right) with the students who joined the 2016 programme

HKU Team Competing in Televised
Cultural Debate Competition
An HKU team captained by Arts undergraduate
student Mr Chong Shing Hei are among the finalists inthe cultural debate competition, “The World Listensto Me”. The team, which also includes Mr Huang
Guanyu and Mr Lim Kam Ho, both undergraduate
students from the Faculty of Business and Economics,
are competing against 17 other university teams fromHong Kong, Mainland China, Macau and Taiwan in thefinal stage of the competition in Beijing. The team iscoached by Mr Hayson Liu from the School of Chinese.
Over two hundred institutions and 1,100 students took
part in the preliminary rounds of the competition,
which is co-organized by China Central Television(CCTV) and Taiwan’s CTi TV. The programme will bebroadcast on CCTV 4 and CTi TV from November 2016
to February 2017 and is expected to reach millions ofviewers in 198 countries.
http://www.japanese.hku.hk/
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