On May 29th, the 1st annual meeting of the Josai-Dalian Northeastern Alumni Association was held in the city of Dalian.

Over 60 attendees from near and far were present for this lively event, including of course former exchange students who studied at Josai and JIU, but also past recipients of the “Mukaibo Takashi Memorial” Murai Takashi and “Mizuta Mikio Memorial” Mizuta Noriko Scholarships, graduates of the JMBA program, and students and faculty from the Japan-China Joint Ph.D. program. Each attendee gave a few words of greeting, impressing the representatives from Josai with their diverse resumes, some of which included teaching at universities in China and Europe and serving as an executive officer at Chinese multinational corporations.

The gathering opened with greetings from Advisor Murai Takashi who has devoted the last 30 years to facilitating academic exchange with Dalian. Advisor Murai expressed his great joy, while being rendered almost speechless at the thought of how much academic exchange between these two countries has flourished. Those in attendance shared Mr. Murai’s sentiment, echoing his pledge to maintain this deep connection in the future.

Afterwards, the participants were pleased to receive words of welcome from Du Feng Gang—Dalian University of Technology Professor and President of the Dalian Alumni Association—and Yu Tao—Dalian city Vice Secretary (and JIU faculty member) and Alumni Association President for the Dalian University of Foreign Languages branch. With the success of this event, Josai—as a branch of the Northeast Alumni Association—is looking forward to all the projects they will embark upon in cooperation with the other members.