Hello, everyone!

This is Francesca, and in this project I was the 責任者 of the group 15. Our group’s topic was ‘gender’, and first of all I want to thank you all for the great feedback we have received during the past few weeks. There were many people who joined our group during 自由会話 and who shared a comment below our posts, and I really appreciate it! I am very grateful that we have been given the opportunity to participate in this project. I am one of those students who were unable to leave for Japan due to COVID-19, so I was very happy to have the possibility to meet and talk to Japanese people or people who share the same passion for Japan as me.

I felt very lucky about the topic that has been assigned to us, because ‘gender’ nowadays is a much debated and sensitive issue and I was very interested in listen other people’s opinion about it. Although the language has often been an obstacle to understanding and speaking, the discussions we have had over the past few weeks were always stimulating and interesting. They made me realize that unfortunately stereotypes related to gender are still many all over the world, and because of these a lot of people are still unable to express their identity freely, and the events that are happening these days in Italy linked to the law against homotransphobia are proof of this. But luckly all the opinions that I heard in this project were intelligent and open-minded, so I’m positive about a change.

Finally, this project helped me a lot on various aspects. First of all, my japanese skills improved, especially in the spoken language. But the thing that enriched me the most as a person was being able to discuss and listen to the ideas and opinions of many new people. I have been able to collaborate with amazing people, who have always been able to stimulate me and make me reflect, without ever treating the issues superficially. And most of all I wanted to thank the girls in my group, with whom I had a great time. The thing that perhaps I missed the most about the exchange was being able to meet new people and learn about their stories, so the thing I am most grateful to this project for is that it made it possible.

Thank you for the good time, 皆さん!