MONJA MIHAJLOVIC
I have officially experienced my first typhoon! I came to the university today to get some work done when one of the graduate students kindly informed me that there would be a typhoon that afternoon and that if I had to take a train home, I should leave earlier since they would probably be canceled in the afternoon. I think “typhoon” is a glorified word for tropical storm though, because it really did not seem like anything to worry about, but then again I was indoors and I really did not have a window to witness the storm for most of the night. Either way though, apparently there will be another one on Friday, so we will see what it entails for me! I hope that this means there will actually be good weather for my last few days in Japan next week.
I had an extremely interesting interview with a professor from the Graduate School of Economics today. He talked about his work with an organization he created, called Harasou. It is a Non-profit organization which works on reducing the waste from packaging in Japan. He works with undergraduate students who in 2007 began at a local grocery store and began studying different types of products and how much packaging they produce. They would then label which products contained the least amount of waste and basically label them to say that customers should pick the ones with least amount of packaging. They then studied to see whether they influenced the customer’s decisions by studying sales before and after. In additions to the studies they have events called the Harasou Café, where the students meet with housewives from the area to discuss with them how they feel about packaging and what they want to see done and whether they are willing to choose the products that contain the least amount of packaging. I found this to be extremely interesting and was happy to hear that Japanese women actually seem to be very interested in this, and find reducing waste to be of personal importance to them. Sometimes they even invite engineers from food companies to see how they feel about the issue and to talk with the women about what they want to see done. The program has expanded each year to include other grocery stores, and the biggest bread company in Japan is now reducing their waste and using the Harasou logo to spread the word. They even had a Harasou conference in Tokyo last year where they invited companies and the environmental government agencies to participate and spread the word, everyone seems to be on board. It was really inspiring! I think they said that the bread company alone has reduced their waste b over 14 tons.
I think that this weekend I will go to the Memorial Museum to learn more about what happened during the earthquake in 1995 and to see what they have done since to help prevent future such catastrophes.