An eChallenge...

Over the holidays, while others went away to Japan, some of my friends and I busied ourselves on an eChallenge... We were required to submit a concept proposal to the University of Adelaide and guess what? We made it to the semi-finals and all the way to the finals! And even though we didn't win, this was a fantastic experience! So who were we, you ask?

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Recognise us??

A Parliament Experience

Around three weeks ago, I received a phone call from Temasek Polytechnic, inviting me to attend a Parliament talk. It sounded pretty interesting and it was a rare opportunity to visit the Parliament, so I agreed. And I would like to say, this is definitely not a wasted trip.
These were some rules given to me before the visit.

• Students are to bring along their student ez-link cards or NRICs to exchange for the security passes.
• Students are to come dressed in office/work wear, i.e. no bermudas, jeans, shorts or sandals.
• Students and Staff are strictly advised not to bring bags. Carry only what you need.
• Staff will collect all handphones on arrival and deposit them at the security counter after security checks at the public lobby.

On the 14th September, was the trip itself. The bus took off at around 2pm and travelled through the KPE tunnel. During the ride, Mr Edmund from SAA told us some interesting facts about MP. He had gotten us engaged by sharing with us the MP’s salary. The pay was around $8000 per month however, the workload is heavy. An MP has to work 7 days a week, 24 hours a day. Most importantly, MP has to solve all the problems that the citizens have stated. He also said that, in order to become an MP, an individual has to start off from the most basic role in an organization (eg Grassroot) and work hard to be promoted and recognized.

When we reached the Parliament, we had to go through bag checking counter twice, surrendered our handphones and NRIC in exchange for an entry pass. Before we enter the Parliament room, there was another checkpoint. The whole process is somewhat similar to that of the Airport.
Finally we entered the Parliament room which is located at a higher ground than the actual one. Anyone who enters or leaves the room is obligated to bow to the Speaker of the Parliament. We bowed and sat. The talk had already begun. LCDs were everywhere in the room capturing the image of the current speaker. There were also earphones inside the armrests which allow us to switch from one language to another and these languages were translated by several humans, on spot!

Just a side note: When the Speaker and the Mace are not present, the talk will be nullified. Each seating was allocated to individual MP and Ministers for the convenience of electronic voting.
The topic varied. There were talks about private educations and there were talks about the casino in IR. Each speech lasted for quite long and most of which were too complicated for my understanding. I realized that all the speaking MP has to give statistics to support their point of views and it sounded almost like a debate.

Overall, this trip has been fruitful and an exciting news is that, I had seen Prime Minister Lee! It is such a pity that we couldn’t get a chance to converse with him.

Posted by Genevieve Leng

Japan Study Trip - IT systems used in Tokyo Stock Market

In Japan, the stock market comprises of companies from Japan companies from all over the country. This stock market in Japan is called the Tokyo Stock Exchange (TSE). It is something like the Singapore Straits Times Index or STI for short. In the Tokyo Stock Exchange, many trades take place, consisting of buying and selling of stocks and bonds. For the trading participants whom want to do trading in the Tokyo Stock Exchange, they will have to go to a securities firm first before they are able to trade in the Tokyo Stock Exchange. TOPIX (which also stands for Tokyo Stock Price Index) is used to track all the domestic companies of the exchange and are cited by news or financial services firms and are used to benchmark the performance of portfolios such as mutual funds. In the past, the Tokyo Stock Exchange (the size of 4 tennis courts) used to be filled with 2000 floor traders using hand signals for transaction. You can imagine the chaos in there when the floor traders are rushing to buy or sell stocks. Now, the floors traders are being replaced by computers and transactions takes place electronically. At the Tokyo Stock Exchange stock centre, the staffs monitor the market and does ten thousand investigations on private (illegal) transactions. These illegal transactions takes place to remove the brokerage fee all together. Hence, the staff is here to prevent such events from happening. There is also a “Thinker” which a curved LED panel which surrounds the top of the Tokyo Stock Exchange stock centre. It displays the latest prices of stocks and if they have risen or fallen. A neat feature about the “Thinker” is that based on the number of transactions are done, the speed of the stock prices movement will increase or decrease. For example, if 100 transactions are taking place, the “Thinker” will slow the speed of the stock prices down. Whereas if 10000 transactions are taking place, it will speed up the movement of the stock prices. Of all the companies in Japan, 2400 companies are listed in the Tokyo Stock Exchange. They are separated into 3 sections, the first section is for large companies, the second section is for medium sized companies, and the “Mothers” section is for high-growth startup companies. One of the few IT issues that occurred in the Tokyo Stock Exchange before is on the 17th January 2006, where the Nikkei 225 (the TSE index) fell 2.8% which was the quickest drop in 9 months. This was because investors sold stocks across exchange in the wake of a raid by prosecutors on an internet company named ‘livedoor’. Due to this, the Tokyo Stock Exchange had close early on 18th January as the trade volume was threatening to exceed the TSE’s computer system’s capacity of 4.5 million trades per day. This event was known as “livedoor shock”. The exchange did not hesitate to increase its order capacity to 5 million trades a day. In order to get us more involved, there was a hands-on session of trading in a virtual market where we managed to earn a profit of 200k. To summarize, we found this trip to the Tokyo Stock Exchange meaningful and interesting.

