Leadership & Technology Management Study Trip in Japan
Tuesday, January 02, 2007
Last December, some of our NTU students took part in a 6 day exchange trip to Tokyo, Japan. Here is an account by our president, Peidong:
We visited two universities, Soka University and Waseda University. Soka University impressed all of us with their friendliness and hospitality. The students prepared very fruitful discussion sessions and we enjoyed interacting with them. The university campus was extremely beautiful and provided a very condusive environment for learning. There were very comfortable lounges, reading rooms and libraries for students to do reading and learn language etc.
We had a wonderful and fun session at Soka University discussing about leadership qualities and our role models. We also discussed how leadership differs between Japan, a typical Asian country and Singapore, a more westernized one. We also had the chance to try some hands-on activities in teams for a manufacturing competition. Through that, we were able to learn how to work better and more efficiently in a team and produce better results.
The other university we visited, Waseda University, has a longer history than NTU and we strongly felt the long history of traditions and academic atmosphere on our campus tour. We agreed that this is rarely felt in NTU, perhaps because NTU is newer, therefore Waseda University really gave us another perspective.
Other than our campus tours, we also visited 2 companies, Olympus and NTT DoCoMo. NTT DoCoMo was the most impressive event through the trip. We were impressed by two major points: first, the advanced technology of the mobile phone industry in Japan. In Japan, a 3G phone is almost a necessary for everyone by which they can watch TV, download music, etc etc. In the company show room, the company also showed us some new concepts of products for the years to come. The kind of creativity really amazed everyone of us. Secondly, in the show room, we were attended by several extremely friendly and graceful attendants who showed us around. The spirit and quality of service is so amazing that we believe that probably we could not find that any where else in the world. NTT really demonstrate how the technology is being managed and transformed into industry and business.
Overall, the trip was a tremendous success through which all of us had fun touring tokyo and learning about leadership and technology management. Most importantly, this trip served to deepen the friendship between our universities and also the two countries.
More Photos can be found at http://ntuwaseda2006.myphotoalbum.com/