Monday, March 7, 2022 | The Japan Times | 9

sustainable japan

ESG promotional content
produced by The Japan Times Cube

Not-for-profit organizes beach cleanups, citizen science/art, sailing

SEGO Initiative creates
connections in Kanagawa
Name: Alana Bonzi

Title:Co-founder and Representative
Co-Director of the SEGO Initiative
URL: www.segoinitiative.org
Birthplace: Trinidad
Years in Japan: 26

Leaders & Readers
LOUISE GEORGE KITTAKA
CONTRIBUTING WRITER

Serendipity flows like a current throughAlana Bonzi’s life, gently leading the environmentalist and educator to places andpeople where she feels at home. Her love
for nature and a desire to create connections within her community are reflectedin the SEGO Initiative, the not-for-profit she
founded with her husband, Michel, in thecoastal Kanagawa city of Fujisawa.
Like many who came to Japan in the1990s, Bonzi initially arrived on the JET Programme. She was accompanied by Michel,her fiance at the time, who taught French
privately while Bonzi was working as an
English teacher. Hoping to be assigned toa warmer area of Japan and in close proximity to nature, the couple were delighted
to find themselves in the city of Izumi inKagoshima, which is known for hosting
more than 10,000 cranes each winter.
“We got married while we were in Izumi
but had to travel to Osaka for the required
interviews with our respective embassies —it was a little bit more complicated with twoforeigners,” Bonzi recalled with a smile. “Onething led to another, and we found our pathhere in Japan.”

Loving where you live

The next step on their Japanese journey
led to Fujisawa when Bonzi started a newposition lecturing on corporate social
responsibility (CSR) at Keio University in
2001. They subsequently opened their own
language school and purchased a house.
“We put down roots and wanted to givesomething back. There was a foreign community there, and we wanted to connect
them with the local Japanese community,”
she explained.
In the spirit of “love where you live,” thecouple came up with the Fujisawa Beach
Cleaning Project. Since the principle ofcleaning a beach needs little explanation,
Bonzi says it was an ideal way to bringpeople of various backgrounds and ages
together for cleanups twice a year, in thespring and the autumn.
With her academic background in CSR,
as well as practical experience gleaned fromher work in government and a short-term
assignment as the interim director of theCanadian Chamber of Commerce, Bonzi
pondered how to take her business acumen
and apply it to these volunteer activities.
The encouragement of corporate sponsors of the Fujisawa Beach Clean was a very
important factor behind the decision to takethe next step. “In Fujisawa, you can go surfing in the morning and then take the train
to work. So, how do you bring that engagement from the corporate office back to thislocal area?” she said.

A culture of connections

The SEGO Initiative was launched as a
not-for-profit in 2014. Bonzi and her husband wanted a name that worked in both

Lecturer, teacher,project founder
Alana Bonzi was born in the Caribbean
island nation of Trinidad and later moved
to Canada, becoming a naturalized Canadian citizen. She holds multiple degrees,including a B.A. with honors in modern
languages (1987) and a B.Ed./M.A. in teaching (1995), all from the University ofToronto, along with an MBA from Canada’s
McGill University campus in Japan (2003).
She first arrived in Japan in 1995 to teachEnglish in Kagoshima Prefecture, before
moving with her husband, Michel, to Fujisawa, Kanagawa Prefecture, six years later.
Bonzi continued to pursue an academic
career and has been lecturing at Keio University since 2002. She combines this withher role as representative co-director of
the not-for-profit SEGO Initiative, which
she founded with Michel in 2014 following the success of their Fujisawa Beach
Clean project, along with running their
French-language school. Having bothbeen raised in coastal areas, in their sparetime the couple enjoy relaxing near thebeach or taking drives around their area.

English and French, with the English version standing for sustainable/social, environment/education, global/grassroots andoutdoors/outcome.
Eight years on, the couple are still at theheart of the organization, managing theactivities while continuing their day jobs
and relying on the efforts of volunteers forsupport. Bonzi likens this to concentric
circles, with an inner circle of a handful ofpeople with whom they bounce aroundideas, then widening to include larger groups
as their initiatives develop and take shape.
“There are teams of staff from corporate
supporters and their families, students,
members of the local community andsometimes dedicated groups — foster children, for example. For our pre-COVID beachcleanups, there were usually more than 500
volunteers who joined annually,” she said.
For the past two years, SEGO has encouraged “Together Apart” cleanups as a sociallydistanced alternative, with volunteers working in their local areas at their own pace.

