Prof. Tsuno, Dr. Nakano, Dr. Umemoto, Mr. Nakjima. Dr
Eiho, Dr. Miyazaki, Mr. Meshima, JICA Director General, Inatsug-san,
Yamamoto-san, Tachibana-san, Kawai-san. Friends Ladies and gentleman,
We are all here gathered coming from different
countries not only because you invited us or we are interested to come here in
Japan but because of a global concern that we face today. Our earth faces a lot
of problems due to human or our own activities, the earth needed an immediate
action.
Your experience about the Seto inland sea, how it was
polluted before and how it is now recovering today is very informative to us
and we hope that we can apply what we have learned to our respective countries.
Before we came here in Japan, we thought that we will
only have lectures and plant visits, but now we developed not only our minds
but also the socio-cultural aspects of our lives. We were able to make friends
from different countries especially among our group, within the JICA center,
with young elementary students, with our sensei, thru home visits and countless
encounters with other people here in Japan.
The cost of living here in Japan is expensive, I would
always remember my friends’ expression as “takai desu” but we would realize
that it is expensive because an additional value is added, that value is for
environmental protection.
During our two and a half month, stay here in Japan, we
sometimes feel that it is too long because we are missing our home and
sometimes we feel that it is too short because we find this country very
interesting, especially its environmental programs, we need to learn a lot and
it is short because we would be parting away from our new friends.
Tomorrow as we will all go home, we
will be bringing home the knowledge from the lectures and the experiences you
shared with us, bringing home tons of picture… but most of all we would be
bringing home many stories about Japan and our stories together about friends
that we will never forget
We would therefore like to give our
sincerest gratitude to all of you. To our Prof. Tsuno our program head, to
EMECS, to JICA, to JICE, to Yamamoto-san, to all our Sensei in our course and
our language classes. And most of all to Kawai-san our coordinator, who was
always with us to provide links to the lecturers if we have questions and
guided us from the start of the course., to Inatsugi-san who provided linkages
with different offices and sharing us many things about Japan, to Tachibana-san
who was also with us in the throughout course and helped us make adjustments
during our stay here.
There are many people to give thanks
to and we would never forget this trip in Japan. And hoping that we can will
meet again somewhere in this world.
Domo Arigato gozaimashita