Progress Report

There was another meeting of the Kawasaki Representative Assembly for Foreign Residents on Sunday. Because the Open Meeting has a completely different format, this was the first normal meeting for over two months, with the result that most of us had more-or-less forgotten what we had been talking about. Fortunately, the secretariat had a summary for us, which made things a bit easier.

Two members of the assembly moved out of Kawasaki, and so had to resign. There aren’t many absolute requirements on members of the assembly, but being a foreign resident of Kawasaki is one of them. As a result, the first business of Sunday’s meeting was the formal appointment of their replacements. This was followed by three reports on what had happened in the Open Meeting, because the format meant that each representative only attended half of it; we had to be at the sub-meeting for our own subcommittee, and so missed what happened at the other one. This report let everyone catch up.

The next order of business was the progress report from the city. Every year, the Assembly makes concrete proposals, which the city is required to take seriously, and to report back on. The issues that the city has not judged to be dealt with are brought back every year. Some, like trying to persuade the national government to change the pension system, have been unresolved since the Assembly was established. The pension system problems might get solved by accident in the near future, because the government is planning a full-scale reform, but it won’t be anything to do with that recommendation. Others, addressed directly to the city, seem to be making progress. One, in particular, sounded from the report as though it will be completed by the time the city reports next year.

This is obviously a very important part of the process, but it did take quite a bit of time, leaving us without much time for discussion. Nevertheless, we did make progress. We wrapped up our discussion of immigration, agreeing to revisit it when we were deciding on what to make formal proposals. We also finished discussing the library system, and that probably won’t make it to a formal recommendation, because the current situation seems pretty good. We can recommend and donate foreign-language books to boost the holdings, but they aren’t at all bad already.

We then moved on to talk about support for foreign students. It seems that the budget crisis has led to scholarships being cut, but one representative commented that it would actually be more useful to provide support for finding relatively cheap places to live, and part-time work to help pay the tuition fees and living expenses. Another point raised was the importance of pastoral support. Going to university can be isolating at the best of times, even more so when you are going to a foreign country. The provision of somewhere to go and talk about problems, probably outside the university, would be useful, but a more positive approach was also called for. That is, it would be good if it was someone’s job to check up on the foreign students and make sure that they were coping and didn’t have any serious problems. When you are faced with serious problems and get depressed, it’s not uncommon to not think to look for help, so someone actively coming to check on you can be a literal life-saver.

Finally, we had time to quickly look at the documents for the housing support services provided by the city, ask for documents for the next meeting, and make our plans for next time, which include starting our consideration of the deeper problems we listed in our first meetings.

Actually, before our discussions we spent quite a lot of time talking about the process by which our annual reports and recommendations are put together. That didn’t advance our discussions, but it was important, because it means that everyone is now clear on what will happen when, and how these things are decided.

In any case, the assembly is still going well, and I think we will have useful recommendations to make by the end of our term in March 2012.


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