A student networking event was held online on February 13, linking Wakkanai Hokusei Gakuen University located in northern Hokkaido’s Wakkanai City and Sakhalin State University located in Yuzhno-Sakhalinsk City, Sakhalin Oblast, Russia. The students exchanged opinions under the theme, “How young people see the future of Hokkaido and Sakhalin Oblast”.

This is an independent project that has been conducted by the Soya General Subprefectural Bureau since 2019. For this installment, the original plan was for students from Yuzhno-Sakhalinsk to visit Wakkanai, but the event was altered to an online environment to prevent novel coronavirus spreading.

Five students from Wakkanai Hokusei Gakuen University and seven students from Sakhalin State University who are studying Japanese participated. They spoke with each other for about two and a half hours in Japanese using the Internet, and looking at video feed of each other.

Looking forward to being able to travel back and forth again after the corona virus pandemic subsides, they introduced their favorite local spots to each other. The Wakkanai Hokusei Gakuen University students raised the excitement level by saying, “We want you to come to the curling stadium that opened last year.” And the Sakhalin State University students recommended, “You should definitely see the beautiful Sea of Okhotsk waters.”