Posted by Melvin Hee, Joshua Ng

Japan Study Trip - Ueda City Multimedia Centre

In 1995, a new Multimedia Information Center was completed to usher in a new information age.

This area is where the public can use the computers to do research or they can use them for normal use like surfing the web or online chat. Parents can also bring their children there to play learning games on the computers. The public can also use the tables and chairs for studying and reading as the learning environment there is good.



This is the computer lab where training and courses will be held for both professionals and beginners. They will be taught how to draw and make animations, they will also be taught how to modify and edit cartoons and movies using the computers.

This area is where the public can use the facilities to self edit the videos or film they make by themselves.

These people are the animators working at the Ueda Multimedia Centre. There are only responsible for adding the colours to the pictures which are sent to them from another city. Animators from another city will draw the pictures and tell write on the pictures what colour they want at which area and these animators at Ueda will put in the colours. They divide the work in this way so that it will lighten the work of the animators so that they can create more animes.

Posted by Jun Ren, An Rong

Japan Study Trip - Similarities between Japanese culture and Singapore culture

After having been to Tokyo as well as Nagano in Japan, I have discovered several similarities in terms of its culture.
One such similarity is both Singaporeans and Japanese have Buddhism as one of their religions. Majority of the Japanese people are Buddhists while majority of the Chinese Singaporeans are Buddhists. Japanese Buddhists believe in good luck. In temples, such as the one I have been to in, the people believe in fortune telling. A stick with a number written on it is to be shaken out from a metal can. Based on the number of the stick, the person has to take a piece of paper from the small wardrobes placed in front of the person. This type of fortune telling is also conducted in Buddhist temples in Singapore.
Another similarity is the food culture. Japanese people eat rice as staple food, which is similar to the Singaporeans. Rice is the main staple food of Asian countries. Not only is rice eaten during meals, noodles are occasionally consumed, especially during a person’s birthday. Both Japanese and Singaporeans believe that noodles are long, hence representing longevity. The Japanese people usually eat soba, a kind of Japanese noodle, during someone’s birthday. Similarly, Singapore Chinese eat longevity noodles during someone’s birthday.
Not only is Singapore similar to Japan in food culture, both of these Asian countries use chopsticks in meals. Japan has started using chopsticks due to the influence of China whereas in Singapore, the Chinese origin has brought chopsticks into Singapore. Not only is the Chinese in Singapore use chopsticks now, even the other races such as the Malays and Indians are also learning how to use chopsticks.
Let us now move on to the similarity of the languages in both countries. Although the languages spoken in both countries are different, some of the Japanese characters are rather similar with the Chinese characters. This is probably due to the influence of the Chinese when Japan invaded China during World War II. The similarity of both the written characters has actually aided me during the study trip, especially during the home stay in Nagano. As our group faced language barriers during the home stay, besides the use of body language, the Japanese family, Suzuki, attempted to write on paper some Chinese characters. This helped us in communicating between each other.
Another similarity between both countries is the modern lifestyle. As Japan and Singapore are technologically advanced countries, people in both countries have a high standard of living. I felt the hectic lifestyle in Japan, which is similar to Singapore. The streets of Shinjuku, Tokyo is rather similar to the busy roads in city hall. Working adults flood these streets in the morning, rushing to work. In the evening, these adults also flood the streets.
There is also another similarity in terms of the transportation system in Japan as well as Singapore. Both of these countries have buses and trains as a form of public transport. Not only are there buses and trains, the use of cars are widely common too. However, I liked the way the Japanese queue up for their turn in entering the train at the train station. In Singapore, whenever a train arrives, people will simply crowd around the train door to enter the train, which I find unsystematic. I hope that Singapore can improve on this to make our train system as systematic as the Japan train system.
To sum up, the lifestyle in modern Japan has been rather similar to Singapore as both countries are technologically advanced. Both countries are of high standard of living. If I have a chance, I will not mind to make another visit to Japan!

