Glocal Diary for Local-to-Local

Saat ini, Indonesia berusaha untuk menarik penanaman modal asing (PMA) sebanyak mungkin ke Indonesia. Untuk itu, berbagai kemudahan prosedur perizinannya diteruskan. BKPM mengharapkan banyak perusahaan China yang relokasi ke Indonesia. Saya bisa memahami apa yang diinginkan oleh Indonesia. Memang PMA dibutuhkan untuk pembangunan perekonomian Indonesia, meskipun saya pikir PMDN juga sebenarnya memiliki banyak kemampuan untuk berkontribusinya. Sebaiknya perlu ada dorongan agar PMDN yang berinvesitasi juga. Dari kacamata orang asing, mengapa harus PMA berinvestasi ke tempat yang tidak diminati oleh PMDN. Indonesia masih terlalu mengharapkan peranan PMA seperti dulu. Dibandingkan love-call dari Indonesia terhadap PMA, saya masih merasa tanda tanya bagaimana seriusnya penarikan PMA. Pasalnya, banyak teman orang Jepang komplain begitu sulitnya untuk mengambil visa kerja. Persyaratan dan prosedurnya makin ketat. Sering berubah. Sulit sekali mendapat visa, katanya. Sedangkan, pengawasan terhad...

Last week, I watched the TV program "Zen and the 21st Century" in the morning. Various important words were spoken. In particular, I thought about how Zen and meditation are different. Meditation has taken root in Western societies thanks to people from Western countries who have learned Zen. What is the purpose of meditation there? I often hear the word 'mindfulness', but it seems to be a way of life that values ​​this moment right now. It may be a story about how to live like yourself, in a sense, how to live your true self. However, it might be different from Zen. Zen opens yourself, opens yourself in the relationship with the surrounding things, releases yourself into the environment, so the boundary between yourself and the surrounding environment disappears, it connects with nature and the environment. According to the TV program, that was the story of the basic idea of ​​Zen. In other words, meditation and the mindfulness are considered to be what you do and ho...

Salah satu minat saya adalah kasih kuliah di Indonesia. Selama ini, saya mendapat kesempatan kasih kuliah tamu di beberapa universitas di Indonesia, termasuk Universitas Indonesia (Jakarta), Universitas Gadjamada (Yogyakarta), Universitas Brawijaya (Malang), Universitas Hasanuddin (Makassar), Universitas Sam Ratulangi (Manado), Universitas Muhammadiyah Malang, Universitas Ciputra (Surabaya), dll. Pada tahun 2019, saya kasih kuliah tamu di Fakultas Ekonomi dan Bisnis Universitas Brawijaya, Malang, dengan tema Desentralisasi Fiskal dan Keuangan Daerah: Negatf dan Positif (29 April 2019), Sejarah Pembangunan Ekonomi Modern Jepang: Perbandingan dengan Indonesia (30 April 2019), dan Strategi Pengembangan Daerah: Pendekatan Gerakan OVOP (One Village One Product Movement) untuk konteks Pembangunan Daerah Indonesia (2 Mei 2019). Setelah selesai kuliah tamu di Universitas Brawijaya (29 April 2019) Selain itu, saya kasih kuliah tamu di Universitas Sulawesi Tenggara, Kendari, dengan tema Kewi...

In the United States, the death of George Floyd, a black man in Minneapolis, triggered demonstrations and the unrest has spread across the country, but it shows no signs of ending. The officer who choked him to death was a troubled man who had been the subject of 18 complaints in the past 18 years. The remaining three officers who were with this officer and did not stop the act were also charged. One of those three men was from the Hmong, a minority group in Southeast Asia. He was a man who came to the United States and became a policeman since he had cooperated with the U.S. military during the Vietnam War. Shortly after this incident, shops and stores owned by Hmong people were burned down by protesters. I didn't know the above story until I read an Indonesian newspaper. I wonder if it would have been reported in the Japanese newspapers. The current protest movement against black discrimination in the USA has another inherent sense of racism in it. We need to keep a close eye on ...

Kemarin (13 Juni 2020), ada kontak lewat WA dari seorag teman saya di Batam. Kalau tidak salah, saya ketemu beliau di Batam pada tahun 2010. Sangat bersyukur karena beliau masih ingat saya meski sudah hampi sepuluh tahun yang lalu. Pada tahun 2010, saya mengunjungi Batam untuk menyelenggarakan suatu Seminar Pengembangan Produk UMKM untuk ekspor ke Jepang atas nama expert JETRO (Japan External Trade Organization). Saat itu, saya bertugas di Jakarta sebagai penasihat pengembangan UMKM untuk KADIN Indonesia. Kali ini, beliau minta nasihat tentang strategi pengembangan Kabupaten Anambas, Provinsi Kepulauan Riau. Saya sendiri belum pernah ke Anambas, maka saya minta waktu untuk mempelajarinya dari bahan informasi seperti media dan internet yang saya bisa dapat di Tokyo. Sekaligus saya minta beliau mengirim bahan informasi tentang Anambas jika ada. Besoknya, beliau langsung mengirim dokumen PDF dengan berisi 97 slide PPT kepada saya dengan WA. Akhirnya, saya harus membaca dokumen tersebut. L...

