By Jeff Jenkins

The Blue Star of Life Ceremony was an extremely educational experience in both my career and knowledge of the U.S-Japan relationship.

After, the formal portion of the event at the Kennedy Center (in which I gave a major speech), I could talk with the university students about their careers and what they wish to pursue after college and their responses were very insightful. Especially Masa-san’s, because his major is in international relations, which is the same major that I wish to go into for college. During our discussion, I realized that we all had the same dream and that was to make the world a fair and equal place for all, not just in Japan and America, but the entire world. Our bond has the potential to not only benefit both countries, but the entire globe. If we’re able to continue similar practices such as the Blue Star Ceremony, where the youth from both countries can sit down and exchange ideas, it’d be a major step in the right direction to strengthening our bond. Throughout the two group discussions I could hear a lot of interesting ideas on how we could as a group find ways to make our societies better, either economically or socially, even more so because times are changing, and new innovations are being made that could lead to more problems for society.

For example, my group’s topic was about “Technology.” We talked about how robots (AI) could coexist and benefit mankind, especially since robots are starting to become the future of the world. We discovered that it’d be nearly impossible for robots to coexist with humans, especially in workplaces, because robots would kick a lot of people out of their jobs and that would create other global problems, due to the amount of people that would be poor. And this required us to think of various laws and regulations that would prevent such things from happening, such as creating new laws that governments would have to follow to balance out the rapid increase in technology and find a middle ground between robots and humans.

We also discussed how technology could benefit educational systems around the world and provide a fair and free opportunity to gain education. For example, Taku-san explained to us an invention called “MOOC.” It’s an invention that allows people to listen in on college lectures for FREE and it’s available anywhere and for anyone to use. However, people must have access to the materials such as laptops and Wifi, which could also be provided for free, especially for less developed countries around the world that don’t get the proper attention needed. Together we can provide the support needed to give everyone a fair chance at an educated and fair life.

Overall, this event helped me better understand the role that I play in the U.S Japan relationship as the upcoming youth, who’ll one day make big decisions that could potentially affect the world forever.