Hirofumi Ueda (Retiring in AY2025)

At Osaka City University, where I worked before coming to Keio University, I spent 13 years at the Institute for Economic Studies and 4 years at the graduate school for working adults. Because of that, I had few opportunities to interact directly with undergraduate students, and it was only after moving to Keio University in my mid-40s that I held my first student seminar. During my own undergraduate days, I was in a small seminar with only three students, so starting out with more than ten students was a bit overwhelming as I navigated seminar management and the distance between myself and the students. The first-generation students who applied for this risky new seminar each had their own thoughts about it, and they were a unique and fun group of members.

Since I stated that the seminar would involve learning from real-world companies, industries, and regions, the number of applicants increased, sometimes exceeding 70, making the selection process quite difficult. I have personally interpreted this positively, thinking that many students want to connect the "economics" they learn at the Faculty of Economics more closely with real companies, industries, and regions. For that reason, I struggled with the dilemma of wanting to meet the students' desire to study in the seminar while having to turn many away due to the limited capacity. Also, in years when I accepted nearly 30 students in a single grade, it was hard to remember their names. Since I couldn't remember them just by meeting once a week, I sometimes prepared for the seminar by studying their application forms over and over again.

In the seminar, until the COVID-19 pandemic, we held an annual summer training camp to visit and research industries and companies in regions I was involved with. These were mostly places that students would almost never visit on their own for travel, and it was their first time visiting through the seminar camp. Since there were many participants, I divided them into groups of several people. I prepared the visit destinations (companies, financial institutions, government offices, organizations, etc.) to some extent in advance and had the students conduct preliminary research on them. It took a lot of effort to prepare, including requesting visits with the cooperation of local people and making sure students contacted them in advance so as not to be rude, as they often visited on their own. Recently, more students are from the southern Kanto region and have little knowledge or thought about the reality of rural areas outside of major cities. Therefore, I packed a lot into the three-day, two-night seminar camp because I wanted them to experience the current state of rural areas firsthand and hear stories directly while they are students.

In particular, I made a conscious effort to include eating the local delicacies of each region. We often went to Hokkaido for the seminar camp, and students had an overwhelming image of Hokkaido as being all about "crab." Therefore, I intentionally decided not to eat crab during the Hokkaido camp, and for the camp in the inland Tokachi region, we focused on local vegetables and meat. A student who had previously said they couldn't stand mutton told me for the first time at a Genghis Khan restaurant in Obihiro that mutton was delicious. In Memuro, Tokachi, we enjoyed delicious yakiniku at a price unthinkable in Tokyo while reflecting on the local community's passion at a restaurant run by locals that serves local beef and vegetables.

In Hakodate, we watched the fish market auction from 6:00 AM and then had breakfast at the market diner with transparent squid sashimi that had just been caught that day. In another year, at a hot spring inn in Iwanai, after listening to a talk, we were delighted to have a lunch featuring plenty of sea urchin and salmon roe from Shakotan. I believe that enjoying regional delicacies while feeling the nature, people, and their thoughts in each region is a valuable lesson that cannot be learned from books alone. Being able to share such opportunities with students during the camps has become a very precious memory for me as well.

I hope that the students who participated in the camps will, at some point, reflect on the fact that every region has its own delicacies and that these are supported by the local nature and the people who live there.