The three pillars of SEGOOver the years SEGO’s activities haveevolved to encompass three key pillars:
volunteering through the cleanup activities,
public education via citizen science and art,
and reconnecting to the marine environment via sailing.
The citizen science aspect includes contributing information about the prevalenceof plastic waste to a database run by theOcean Conservancy, a nonprofit environmental advocacy group headquartered in
the United States. SEGO is one of its official
partners in Tokyo. Plastic waste from theocean has also been utilized as a medium

SEGO INITIATIVE

for art installations by four artists. Thesewere initially displayed on the beach during SEGO’s 2019 fall cleanup and were later
exhibited at an indoor space in Fujisawa.
Sailing, the third and final pillar, ties inwith Michel’s role as the Japan representative of Tiwal, a French manufacturer of small
dinghies. “We wanted to see how we could
incorporate this into what we were doing
and make the ocean accessible. You canactually go out onto the water and understand your place in this beautiful and fragile
marine environment,” Bonzi explained. “Weare all about making connections — hearts,minds and nature.”

Looking toward new horizons

SEGO’s newest project is the #CreateWaves
campaign, which is slated to kick off thisspring on Earth Day, April 22. The overall

goal is to help people cooperate and facilitate creative community-based solutions
through a variety of activities, including further Together Apart cleanups, educationalwebinars, art and film, and hands-on volunteer opportunities.
Looking ahead, Bonzi would love to see
SEGO branch out from beach activities toencompass organic farming while continuing to serve as a platform for new ideas.
She is also very open to connecting withinterested individuals and groups to explore
diverse ways to connect and grow.
Asked what she enjoys most about living in Japan, Bonzi paused to think for a
moment before answering. “It is really hardto pick out one thing, since I have been here
a long time, but I guess it is a sense of place, asense of balance that you find. And there isalways something new for us to discover —we still don’t know everything about Japan,
even after being here so long,” she said.

NTT collaboration learns how to État d’esprit
modern Okinawan cuisine rooted inplant a sustainable well-being city Innovative,
local foods and flavors
Satoyama~AuthenticJapan
MAIKO MURAOKACONTRIBUTING WRITERNTT Urban Solutions recently acquired
a new certification of international guidance on the operation of smart cities overits development project in the central
Nagoya district of Higashisakura, conducted in collaboration with NTT Urban
Development and other NTT companies.
The certification, called ISO 37106, isthe first granted in Japan since the International Organization for Standardization
established ISO 37106 in 2018. The standard focuses on “how to develop an open,collaborative, human-centric and digitally-enabled operating model” for a smart
city that “puts its vision for a sustainable
future into operation.”
Terufumi Takada commented in arecent interview with The Japan Times
that what counts is creating a place thatkeeps developing after construction work
is complete, which is what the international standard was established for. “Inthe case of buildings, their value is usuallyhighest when new,” he said. But we aim tocontinue to grow after the construction iscompleted by applying the results of theHigashisakura project to other districts
and vice versa. “We aim for growth withage, not degradation with age,” he said.
The question is how to decide the direction of growth. Takada and Yuko Kishi

Urbannet Nagoya Nexta Building
FORWARD STROKE INC.

explained that to do this, they involve
all the stakeholders not only in the target area but also in the surrounding districts. Takada said they are engaging withmembers of the association of shop owners along the Hisaya-odori boulevard in
the center of Sakae, a major downtown
area in Nagoya, as well as people living
in neighboring residential areas. “We aretrying to learn what their expectations
are, because we aim to clarify and realize
what those who live, work and shop there
find value in and what kind of future
they imagine, using the power of digitaltechnologies instead of building the kindof town that developers design,” Takada
said, pointing out that this human-centric
strategy perfectly aligns with the principles of ISO 37106.
Kishi said, “We incorporate technologies
based on the needs of each of the stakeholder categories in the area to make thistown one that continues to evolve.” Shesaid NTT’s data platform is supporting thiscontinuous evolution: “We can accumulate and analyze the area data in the platform and use the findings to create newservices and solutions, as well as apply
them to other places.”
Some of the examples of such services
and solutions include an effort to cut in
half the energy consumed by air conditioning in the Urbannet Nagoya Nexta
Building, an office building with commercial facilities newly built by NTT Urban
Solutions and NTT Urban Developmentin the northwest corner of the district.
“It is said that about half of the energy
used in a building is for air conditioning.
We are going to halve it by gathering datafrom sensors that detect temperature andmoisture or the flows of people and using
it to create a control setup that ensures
optimal operation, with low energy consumption yet a high level of comfort,”
Takada said.
Takada said they are also planning toimplement a system that helps reducefood loss by forecasting the numberof customers at each restaurant, using
data drawn from past history based on
weather, day or the impact of eventsbeing held in the neighborhood.
Kishi explained that they are also introducing a contactless elevator system
powered by facial recognition technology

