Eric's Beijing Diary

I had asked Piano to help me organize a (Chinese) New Year's party for the Software College interns who are working in the Tokyo area. Piano and I went to Yokohama at about 3pm and met some of the other students, then we all headed for Chinatown. As you may know, Yokohama is a very international city, due in large part to the harbor. Speaking of which, I saw something sitting in the harbor that I had not seen since I was three years old: The Hikawa Maru. I lived on this ship for a couple weeks on my first trip to America a few weeks after my third birthday. I remember getting off the ship in Seattle (at least I think it was Seattle), but for the life of me, I can't remember the rest of the voyage. Don't know why. The ship is basically a tourist attraction, now. It is closed for maintenance, but next time I am here, perhaps I will go there for dinner, or something, if it doesn't cost too much.

We had a pretty good sized group this year, close to 20 people. The Software College at Beihang University in Beijing has a major called "Japanese Software." Students of this major usually study Japanese for three to four hours a day for a year along with their other classes. This study is followed by one year in Tokyo doing an internship with a Japanese company. Piano did a good job of setting things up. We went to a barbeque type place, where you have a fire and grill in the middle of the table. We would lay the meat strips--lots and lots of meat--on the gril, and then dip them in a special sauce, and...down the hatch. Spring festival is a time of the year when students who are not able to go home could be inclined to get a little homesick, so I wanted to encourage them, and let them know that we are proud of the work they are doing. Japan is experiencing a rather severe shortage of professionals right now. They just imported 500 nurses from the Philippines. One of my undergraduate students at the university had contemplated entering the Japanese Software program as a graduate, but a Japanese company convinced her to give up graduate school for now, and come directly to Japan. She doesn't speak Japanese, but they are going to put her through a three month course this summer. Japan is a very good option for Chinese software engineers right now, because Japan has some of the largest software companies in the world, and it is easier for them to train engineers from China than from other non-kanji cultures.