Today I would like to introduce MITANI Nobuhiro to you - a person who simply cannot go unmentioned when it comes to exchanges between young people from Japan and Germany in the capital of Berlin!

Mrs. NAGAI Junko, 87 years young, has lived in Germany for many years and has broadcast German reports to Japan mainly on radio. It is not easy to summarize her long and dramatic life in a compact article. As Ms. NAGAI likes to say, it could be a "nagai article" - nagai is a homonym of "long" in Japanese. Be that as it may, I will try anyway.

Finally to Japan! A big dream for many young adults in Germany. In addition to the Japanese-German Center Berlin (JDZB), the German-Japanese Youth Society (DJJG) also runs exchange programs. These are supported 100 percent voluntarily, take place annually in Germany and Japan and are aimed at 18- to 30-year-olds.

In the "Sustainablility Talks", our YLF-alumni now meet regularly to shed light on sustainability from the perspective of Japan and Germany. The topic of the first meeting was "Sustainable Mobility".

The Japanese-German youth exchange is close to the heart of JDZB Secretary General Julia MUENCH. In this article, which also appeared in the current edition of our quartely publication echo, she appeals to join all available forces in order to create even more attention for existing exchange programs.

On June 9, for the first time since the beginning of the Corona crisis one year and five months ago, a concert took place at the JDZB. It was streamed live. In this blog post, Deputy Secretary General KIYOTA Tokiko recounts the events of this memorable day.

Have you ever heard of the film "Sushi in Suhl", which was released in Germany in 2012 and is based on a true story? This article is about the main protagonist of the film, Rolf ANSCHUETZ, who ran a Japanese restaurant in the former DDR. The author is Gero SEIFERT, who was president of the German-Japanese Society Halle in Saxony-Anhalt from 1998 to 2020 and was in contact with ANSCHÜTZ before he died.