Today, East Japan including Tokyo has just entered the season of tsuyu , a rainy month, until the middle of July.  Tsuyu  had been characterized as continuous long but small rain almost every day. But, in recent years, tsuyu  has become short but heavy rain in several days, as like as we experience in tropical areas. Of course, the average temperature in Japan is warmer and warmer maybe because of global warming. I feel Japan has now almost semi-tropical climate from spring to autumn. In my house in Tokyo, there is a small garden with several kinds of flowers. Flowers are changed and changed from one to another in a year. We enjoy cherry blossoms in March-April. Azalea in May. Now, in June, we start to enjoy hydrangea ( Ajisai in Japanese). We have several kinds of hydrangea in our garden. There are several trees of pomegranate or zakuro in Japanese. We found two small pomegranate fruits in the tree. Fortunately, we met a yellow-bodied dragonfly that took a rest on...

Kali ini saya sedikit cerita waktu saya pertama kali mulai tinggal di Jakarta pada Agustus 1990. Saya tinggal di Jakarta selama dua tahun sampai Agustus 1992. Ini pertama kali berdomosili dengan KIMS (saat ini KITAS) di Indonesia. Saya tinggal di Jakarta sebagai overseas research fellow dari kantor saya, Institute of Developing Economies (IDE), Tokyo, Jepang. IDE menugaskan kepada staf peneliti untuk tinggal di negara sasaran penelitiannya. Sebagai staf peneliti Indonesia, saya memilih tinggal di Indonesia selama dua tahun. Waktu itu, status saya di Indonesia sebagai mahasiswa S-2 UI. Biasanya, overseas research fellow menyewa rumah sendiri dan mobil sendiri seperti diplomat atau staf-staf perusahaan Jepang yang dikirim dari kantor pusat di Jepang. Namun, sebagai  calon ahli Indonesia di kantor saya, saya merasa harus berusaha tahu dan mengerti secara dalam dan benar dengan penuh pergaulan dengan masyarakat Indonesia sehari-hari. Maka, saya sengaja mencari indikos di wilayah Jakart...

Why are there fewer corona deaths in Japan than in Western countries? When asked so, Japan's deputy prime minister Mr. Taro Aso replied that it was because the "cultural standard" is different. "Cultural standard"? He said that the "cultural standard# of Japan is higher than other countries. This was the result of voluntary restraint of Japanese people, without the government taking any strong measures. As it say, Japanese people have higher "cultural standard" than other countries. It is true that the number of corona deaths in Japan is much lower than in the West. However, it is actually one of the highest compared to other Asian countries. If compared with other Asian countries, we can say that Japan has lower "cultural standard". I remember two things. First, the reason Japan started World War II was the idea of a superior Japan liberating a lagging Asia. It was said that civilized Japan had to teach and guide other Asia that had not...

Mungkin ini saya perlu memberitahukan kepada teman-teman orang Indonesia. Ini adalah refleksi pandangan sebagian masyarakat Jepang tentang Indonesia. Beberapa hari yang lalu, ada suatu posting twitter tentang sejarah Indonesia dan Jepang. Jika ada yang bisa baca bahasa Jepang, silahkan membacanya secaralangsung.     Posting Twitter tentang Sejarah Indonesia dan Jepang (bahasa Jepang) ********** Awalnya mulai dari persoalan ujian di suatu universitas swasta. Isinya mahasiswa/i diminta bikin kesimpulan dari tulisan tentang sejarah Indonesia-Jepang. Tulisan tersebut termasuk pendidikan sejarah di Indonesia yang mengatakan bahwa penjajahan tentara Jepang selama 3,5 tahun bisa dikatakan lebih berat daripada penjajahan Belanda. Ditambahnya, pendidikan sejarah di Jepang tidak begitu banyak mengajar apa yang Jepang melakukan di Asia Tenggara termasuk Indonesia pasa waktu Perang Dunia II. Tidak mengajar juga tentang penjajahan tentara Jepang terhadap wilayah Indonesia. Mestinya mahasis...

I myself have worked in Indonesian studies for 35 years, and during that time, I have made efforts to deepen my experience and expertise in regional/community development in my own way for 25 years. Therefore, when people ask me what I specialize in, I try to answer that there are two main areas: Indonesian studies and regional/community development. I became strongly aware of regional/community development in 1995, when I started to work as a regional development policy advisor for Eastern Indonesia. Prior to that, for two years from 1993, I had studied whether Japan's industrial policy would be effective for the industrial development of Southeast Asian countries. Just then, the World Bank published a report called "The East Asian Miracle," which drew attention to the fact that the World Bank, which had kept a market fundamentalist stance, had given a certain amount of credit to Japanese-style industrial policy. In Japan's industrial policy, there was a discussion a...