Picking up the pieces: Final Reporting Session at the EU-Japan Centre for Industrial Cooperation (26-08-10))

So here it is. The D-Day I thought would never come is finally knocking on the door...

Even before the show started, the day already looked like a tough one: the previous night I went with Hajime and Chun to Oedo Onsen in Daiba (there'll be a post somewhere about that too), and I managed to reach my house at 3am. True, the speech for the presentation was already written and checked (Thanks Hajime!), but the physical presentation didn't exist, hehehehehe... So I had to spend a couple of hours selecting pictures and videos for the final show... leaving me with something like 3h-4h of sleep for one of the longest (emotionally speaking) days of the program. Woke up at 7am, walk around in a winter suit with 30 degrees C and 70% of humidity, run back and forth from the station to my house a couple of times to pick up forgotten stuff...a typical morning to Hanzomon :)

Then, at 9am, lights out, and up and with the courtain. One by one, each of us (Vulcanus) would stand up and share with our fellows, the Centre, and the representatives of the hosting companies his/her year in Japan. Again, no surprises here: when Willy had to talk, he started to cry like a baby (sigh...). And the thing continued in Monika's and Davide's presentation, with also sporadic storms in Kuba's and David's (Davids' one is so good I attach it here. The music was composed by him). I must say, reviewing this whole year through the eyes of the other Vulcanus was a hard experience. It's not the first time that I say this, but even now it's difficult for me to describe my Vulcanus year with positive or negative adjectives: there's been so many things going on, the personal experience has been so big, so full, so complex, that it is going to take me a while to assimilate and understand all of the things which took place there.

(Remember the post about the guy who spent 1,5 million yens in 48 hours with the mobile phone? Here's your man...and the mobile phone bill!!)

But I'm diverting from the main topic here. So, to sum up, everyone of us brought her or his own Japan to the meeting. Wether the talk was only about work, or about his traveling, or a mixture of both, every participant gave his own personal stroke to the whole Vulcanus painting. I'm not going to get into details, but there was this one "presentation" (more of a failed attempt to make a round table) which I found simplistic and completely unfair towards the Japanese. The controversy of its topic was such that, in order to be fair enough with the topic of discussion, the speaker should have taken a much more mature approach. Instead, for the last time, the gaijin card was played, and the speaker preferred to take the role of European conquistador who looks above the poor and uncivilized aborigines (a.k.a. , all the non-Western cultures). Though I could have agreed to some extent with part of its discourse, the way in which the topic was treated, as well as the way it was presented forces me to be against such opinions. Plus, I also think it was very inappropriate and rude to talk about such topics in front of the Japanese representatives of the host companies. The attendants expected to hear about Vulcanus in Japan, not about old clichés from the Japanese culture.

Differences appart, the presentations were followed after by the cocktail party, with plenty of food and drinks, and of course, speeches (Japanese love speeches way too much for me). And, in order to keep the tradition and close the circle, the whole ceremony could only finish with a splash of music and lights such as the ones of A-Life...

I wish everybody a happy trip back home Vulcanus! You guys know how to make time worth...