On december 18th, I had last seminar in this year. We discussed about how to create the peaceful situations in post conflict countries, especially focusing on reconciliation within intrastate countries–Bosnia and Rwanda.
　　There is no way of constructing sustanable state without creating social (national) identity or social solidarity. In order to attain that goal, it is important to have mutual understanding through truthtelling between different ethnithities.
　　Although we had concreate discussion about this, I am not so sure about whether truthtelling is really working in post conflict area or not. I would rather think that it is quite difficult for people who were killing each other at that time to reach mutual understanding and it is only time to solve this problem, which always made us feel kind of hopeless.
　　Then, I went to the English department building where I was supposed to meet my swedish friend and practice our own languages–swedish and japanese. He had been living in Japan for two years. It is a bit difficult for him to speak fluent japanese but he could still understand some words and sentence including kanji.
　　He is not so tall and rather slim than muscle. I guess he is around thirty years old, having him with wallet by Armani. His appearance gives me the impression of dandy and gentleman. In fact, he is a kind of guy who never misss to care for others.
　　Still to me, he is filled with mysteries. He got married with japanese girl 5 years ago. He said, however, things between two doesn’t seem to go along well. He said that he wanted to think it over and let things go when he came back to japan. Things are not so easy as it seems.
　　As you may know it, Japan has one of the most strict rule when it comes to nationality. He can continue living in Japan as long as he is married with japanese. But if he once get divorced, there is no way for him to stay in japan except to get working visa or study visa. Of course, it is not so easy to get working visa, though.
　　By the way, we did practice swedish and japanese through the book ” Norwegian Wood” by Murakami Haruki. I am reading the just the part where Watanabe and Midori meet in a quiet restaurant near university. There are a lot of useful phrases in this book. I hope I could memorize all of words appeared in this book until June. In order to achieve that goal, I have to read at least two pages everyday.