Excursions

My experience of visiting Japan and EIIRIS in May-July 2014

This was my third visit to Toyohashi Tech and around the tenth visit to Japan—so Japan has slowly become my home away from home. My most ever lasting impressions of Japan are the work culture and down to earth humility. The fact that every person, irrespective of the type of work they do, all are happy doing their work with the appropriate care and planning for producing the best results.

Being rural and located in an agricultural landscape, Toyohashi University of Technology has helped me to watch and observe the traditional Japanese living in places far away from busy city culture. It is amazing and has been a lesson for me to observe how meticulous each of the farmers are to cultivate the crops from each small or big pieces of land which they own around their houses.

In India, I come from the south Indian state called ‘Kerala’, which is a small state located just above Sri Lanka. Between Japan and Kerala, I have noticed many similarities. (i) Dance: Japan’s ‘Kabuki’ and Kerala’s ‘Kathakali’. Both, performed by men only, involve facial coloring, high in facial expressions. (ii) Traditional building and house architecture: Similar roof shapes, tiled roofs etc., probably due to lot of rain throughout the year at both places.

Coming to my experience and interaction with researchers at the Electronics-Inspired Interdisciplinary Research Institute (EIIRIS), the research environment, infrastructure with cutting edge technological equipment, interdisciplinary structure and the work culture have left an everlasting impression on me and surely will help me to continue to carry out collaborative research work between EIIRIS and IIT Delhi.

I am very hopeful that in the future, there will be even more exchange of ideas, students and researchers between Toyohashi Tech and IIT Delhi for the mutual benefit of each institute.

Joby Joseph, Professor of Physics IIT Delhi, New Delhi, India.