Dnipropetrovsk Boys Try Kimono

A Ukrainian-Japanese cultural center, the first in Ukraine, has been opened in Dnipropetrovsk. As the Ambassador Extraordinary and Plenipotentiary of Japan to Ukraine, Kishiro Amae, said at the opening ceremony, the center’s goal is to spread information on the Country of the Rising Sun as well as to enable those who take interest in Japan to gain direct access to its rich culture.

The young people who come here can use a computerized language-teaching room to delve into the mysteries of Japanese phonetics, surf the Internet, and watch Japanese television programs. According to the center’s employees, Dnipropetrovsk residents willing to get in touch with oriental culture will be taught traditional Japanese arts, including such subtleties as tea ceremony.

Yet, as the opening of the Japanese center showed, Dnipropetrovsk is even now full of overseas culture aficionados. On the very threshold, Ambassador Amae was greeted with traditional bows by Ukrainian school and college students wearing the impeccable kimonos and sandals. While officially presenting the center, the ambassador himself took part in a Japanese language lesson, and when he saw aikido, karate, and judo fighters, he even promised them a training session in the homeland of ninjas and samurais.

It is no accident that a Japanese center was opened in Dnipropetrovsk. The ambassador said his country had been evincing great interest in Ukraine lately — first of all, because the Japanese economy is now thriving again after long stagnation, and the mechanical engineering market needs much metal. From this perspective, the Ukrainian steel-making sector is attractive owing to its high potential and reasonable prices of its products. Moreover, as the European Union expands it borders, the Japanese companies working on the European market have begun to take more concrete interest in Ukraine. Ambassador Amae revealed that as long as a year ago he had helped conduct a D(sseldorf workshop for Japanese businessmen on the problem of investments in Ukraine. This year, he wants to organize a trip of Japanese entrepreneurs to Dnipropetrovsk, the center of Ukrainian metallurgy and rocket-building. He advised Dnipropetrovsk industrialists to more actively open their representations abroad and establish closer contacts with Japanese capital which is also casting a look at the metallurgical capacity of Russia. “Those who will sooner find a common language will derive benefit,” the Japanese ambassador noted.