IJA Bounenkai End of Year Party 2023 | Photo Gallery
On 30th November the IJA members and friends joined our annual Bounenkai End of the Year Party which was hosted at one of the most popular and authentic Japanese restaurants in Dublin – Daruma.
On 30th November the IJA members and friends joined our annual Bounenkai End of the Year Party which was hosted at one of the most popular and authentic Japanese restaurants in Dublin – Daruma.
To celebrate summer and all the beautiful seasonal flowers, the IJA Council organised a beautiful, seasonal Summer Ikebana Workshop for our members. The workshop was presented by the IJA member and Ikebana instructor Mrs. Tomoko Ozaki on 26th August.
Workshop participants had a unique opportunity to learn about Ikebana traditions and principles, make their own Ikebana arrangement and change the way how they think about floral displays. We would like to thank everyone who attended this event and hope it was a great experience and learning opportunity for everyone.
A wonderful surprise for our workshop participants was the visit by H.E. Mr. Norio Maruyama, Ambassador of Japan to Ireland, and Ms. Keiko Nakata, Embassy of Japan in Ireland.
We would like to thank Eva Reavley, IJA Council, for all her work and support to make this event such a success, and our event hosts – Oomi Travel – for welcoming us at their cosy and beautiful office, and looking after us during this event, and Gopan Bakery for very tasty Japanese baked treats.
A Hybrid Japanese Typewriter project developed by Stratford College 3rd year student Joseph Mudrak was among finalists of the 2023 BT Young Scientist & Technology Exhibition.
Joseph (14) has always loved to discover new and challenging things to learn. He learned to read when he was two years old, and by the time he was ten, he was teaching himself Chinese characters. He loves learning new languages and currently speaks Polish, English, and Irish, and is learning Japanese, French, and German. Joseph is also a pianist and has won a few competitions in Ireland. He is currently doing RIAM Grade 7 at the age of 14.
His passion has always been languages, different cultures of the world, music and programming. Joseph is also very interested in Japanese culture and language, and it is his dream to visit Japan one day.
After starting to learn Japanese at home by himself, he realised that Japanese is a very complex language, with thousands of different characters, which led Joseph to wondered how a hypothetical typewriter would work with such a writing system. After finding out about what currently exists and is available, he decided to make an electric version that fits all the characters used in Japanese onto a standard QWERTY keyboard. There are still industries where typewriters are in use, and this project is a robust and easy-to-use solution.
There were more than 1700 projects submitted for the competition of the 2023 BT Young Scientist & Technology Exhibition. The judges chose 550 for the final exhibition at RDS, Dublin, and Joseph’s project ‘エレキタイプ – A Hybrid Japanese Typewriter’ was among the finalists.
‘I very much enjoyed talking to you about your project on a Hybrid Japanese Typewriter. I had no idea how difficult it is to type Japanese and I was surprised by the complexity of the problem. You presented your project with clarity and confidence. Well done!’ – Dr. Peter Taylor, Judge at the BTYSTE 2023
Micheál Martin, Tánaiste, Eamon Ryan, Minister for the Environment, Climate, Communications and Transport, and Ivana Bacik, Leader of the Labour Party visited exhibition at RDS, Dublin and showed interest in Joseph’s project.
Joseph also had a wonderful opportunity to meet with Ms. Keiko Nakata, Embassy of Japan in Ireland, who was delighted to learn about his invention and received a gift book about Joseph’s project.