Posted by Marcus Chia, Jonathan Chan

Japan Study Trip - Differences Between Japanese Culture And Singapore Culture

1. Introduction
This report serves to document our findings about the diffferences in culture between Singapore and Japan during the seven days. We will be highlighting and describing some of the more important aspects of culture and its unique differences as well as how did we cope with it.

2. Differences between Japanese Culture and Singapore Culture
2.1 Food and table manners
This difference was encountered during our home stay in Nagano. In Singapore, our table manners are in-lined with the western culture. However, in Japan, it is a basic courtesy to say ‘Itadakimasu’ before eating and ‘Gochisosama deshita’ after finishing your food. This is less commonly seen in the city like Tokyo, but was often practiced in the suburbs of the city like Nagano. Thus, it is something different as we Singaporeans do not have such habits.
In Singapore, we often dine out for most of our meals, hence if it is at a hawker centre or a food court, it would normally be a one dish meal. However, in Japan practically all of their meals are eaten at home, cooked by the lady of the house which explains their long life mortality. A Japanese meal commonly consists of rice, raw fish, tempura or meat, coupled with two other side dishes and soup. This includes breakfast as well which is totally different from Singapore where we had only bread, cake and a cup of hot Milo, Milk or Tea.

Breakfast in Home Stay

2.2 Traditional Home
The differences between our home in Singapore and a traditional home in Japan which is somehow look alike what we have seen on television which samurais and ninjas lived in. In a traditional home, it is usually made of wood and paper, furnished with an organic feel, tatami mats and sit down bathrooms. Most of which are partioned by paper sliding doors known as fusuma.
Firstly, a traditional Japanese home usually uses parquet floor design. Westernised countries like USA and Singapore uses marble floor and tiled. As a result it eludes off a Zen sensation whenever we stepped in giving us a organic feel. This can be found in Singapore as well, but it is rather rare as it costs a bomb to have such furnishing.
Secondly, the most important thing in a home is the bed. In Singapore, whenever we are tired, we think of our soft feather spring bed which is very comfortable. However, beds are not commonly seen in such traditional homes as their ‘beds’ are called tatami mats. Tatami mats are thick straw mats which provide more comfort to sleep on than stone or wooden floor. Hence blankets are given as beds. Also what was difficult to adapt to, were their pillows. The pillows were not feathery soft but hard as it contained like a bean-like material. It costed us quite a number of sleepless nights.
Lastly, their bathrooms are not quite what we expected. It is certainly different from Singapore as the toilet is not their bathroom. They are two separate rooms. The bathroom neither has a bathtub nor a standing partition. All there were was a showerhead, soap and shampoo, a body scrub and a stool. So it works by sitting down on a stool and bathing yourself normally. This is so, as the bathtub is used as a public bath irregardless of whether it is at home or at a real public bath. The Japanese re-uses their bathwater either for bathing or washing laundry and hence as a result, it is like Japanese cum Western bath style, where we soak in the bathwater after washing yourself and doing a westernised bath after soaking. This experience was greatly enjoyed by us as we soaked in the relaxing hotspring water at the onsen.

2.3 Traditional Games
In Singapore, usually the types of card games we play are mainly poker cards, such as “Black Jack”, “Big 2” and etc. However, in Japanese culture, their traditional card game was called “Hanafuda.” It is a special sets of cards which can be used to played in many different ways just like a set of poker cards. During the home stay, one of the types we played was called “Matching” whereby we have to memorise the cards every time we flip them up, and flip another card which is under the same category as the first card.

The Host Teaching Us How To Play “Hanafuda.”

