#2-4 Going, going... [Aug 27th 2011]
Members:
We gathered at Marunouchi on this week for the first time. Marunouchi is the most refined business district in Tokyo on weekdays and also fashionable place especially on weekend. People gather there to eat fine meals, go shopping, enjoy arts and do exercises. We had two new comers on this week’s study group. Kanno who is working for a foreign-affiliated financial firm, found our study group by net surfing. He searched a group of reading the economist and checked over 20 websites and finally reached our website. Saito is a friend of Ogawa and Shimada. We joined a student organization named AIESEC during our college life. He is good at English because he went to do an internship in India for a year.
We picked up and discussed 7 articles on 6 topics. Follow up our discussion briefly. First, we discussed two articles about a new trend of immigration. In the economic crisis like we are suffering right now, emigration declines because economic decline takes their jobs. The opinion of the article is clear on its title, “Let them come”. They insist that even economic crisis continues to burden their nation’s employment, immigrants bring skills, energies, ideas and willingness to work that boost productivity and encourage innovation. Especially because immigration becomes temporary and there is global competition from the East for them, the article insist that the West should be more welcoming to migrants. We first brought international students’ case we experienced in our life one by one. But that’s not a serious case because they don’t take many jobs from local people but bring merits much more. So we shifted to discuss the matter of workers.
The next topic politics in Japan was written before Noda was elected as a prime minister. What were interesting on this article were phrases for introducing candidates of the election. Mr. Maehara was called a train spotter. Mr. Kaieda was a cabinet minister who burst into tears in parliament. Mr. Noda was somebody who exonerates war criminals. We enjoyed such ironical ideas.
Then, we changed a topic and discussed the issue of African poor Internet access reading the example of Sierra Leone. Our discussion tends to incline to Japan’s case because we are Japanese but I think we should focus on foreign issues much more. To focus on foreign issues and discuss is hard to do because we should imagine things that have nothing to do with us.
Lastly, we picked up two articles from Finance & Economics section. “Behind the bald figures” is a humorous article aiming to find another BicMac index. Many unreliable but innovative ideas that indicate economic outlook are presented on the article. “Changing target” is a more serious article focusing on the policy of a central bank. They set inflation target on their monetary policy. The article presents the idea of changing the target to nominal GDP and verifies it. They conclude the idea is questionable but such a challenging idea is interesting to know.
The café we gathered this week opens at 10 am so some of us waited outside in a few minutes. Inside the café was comfortable and relaxing. We ate lunch together in Marubill near from the café. Most of us are strangers each other so we introduced ourselves during lunch. My aim is to manage this study group properly and attract enthusiastic people to make a positive impact on a society.
4th Sep, 2011 Marunouchi DEAN DELICA
Ono, Ogawa, Iino, Nagao, Tahara, Tomozawa, Sotani, Kanno, Shimada and Saito.
10 people gathered this week.
Articles we discussed:
[Leaders][Immigration] Let them come
[Briefing][Libya] The birth of free Libya
[Asia][Politics in Japan] Sixth time lucky?
[Middle East and Africa] www.africa.slow
[International] Moving out, on and back
[Finance & Economics][Alternative indicators] Behind the bald figures
[Finance & Economics][Economic focus] Changing target
We gathered at Marunouchi on this week for the first time. Marunouchi is the most refined business district in Tokyo on weekdays and also fashionable place especially on weekend. People gather there to eat fine meals, go shopping, enjoy arts and do exercises. We had two new comers on this week’s study group. Kanno who is working for a foreign-affiliated financial firm, found our study group by net surfing. He searched a group of reading the economist and checked over 20 websites and finally reached our website. Saito is a friend of Ogawa and Shimada. We joined a student organization named AIESEC during our college life. He is good at English because he went to do an internship in India for a year.
We picked up and discussed 7 articles on 6 topics. Follow up our discussion briefly. First, we discussed two articles about a new trend of immigration. In the economic crisis like we are suffering right now, emigration declines because economic decline takes their jobs. The opinion of the article is clear on its title, “Let them come”. They insist that even economic crisis continues to burden their nation’s employment, immigrants bring skills, energies, ideas and willingness to work that boost productivity and encourage innovation. Especially because immigration becomes temporary and there is global competition from the East for them, the article insist that the West should be more welcoming to migrants. We first brought international students’ case we experienced in our life one by one. But that’s not a serious case because they don’t take many jobs from local people but bring merits much more. So we shifted to discuss the matter of workers.
The next topic politics in Japan was written before Noda was elected as a prime minister. What were interesting on this article were phrases for introducing candidates of the election. Mr. Maehara was called a train spotter. Mr. Kaieda was a cabinet minister who burst into tears in parliament. Mr. Noda was somebody who exonerates war criminals. We enjoyed such ironical ideas.
Then, we changed a topic and discussed the issue of African poor Internet access reading the example of Sierra Leone. Our discussion tends to incline to Japan’s case because we are Japanese but I think we should focus on foreign issues much more. To focus on foreign issues and discuss is hard to do because we should imagine things that have nothing to do with us.
Lastly, we picked up two articles from Finance & Economics section. “Behind the bald figures” is a humorous article aiming to find another BicMac index. Many unreliable but innovative ideas that indicate economic outlook are presented on the article. “Changing target” is a more serious article focusing on the policy of a central bank. They set inflation target on their monetary policy. The article presents the idea of changing the target to nominal GDP and verifies it. They conclude the idea is questionable but such a challenging idea is interesting to know.
The café we gathered this week opens at 10 am so some of us waited outside in a few minutes. Inside the café was comfortable and relaxing. We ate lunch together in Marubill near from the café. Most of us are strangers each other so we introduced ourselves during lunch. My aim is to manage this study group properly and attract enthusiastic people to make a positive impact on a society.
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