HIMJA EXPO

Cultural education as a step to take on the world. That is a quest that we, the Japanese Language and Culture students should go with.  We learn cultures, we learn language, we learn how to apply the language in a working environment which culture is different from us. Students in Japanese department are highly expected to work in a Japanese working environment along with the cultures. Based on those, HIMJA Binus held a chain of educational events consist of cultural workshops and Japanese work field seminar. We call that HIMJA EXPO.

HIMJA EXPO was held on 28 – 31 May 2012, along with BINUS’ Global Cultural Week. Here is a glimpse on what was within the event.

OSHIBANA WORKSHOP

Oshibana is a traditional art where you put dry flowers and leaves in a carton paper, then you laminate and press it so it becomes a completely different image.

SEMINAR “CHALLENGES FOR THE JAPANESE LANGUAGE STUDENTS”

In the Japanese department of BINUS University, we have two specialization when students became third year students. They are Office Japanese and Translating Japanese. Generally, anyone from any specialization is able to work in any kind of field, not just from what they have specialized. But specifically, what kind of promising, challenging field do we have in both specialization? We decided to invite the Japanese people journalist from The Daily Jakarta Shimbun and an Indonesian dubber for the Japanese animation series, Mrs. Hanna Bahagiana (known for her role in Naruto, One Piece, Honey Bee Hutch, etc).  They talked about what kind of challenges, pluses and minuses of their field, and even did some dubbing workshops.

SHODO AND MANGA WORKSHOP

Shodo literally means “the way of writing”. Shodo is a Japanese calligraphy written on a special calligraphy paper. On this occasion,  the Japanese department’s native lecturer, Miss Natsumi Koda, gave direct explanations and taught people who were interested in Shodo although they don’t speak or write Japanese.

Manga is a term to say comic books from Japan. Manga, is already a big part of Indonesian child and youngsters. Nowadays, even those who already at their 30s still read Manga. At this time, there are many Mangaka (term to say Manga creator) from Indonesia, so being a Manga creator is also a promising and a challenging job for Japanese department students for there are Indonesian people who have made their debut in Japan. One of Indonesia’s famous Manga creator is SYS, affiliated with M&C! Comics (one of Indonesia’s biggest Manga publisher). We invited her to become one-day Manga instructor in this workshop. The workshop itself turned out to be crowded with many people, we even had to add some capacity to the workshop!