Posted by Clarke, Kenny

Japan Study Trip - Similarities of Bank of Japan and Monetary Authority of Singapore

Singapore and Japan are international financial centres that constantly strive to offer financial institutions with a pro-business environment, excellent infrastructure and top-of-the-edge technology to encourage the nurture of talented investors and the continuous upgrading one’s skills.
The Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS) and the Bank of Japan (BOJ) are the respective central banks in Singapore and Japan. Both of the central banks are in charge of the function of currency issuance, in the instance of Japan, the BOJ issues Japanese yen and for Singapore, the MAS issue the Singapore dollar. In order to maintain people’s confidence in banknotes, various securities features were put into both the Japanese yen and Singapore currency. Thus, both MAS and BOJ have control over the circulation of their respective home currencies, as well as money supply and credit of the respective currencies.
MAS and BOJ oversees the nation’s primary monetary authority, giving great emphasis on the monetary policies in the country to achieve currency stability, minimal inflation rates as well as high employment rates. It is also known as the bank of the government and the lender of last resort for commercial banks. Due to the subprime in 2007, MAS has decided to intensify the supervision of financial institutions due to the large impact of the crisis. MAS also regularly conduct a coordinated industry stress testing exercise (in order to assess potential risks to financial institutions’ soundness) with banks and life insurers. BOJ, on the other hand, gives advice and guidance to individual financial institutions about topics, such as risk management.
Data is complied through economic analyses and research activities to produce reports for the government. BOJ monitors developments of financial institutions’ deposits and loans (off-site monitoring) and carries out onsite examination to assess the soundness of the financial institutions’ management by sending out its staff on direct visits to financial institutions. To ensure stable functioning of the financial system, it is necessary to detect and solve problems of financial institutions at an early stage.
Without BOJ and MAS, inflation may occur as the role played by the central banks to maintain price stability and the entire economy in the countries cannot be achieved. Once the economy enters a period of inflation where the value of money erodes, people’s confidence in money will diminish, and economy activity will eventually be endangered. Under inflation also, the value of the money people have in the bank decreases while that of certain kinds of property such as real estate rises. Eventually, the distribution of income and assets will become less and less equitable.
Besides economic instability, the lifestyle of people will be too affected. People would keep cash at home rather than depositing their money at banks, and would carry cash around for payment instead of asking their banks to send money to their counterparts. In addition to the fact that people would be exposed to a considerable risk of being robbed on the street such a cash-based system would be quite inconvenient, Moreover, in the economy as a whole, economic transactions and productive activities would stagnate because money would not flow into firms smoothly.
In conclusion, both MAS and BOJ play an important role for their respective countries, acting as their central banks.

Posted by Saralyn Low, Jessica Lok, Lee Jinq-Yi

Japan Study Trip - Differences between Bank of Japan and Monetary Authority of Singapore

During the Japan study trip, we visited the Bank of Japan’s old building to learn more about Japan’s central bank, which is Bank of Japan. Similarly, Monetary Authority of Singapore is also a central bank. However, we will be talking about the differences between Bank of Japan (BOJ) and Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS) in this report.
The first, and most obvious, difference between the two central banks is simply the appearance of the buildings. The oldest part of the old BOJ building was completed in 1896 and is a great example of western-style architecture of the Meiji era (1868-1912) and designated as an important cultural property. On the other hand, the MAS building is a high-rise building just like those you can see in Shenton Way. It was renovated in 2005 with an architectural style of modernism and the architect is RSP Architects Planners & Engineers Private Limited.

Bank of Japan building

Secondly, for BOJ, their missions are to help maintain their price stability which means that their economy would not experience inflation or deflation however, it is not common for an economy to have price stability and another mission is to ensure the stability of their financial system which would thereby lay the foundations for sound economic development. Their objectives are to issue banknotes and to carry out currency and monetary control to ensure the smooth settlement of funds among banks and the other financial institutions which would contribute to the maintenance of stability of the financial system.
However, for MAS, their mission is to promote sustained non-inflationary economic growth, and to have a sound and progressive financial centre. Their functions is that they act as the central bank of Singapore which includes the conduct of monetary policy, that is the process by which MAS controls the supply of money circulated around, the availability of money and the cost of money which is the rate of interest, in order to attain a set of objectives oriented towards the growth and stability of the economy, they also issue currency, the oversight of the payment systems and serving as banker to and financial agent of the government. They also conduct integrated supervision of financial services and financial stability surveillance. They manage the official foreign reserves of Singapore and they develop Singapore as an international financial centre.
The third difference is that in Japan, BOJ acts like a bank which means that bank operations such as depositing and withdrawing money are available in it unlike MAS which does not have any bank operations such as deposits and withdrawal of money.
Lastly, MAS have also started circulating polymer notes which are much durable, cleaner and cost effective which are most suitable for lower denomination notes like the $2 which is used frequently as it is subjected to more wear and tear. The conventional security features of the paper notes are also retained on the polymer notes which are issued. The polymer notes are non-porous, non-fibrous, sturdy, heat and cold resistant and dirt and bacteria resistant which are better than paper notes. BOJ, however, is still circulating paper notes.

