[Original posted in Hatena Blog by Yui SHOJI, 2020 Public Relations Intern (September 9, 2020); Translated by J. Tsuchiya/H. Lai]
A scene of the interview: Kazuto (left) and Yui (right).
Hello, everyone! Nice to see you! My name is Yui. I am an intern from Public Relations (PR) department of JVC. We will start doing Intern Interview 2020 in this blog! I’m so excited to ask our new interns what questions they might have before they became an intern here. I hope you will get to know more about them through these interviews.
This time, I interviewed Kazuto KANAOKA, another Intern from PR department. We’ve been working together for about half a year, and I found that he can naturally make others feel relaxed when he is near around …! Besides, he is also interested in beauty care, so I took some recommendations from him about skin-care products like facial masks. Yay!
I interviewed him online this whole time. It’s quite unusual, but everything seems unusual this year. Hope you can enjoy it. Let’s see what will happen!
Can you briefly introduce yourself?
Hello! My name is Kazuto. I am studying in the first year in a graduate school and major in international development. My specific research is about ethnic integration and conflict theories. I have been interested in international politics and psychology for a long time and I often read books about these areas. I also love to search about cosmetics and skincare goods to know what kind of products exists in the world, and wonder what effects they have on skin after I read product descriptions. I occasionally buy some products if they seem good.
What made you interested in international cooperation?
When I was a junior student in university, I saw an interview for Mr. Kenro Oshidari, who is the former Regional Director for Asia of the World Food Programme (WFP). I found the international cooperation is pretty cool and interesting. Then I stopped job hunting and decided to study international cooperation in graduate school. Luckily, I was accepted by the school I want to go the most.
I heard that you wanted to work as a PR intern in JVC, but why?
Before I became a university junior student, I didn’t know anything about international cooperation. But since I got interested in it and started studying about it, I knew there are many things happening in the world and so many people are struggling with it. And I knew, a difference can be made when people just know about it even without doing anything for it. I think living without knowing those things is sad.
I chose PR department because I want to help others to know about such reality and activities by using my experience in international cooperation.
I see, the desire to let more people know about those activities motivated you to work as a PR intern, right?
Half a year has passed since you started to work here as an intern, how do you like working for JVC?
I’m thankful for working here and I can do things I want to do. It’s an organization in which there are so many supports, occasions, and opportunities, more than I could imagine before. I am sure this job is worthy of working. After every orientation*, I review what I’ve learned about JVC’s activities. Some things might never interest me if I didn’t attend such orientations. And I learned a lot from firsthand stories.
[*Interns not only do works assigned to them, but also attend various orientations illustrating the mission and objectives of JVC.]
Are there any country or region you got interested in through the orientation?
Yes, Afghanistan and Palestine. I’m curious about what people live on in the two countries. I want to know what they enjoy and what they want to do in their unforeseeable future. If there is a chance, I’d love to go there.
How do you like working as a PR intern?
I found that the PR job is a little bit difficult because even though the information is released, it’s not certain whether the information will reach to the aimed receivers. I’ve been seeking for a good way to send information that can interest people. I’m trying to find out the best way and I’ll keep doing it.
Do you have some specific things that you want to do from now?
In JVC, I’d like to attend events and give feedback about them. I’m not a creative person, but I’m well suited for steady work. Writing about not only what I’ve seen but also what I’ve learned from those events is what I want to do from now.
Privately, I’d like to meet my friends. Many of my good friends now live far away, so I didn’t meet them recently. Before the COVID pandemic, I used to have a tight schedule of meeting friends outside my classes, and I did some part-time works in my spare time.
Yes, I know, because you wrote that your hobby is “chatting with friends”, right? (He responded to a survey before this interview.) Your time used to spend with friends is a big part in your personal life, I guess.
That’s right. Oh, another hobby of mine is training buttock muscles. I’ve heard that training your buttock muscles makes you shaped good and look younger. I am doing something between training and exercise every day for about forty minutes, and I want to keep working out.
Oh, I can see the beauty angel* things now. Personally, I cannot continue my daily thirty-seconds workout for more than two days. He has a strong willpower, right?
[*He is known as a make-up freak among JVC interns. If you have any cosmetic problems, why not asking him?]
Let’s change topics. Do you have something that you cherish in your life?
Yes, my motto is a saying from Ms. Ugaki, a former announcer for TBS TV. She said: “You have your hell, but others have theirs, too.”
Sometimes I may feel I am the worst victim in the world, but maybe others also have the same feelings. When I wondered how I can coexist with this liberal world, I get to the conclusion that maybe I can’t live side-by-side with it. I realized that this world is a home to a huge number of people who are not willing to change their mind for any sake.
The word “empathy” implies that you need to understand others, but there is no “empathy” between you and others unless they also understand you. It is a bidirectional concept. I think we can reduce conflicts to some extent if both can understand each other, even when they are not deeply empathetic.
And it’s the same when it comes to human relationship. What we need is not necessarily empathy but willingness to understand each other. I am living with this idea, hoping it can help me to get rid of negative feelings.
There are as many pieces of “justice” as many people. People are the same, I think, people all try hard to do what they think the best.
During the self-restraint period, what did you try to do or try not to?
I tried to get correct information and tried not to be swayed by the news. I try to think what the fact is. Data comes from everywhere, so it is necessary to evaluate information first by oneself before listening to professionals or intellectuals. New ideas or opinions will come out from this process, I think.
I see, as we live in the world of excessive information, it is important to find out the facts by listening to various opinions of people from every walk of life, without being influenced by prevailing numbers and words. Because each of us believes different things, what matters is believing what you believe and at the same time accepting each other, that is, being empathetic that we mentioned earlier.
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What do you think of the interview? I hope you enjoyed it!
Kazuto has his own pace. He seems to comfort your heart like saying “Hey, everything’s all right. Take a deep breath and relax.” He values friendships so much and I think his friends must be happy. I’d love to work with him, imagining how we can work on PR and international cooperation better in the rest of internship period.
Thanks for reading! I will be so happy if you can leave a comment or put a bookmark here! Well, guess who will be our next interviewee!? Don’t miss it! See you!
