Mohammed Rafiqul Islam was born in Bangladesh and raised in Canada. He came to Japan when he was 19 and studied Japanese at Waseda University and engineering at Ibaraki University. He has a doctorate in engineering. He conducts research on semiconductors and joined U-TEC at the age of 31. He has worked on the development of various products.
Mohammed Rafiqul Islam

First, I will explain how I became interested in Japan. Ever since I was a small child I have liked consumer electronic products. When I looked around my home at the television, the refrigerator and other consumer electronics, they were all made in Japan. When I became a little older and began to learn about the world, I discovered that Japan's consumer electronic products were used all around the globe and started to think, "Japan is an amazing country. I want to go to Japan and study." Twenty-two years ago, when I was 19, I moved to Tokyo. At that time, it seemed that there were not many people from other countries walking around the city, even in Tokyo. I studied the language for two years at Waseda University, and then spent four years in the College of Engineering, Ibaraki University, before returning to Tokyo to attend the Tokyo Institute of Technology for three years in a doctoral course. At that time, there were 23 researchers in my laboratory, but, for some reason, only two of them were from Tokyo and the Kanto region. The rest, including the professor, were all from Kansai. Not surprisingly, people in the laboratory spoke in the Kansai dialect most of the time. The Japanese language that I had studied from the beginning was the standard dialect, of course, but as soon as I heard the Kansai dialect, I thought, "I like this language." Kansai dialect has a good rhythm and it is easy to speak and listen to. Expressing your own feelings and emotions is easy. Perhaps for this reason, Kansai people seem to be more expressive and open than people from other prefectures. I loved this Kansai temperament, and thought that I wanted to work in Kansai.

I have been working at the same company for 11 years, and my current residence is now in the city of Nara. The prefecture of Nara has Nara Park, where deer are allowed to roam freely over a vast area, the Great Buddha Hall and many other places that are crucial when discussing Japanese history. When I first started at this company, I visited many places on my days off, not only in Nara, but also in Osaka and Kyoto. I like the great market of Tsuruhashi in Osaka, and Gion, famous for its geisha, in Kyoto. I feel refreshed when I walk through Ponto-cho and other Kyoto neighborhoods with their neatly lined shops. My wife and I used to go on dates there before we married. With a small child now, though, we cannot make long journeys, so we frequently spend days off at nearby parks. Thinking about Kansai as a place for business, I believe that this region has a concentration of businesses that are strong in product development and other aspects of manufacturing. There are numerous businesses that undertake manufacturing with unique ideas and I feel that the region produces many innovations in business fields. This is because Kansai has a concentration of businesses that manufacture not only the consumer electronic products that drew me to Japan in the first place, but also essential parts of rockets, airplanes and other sophisticated equipment. For all of these reasons, anyone who visits once will soon understand the appeal of Kansai. I hope that even more people will come to Kansai.

Nara Park (C)Nara Prefecture	Daibutsu-den (Todai-ji Temple)

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