Summer School 2014

Tohoku University invited high school teachers and prospective students to Future Global Leadership (FGL) Summer School again this year, from the 4th to 6th of August. 21 Participants joined the event from 7 high schools in China, Singapore, Thailand and Indonesia.

During the three-day program, participants got detailed information on Tohoku University, FGL courses, the application process, and even the city of Sendai.

On the 2^nd and 3^rd day, participants took a tour of the labs in each faculty of the FGL program: the Advanced Molecular Chemistry Course (AMC), Applied Marine Biology Course (AMB) and International Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering Course (IMAC-U).

This is one of the labs in AMB. Students are working on research in the field of Integrative Aquatic Biology.

Students also learnt Japanese flower arrangement (Ikebana). This Ikebana class was taught by Prof. Chen. She is a professor of Nanomechanics in the School of Engineering of our university!

Thank you so much for joining the event. See you again!

Indonesian Festival on this Saturday!

Tomorrow, our Indonesian students will join "FESTINA 2014" which will be held in the evening at Sendai Fukushi Plaza.
For those who can, please visit the venue and enjoy the Indonesian culture!

“Smart Work Week” with Netherlands

 Tohoku University’s School of Engineering will hold another interesting event on Wednesday January 22. This event became possible thanks to the cooperation of the Embassy of the Kingdom of the Netherlands. The lecture will be on the theme of “Smart Networks and Reconstructing the Tohoku Area” at Center Hall on Aobayama Campus (where Prof. Koichi Tanaka will give another lecture on Jan 29).
 Amsterdam, the capital of the Netherlands, is called one of the world's Smart cities. The definition of smart city is a place where people can live comfortably thanks to a smoothly operating ICT infrastructure. The targeted subjects of infrastructure include not only hardware like transportation systems and the water supply, but also software for education, medical services and disaster prevention. The Netherlands has solved various infrastructure problems with a unique method called the “Dutch Approach.”
 On the day of the event, panelists will participate from many notable companies in the Netherlands such as Amsterdam Smart City, DNV KEMA, Green it, Phillips, Quby and so on. The Tohoku area is still far from completing reconstruction, so the talk by panelists from the Netherlands will include many good and useful clues and hints for a better Tohoku.
 The event will be held both in Japanese and English, so international students can enjoy the talk for sure. You can take the information back home, and apply it to your own country!

Happy 2014!!

The new year of 2014 has started. The university reopened this week, and students started to prepare for the semester-end exams and final papers. In the high schools, there is a tense atmosphere as students have entered the season of university entrance exams. On January 18 and 19, the National Center Test for University Admissions will be held across Japan. It is a standardized national exam that must be taken by applicants who wish to enter governmental universities, and Tohoku University will be one of the test venues.

In Japan, people who have something they wish strongly to achieve usually go to shrines and pray for success. There are also people who visit shrines to ask for perfect health and safety for family members. For such people, there will be an annual event on the evening of January 14. It will be at Oosaki Hachimangu Shrine. The name of the event is “Matsutaki Matsuri.” It is a kind of bonfire festival. The shrine is not far from Kawauchi Campus, so Tohoku University students can easily attend the event. There, you can encounter an intense fire of tremendous scale made by burning New Year’s decoration, talismans and so on. Legend has it that your mind and body will be cleansed if you stand close to the fire.

Just before ignition

After the ignition (photo from 2013)

 Sometimes it is hard to tell shrine from temple, but the fundamental difference is that while temples are associated with heaven after death, shrines are associated with life on earth. We wish you a happy new year for 2014!

Merry Christmas!!

 It is December 25th. Christmas is an event that is celebrated world-wide. Here in Sendai, trees on Jozenji-Street decorated with lights have been a winter feature for the last two decades. These days, more people enjoy decorating their whole houses as though competing with each other to have the most gorgeous decorations.

Common Christmas cake in Japan

 For good or bad, Christmas is not very much recognized as a holy and religious event in Japan. Therefore, many people take this event as an occasion to truly have fun: while people in Christian countries spend time with family and eat homemade dishes including turkey  on Dec 25, the Japanese (especially the youth) party with close friends, have various drinks, including alcohol, and eat the indispensable Christmas cake.

 Since the winter vacation is for two weeks, not all international students visit their hometown, so they try to plan events where people can share time and food together. The outside is cold, so let’s stay warm and active. Enjoy the holiday season.

We wish you a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year!!