Posted by Elissa Lim, Fiona Ten

Study Trip in Tokyo - Nagano

Day 1. Landing in Japan did not have much of a culture shock for us yet; much of what we saw through the bus ride to the countryside was building, roads and everything else you could find in a city. It was much like Singapore. Soon the view from the inside of the bus that journey took so long turned from skyscrapers to beautiful little houses littered on very green grass with mountains taller than the buildings earlier in the back, as if to complete a painting. Going and staying at the inn taught me the difference of inns in a western country and eastern. Japanese culture had taught them to sleep on a low mattress on a type of wooden mat below that. It wasn’t like a usual bed, being tougher on the back and had a harder feeling. It taught me that going to a different country would lead to different culture practices, which taught me adaptation. At first, it was a slight difficulty, but after a day of trying to adapt to these different practices, it all eased in, as this question dawns to you; if the people here can live like this every day in and out, why can’t you?

Day 2. An intriguing day, as we had to live with a family that lived at the countryside during the evening and till the next morning. An elderly couple greeted us, ever so politely with their dog barking madly. They had their own Japanese style of greeting, so we had to do it their way as we were on their turf. This, alongside with living with the family taught me to respect cultures of different people and follow them wisely. I had also learnt how to sleep with 4 other people, all with different personalities, and to adapt to that to make my night time enjoyable. We were fed with food, most of it being grown by the families themselves. The family had a small farm, compared to the bigger farms the neighbors had. We watered the plants, took the dog for a walk and had been taught how to do penmanship, how to write our names in Japanese.

Day 3 - End of trip. The 3rd day initiated the move to the hotel. We had visited museums, centers and it or business related places of interest throughout the duration of the trip. We saw how professionals in Japan behaved, held themselves and presented themselves to us. It was not like Singapore’s professionals, they just had a different style, but being as professional as they could. At the hotel we them had a proper bed and pillow, unlike the hard bean-filled pillow we had to use at the other places we stayed in. We had then been allowed to visit places that would appeal to teens, like Akihabara, Harajuku and Disney Land.

The great thing about being able to roam around was the feeling of freedom of being able to take things at your own pace. Sadly, Japan, as the darkness engulfs the sun early, the shops too close as early. This taught us how to time our take on Japan and to map out properly. Being at some place too late would mean that the place would be closed, so Japan has taught me how to time my journey time, time spent at that particular destination and many other factors pretty well. Another thing that the trip had taught me would be independence, being alone, managing money, time and taking care of myself were the few things that contributed to my learning of independence.

Posted by Sanchez Seneviratne, Kelvin Koh

Pre-exchange with Tokai University Students

We are going to go to Tokyo in end of Sep to visit schools, Japan's financial markets and information technology companies. Prior to our visit to school, we had MSN video conferencing with Japanese students from Tokai University. We could not send / receive Video each other due to some technical constraints, however we enjoyed voice chatting with sending photo from both side.

Jinq Yi, Kevin, Jissica from FBI

It was a fun session talking with students from Tokai University. Although the session was just conducted through MSN, I could feel their passion of welcoming us to Japan in the coming 2 weeks. They were eager to know the life style and schools in Singapore. During the conference, we had basic Information about both sides' students culture. We exchanged our contact email addresses and I can't wait to go to Japan to meet them!!
(By Jinq Yi)

I think that the conference was an enjoyable experience. At the start, I believe that both parties were shy and afraid to talk. But after awhile, we were comfortable talking to each other and were making jokes. I also believe that the Japanese students are also curious about Singapore as we are curious about Japan and that both parties will learn a lot from this visit during study trip.
(By Kelvin)

During the conference, the three of us had a chance to talk to the Japanese students before meeting them in Japan in two weeks time. We introduced ourselves and shared a few questions. I found this session to be enjoyable and enlightening. We communicated in simple English and managed to understand each other. It was nice to exchange likes and dislikes as well. The Japanese students were very friendly and there were many of them who took turns telling us their names and something about themselves.
(By Jessica)

Photo from Tokai University (Japanese students are watching our pictures)

Photo from Tokai University (at professor's lab room)