From left: Masaki Urushihara, BSI Group Japan;
Andy Butterfield , BSI UK; Kok Hwee Tan, BSI
Singapore; and Hiroshi Nakagawa, president
NTT Urban Solutions NTT CORPORATION

in collaboration with Mitsubishi Electric
Corp. “The system recognizes the face of
the worker, understands which floor heis on and guides him to the elevator thatwill reach the floor the quickest. This
allows an effective operation of elevators,
prevents overcrowding and minimizes
waiting time,” Kishi said, pointing outthat this is also an effective solution in apandemic-aware society where people
are more concerned about health andsanitation.
These solutions and more can also be
deployed to other buildings and otherareas. Taku Mikami of the NTT Data
Institute of Management Consulting said:“We have long engaged in human-centricurban development, but this project
helped us learn the evaluation process of
the international standard on this. From
here on out, we aim to focus our efforts on
supporting municipalities and developers
to build and operate human-centric cities
offering well-being on the international
standard.”
Using technology, a resource that society now possesses, to solve social issues
and keep improving cities is a way toachieve the sustainable future that
the ISO guidance
aims for.

Address
État d’esprit
1195-1 Irabuikemasoe,
Miyakojima, Okinawa
Pref. 906-0502, Japan
http://www.konpeki.
okinawa/

ROBBIE SWINNERTONCONTRIBUTING WRITER

Dinner at Restaurant État d’esprit opens notin chef Yasuhiro Tomari’s sleek, discreetly lit
dining room but rather in guests’ private villas. Champagne is served along with a few
small finger foods. But first, you are invitedto try a small drink made from mugwort,
a bitter local herb. This is the first of many
bold flavors that can be eye-opening for
visitors unfamiliar with the foods of subtropical Okinawa.
Tomari sources the ingredients for hiselaborate, innovative dinners from hishome island of Miyako, as well as neighboring Irabu, where État d’esprit forms thefocal point of the deluxe eight-villa Konpeki resort. Drawing on his background inFrench cuisine, while inspired by the local
tastes and traditions, he has developed aunique approach to fine dining that he likes
to call modern Ryukyu gastronomy, referencing the name of the former Okinawan
kingdom.
Among the highlights of his eight-course
tasting menu is otōri, a rich soup preparedfrom smoked sea snake, along with Okinawan pork, ginger and awamori, thepotent spirit widely consumed throughout
the islands. He elevates tofuyo, a pungent

This section highlights theenvironment and a sustainable society. For more information please visit www.
sustainable.japantimes.com

PAGE: 9form of fermented tofu, into an umami-richseasoning for crab. And he transforms themeat of peacocks — an invasive nonnative
species proliferating on the islands — into arich, memorable noodle broth.
Concerned about the social and envi-

ronmental changes caused by the rampant
growth of tourism over the years, Tomari
sees his cuisine as a way to help preserve
the environment. It is also his way of preserving a vital part of the culture of his
homeland, which is at risk of being lost.

DENNY TAMAKIGOVERNOR OF OKINAWA

KAZUYUKI ZAKIMIMAYOR OF MIYAKOJIMA

I am very pleased that Étatd’esprit has been selected
for the Destination Restaurants 2021 list.
I invite you to come toMiyakojima, which is surrounded by beautiful sandy beaches andblue ocean with coral reefs, and enjoy
the cuisine that can only be found in thisregion.
I hope that through Okinawan foodpeople from all over the world will be able
to experience Miyakojima’s blessed natural environment and unique history andculture while spending a relaxing timesurrounded by the warm people of thisisland.

I would like to express oursincere gratitude for selecting Miyako island’s restaurant État d’esprit.
The dishes prepared bychef Yasuhiro Tomari, whowas born and raised in Miyako island, are
not limited by the rules of French cuisine,and he is particular about local ingredientsand offers creative new fare that bring out
their finer qualities. We would like guests tofully enjoy the fresh air of the island while
facing Miyako island’s blue sea, known to be
the loveliest in Asia. In the dialect of Miyako
island, delicious food is called “nmamunu.”
Please come to Miyako island and enjoy an
encounter with nmamunu at État d’esprit.