Jozenji-Street in Sendai

Photo exhibition for recovery assist

 When the Great East Japan Earthquake happened in March 2011, many volunteers from all over Japan immediately moved to the affected areas to help disaster victims in various ways. They came under the spotlight by performing debris disposal and other labor, and reconstruction could not be conducted without their help.

 People who used to live within 10 km from the nuclear power plant managed to move away from there and are now living as evacuees, but some of them had to leave their lovely pets against their will. On the street, abandoned animals such as cats and dogs wander around and wait for their owners to come back. So a rescue crew for animals is working hard to save pets on the street, and to find their owners.
 The name of the Fukushima-based crew is “Nyander Guard.” Their activities are supported by volunteers and relief aid, and one of their essential jobs is to tell others outside the affected area about their activities and organize fund-raising events. From December 21 to 25, they will hold a photo exhibition of cats that members of the crew documented under the title "Don't forget about us." The situation of animals is easily ignored by the media, so this is a rare chance to know about one of on-going activities for recovery. You can visit the gallery on the 5th floor of the AER Building, just north of Sendai Station. Items for fund-raising will be on sale. 

 Sendai is a major city where you come across events that assist the recovery from the Earthquake.

Seminar on “University Globalization”

On Tuesday, October 22, a seminar will be held to discuss university globalization at Sakura Hall on Katahira Campus. Although the discussion will be mainly on educational circumstances in Japan as compared with other countries, the event will be conducted in English.

Japanese education has been criticized for not nurturing writing capabilities for self-expression. It is often said that many Japanese students studying abroad run into obstacles when intermingling with international students or having to write their first assigned papers—they do not know how to express their own thoughts in words. This is not due to a lack of English proficiency. This issue cannot be overlooked any more. To discuss this situation, seminar participants from various countries, such as England, Germany, Poland, and Singapore, will attend. Most of them are currently residing and working in Japan, and will share stories and ideas from their own countries regarding university globalization. So their opinions should be useful as references, since they will be based on their real transnational experiences. Japanese high school teachers will attend as guests as well.

The event is especially interesting from the perspective of international comparison, so it should be of interest, even to those who are not studying pedagogy. For those who have classes on Katahira, it is worth a look!

University Fair in India!

This weekend, Tohoku University will join university fairs that will be held at two cities in India.

-New Delhi

Day and Time: September 6^th, Friday 9:00 to 15:00

Place: The Lalit New Delhi (Barakhamba Lane)

Organizer: Ritsumeikan University

-Bangalore

Day and Time: September 7^th, Saturday 10:30 to 16:00

Place: Bishop Cotton Boys’ School (No.15, Residency Rd.)

Organizer: The University of Tokyo

On those days, two staff and a professor from Tohoku University will attend to answer questions from participants. You can talk with people from other Japanese universities, including both national and private universities. So please register your name and bring your friends. Parents are welcomed too!

In Bangalore, a lecture presentation will be given and persons concerned such as university professors, corporate managers and high school teachers, will discuss study abroad in Japan.

If you have any inquiries regarding this event, please contact us.

Events in Sendai at the beginning of Autumn

Although the temperature still gets up to around 30 degrees in the afternoon every day, autumn is beginning to appear for sure. Some people have been wearing long-sleeve clothes since the evenings are becoming cooler these days, and outside events can be seen more often from the end of August.

The First Ikebana Experience

Ikebana (Japanese flower arrangement) is one of the essential and authentic Japanese traditions. On a rainy morning, 23 foreign students, visiting Tohoku University for a short program called TUJP, experienced Ikebana for the first time in their lives.

The teacher on that day was Prof. Ying Chen of the Graduate School of Engineering. In the past, Prof. Chen studied Sogetsuryu Ikebana, which is one school of ikebana, in Tokyo. She chose flowers such as lilies and balloon flowers, and branches with small leaves.

The most enjoyable part of Ikebana is to cut some of the branches and arrange the flowers according to your own sense of beauty. The students worked in pairs, and actively discussed how to complete their arrangements. Their cooperation bore fruit.

In the end, the room was decorated with twelve gorgeous flower pots. At the end of the lesson, everyone looked very satisfied and some became kind of sad at not being able to take the flowers back to where they are staying now.

Open Campus on July 30th & 31st!

Tohoku University’s annual Open Campus event will be held on July 30 and 31 this year. Every year during this event, countless high school students come by tour bus. Some people come from far away especially for this occasion. So our university becomes packed.

