Photo Essays: Miyagi Team Project
Miyagi : Tokyo : Osaka : Hiroshima
Our visit to Miyagi (Shiogama and the islands along the coast) showed us how good it is to meet all kinds of different people. People love to be around other people, and without the connections we have with others, we wouldn’t survive. The community of the islands is like one big family. Everyone was kind to people from outside including us, and it really made us feel happy.
Thinking of all the kindnesses we received, we decided that “people are good after all,” and that “meeting new people is important and something to be thankful for.” In Korea, people say that if you meet someone three times by coincidence your destinies are somehow linked. We, too, will treasure the encounters we had on this trip and hope that one day we will be able to visit everyone again.
We have a tendency to judge people by appearances and the environments in which they were raised, but this has been a great opportunity to rethink that.
Our team was made up of Japanese and Koreans. We all had various prejudices before we met. These prejudices originated in problems between our two countries and the people we’d met before. While working on this project, in the process of selecting photos, for example, we had thorough exchanges on the differences in our values and ways of thinking, and the various ways in which our interpretations of the same thing can differ as a result of differences in our cultures. We greatly improved our understanding of each other. Moreover, as we looked at the problems between our two countries, we became aware of how important it is to learn and accept historical facts.
Through our photo shoot in Miyagi and exchange between our Japanese and Korean team members, we realized the importance of being considerate of each other’s feelings.