Many high school students look forward to seeing futuristic machines and experimental tools on Aobayama Campus, and others anticipate trial lectures on Economy and Law on Kawauchi Campus.

At the medical school on Seiryo Campus, you can experience experiments, and campus tours will let you see various laboratories. Then a 10-minute walk from Seiryo Campus will take you to the Department of Agriculture on Amamiya Campus.

The engineering department is even planning to hold a special forum solely for female high school students. Many student activities will be introduced through concerts and demonstrations.

You may be overwhelmed by the number of high school students, but university students looking for suitable graduate schools are warmly welcomed too. Anyone who is ambitious about learning something is invited to join! 

Early Summer Events in Sendai

In May, there are famous annual events in Sendai. One is the “Sendai International Half Marathon” which was held on May 12.

This year, the number of participants was 12,874. There were four types of race: 2 km, 5 km, and 21.0975 km for both wheelchair users and general runners. The 2 km course was mainly for children and the elderly. 

Just as the title of the event says, there were various runners from all over the world, and the first prize went to Mr. Mekubo Job Mogus from Kenya. Sidney Olympics gold medalist Ms. Naoko Takahashi also participated in the event as a guest runner. The roadside was crowded with cheering people, some of whom were dancing and beating drums on Jozenji Street.

A week later, those dancing people appeared again in central Sendai thanks to the Aoba Festival, another annual event in May. The original one dates back to 1655, but at one point about 40 years ago the festival was cancelled because of transportation conditions. However, it made a comeback in 1985 after more than 10 years of absence. The main features are people dancing suzume odori—"dance of the sparrow" in English—and competition amongst various groups. Some of them are workers from certain companies, and some are neighborhood children, female volunteers and so on.

You will be able to enjoy many events in the City of Sendai as the season gets warmer. There is no way you could miss them!

Sakura Season!

The season for cherry blossoms has finally come. Sakura, which means cherry blossoms in Japanese, is becoming a known word worldwide these days. In major cities like Tokyo and Kyoto, and areas further south, the season arrives three weeks earlier than the Tohoku area. Since cherry petals usually fall in a week or so, most of them in southern areas have already fallen by now.  This proves Japan’s profoundly long north-south geographical length.

If you walk a few blocks from Tohoku University’s Kawauchi Campus, now you can find many trees bearing pink petals. The contrast of colors—blue and pink—looks perfectly uplifting when the sky is clear. 

In fact, many students of student circles plan “cherry-blossom-viewing” parties to welcome the freshmen in April. Some of the best places for that are Nishi-Park and Tsutsujigaoka-Park. Nishi-Park is within walking distance from Kawauchi Campus, and stage shows are held there for those who would like to sing songs during sakura season.

Tsutsujigaoka-Park is famous for “weeping cherry trees,” whose long braches dangle and sway in the wind. It is very close to Sendai Station, so the park fills with people who travel all the way from far places.

Every year around this time, there are reports that quite a few people binge-drink while viewing sakura, and are taken to hospital due to alcohol poisoning. Some of them end up dying. So please enjoy the sakura, but we advise you to avoid drinking if you are underage, or drink in moderation if you are an adult!

Entrance Ceremony 2013

The 2013 school year has started.
On April 4th, the entrance ceremony was held, and 2,581 undergraduate as well as 2,418 graduate students became new members of Tohoku University.

Vegalta Sendai

One thing many university students enjoy about Sendai is the active sports scene. The city boasts three professional teams: Vegalta Sendai (soccer), the Rakuten Golden Eagles (baseball) and the Sendai 89ers (basketball).
Recently a women's football club, Vegalta Sendai Ladies, was also founded.

 Here you can see a soccer match unfolding between Vegalta Sendai and Ventforet Kofu from Yamanashi. 




(Click the pictures to view full size)





                                                                                  

The game ended in a draw, 1-1.
In addition to watching sports at one of Sendai's modern stadiums, many Tohoku University students enjoy playing sports. The university has numerous sports clubs, which international students are eligible to join.

See you on the pitch! 






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Photos by Chihiro Ishida

Job Fair for International Students at Sendai International Center

Tohoku University is hosting a Job Fair for International Students at Sendai International Center.
Those of you who are interested in this fair, please feel free to stop by!

Job Fair for International Students
Date & Time:  February 24, 2013  10:00-18:00
Venue:  Sendai International Center Conference Room "Hagi" "Sakura".

Please check the leaflet for further details (Japanese only)
http://www.fgl.tohoku.ac.jp/images/topics/jobfair2013.pdf