Addressing a Press meet here, Indo-Japan Friendship Centre president Kunna Dash said the world’s techno hub Japan has agreed to allow Indian skilled workers 3-5 years visa and that’s a welcome move as they will return as techno wizards and help strengthen Make in India mission.
“I sincerely desire Kyoto, the city of thousand years, to join as partner city with the ancient pilgrim city of Jagannath Puri, for they have many similarities from festivals, temple to religion,” Dash said.
So let’s us all participate in this mission to learn Japanese language and skill so that we can make India shine, he added.
Thirty years have passed since I put my feet in Kyoto, Japan. From the day one I got stuck to its beauty, hospitality and cleanliness. I felt instantly why not an effort be made to join this cultural city of Kyoto, my workplace, with Puri, the pilgrim city and the cultural hub of India, my birthplace. Since then all through my career mostly for last ten years I have been adding little now and then to make it still more. I marked specific similarity between these two ancient cities, Puri and Kyoto. Kyoto, the city of thousand years and Puri has its depiction in age old scriptures.
The chariot festival of Puri and the festival Gion Matsuri have lots of resemblance, he said. The Chandra Sekhar Academy, the co-educational English medium school in Puri has its international branch in Kyoto, Japan too. Japanese language and culture along with Hindi and Indian spiritual art and yoga are taught in both the places as a token of solidarity towards each other’s language and culture, he told.
Being the president of the school I also help the teachers and students to participate in various programmes in either of the places. In a good will gesture I organize artist exchange programmes too.
Similarly every year Japanese pilgrims mostly from Kyoto plunge into Puri to build a small chariot in the image of original Nandighos in the premises of hotel Santana at CT road to pull it onto Grand road , Puri in a procession to meet the original ones.
Besides they also organise a Japan festival in Puri. I am privileged to be appointed as the International Tourism Ambassador of Kyoto, Japan. The Japanese pilgrims mostly Buddhists from this ancient capital city of Japan link Lord Jagannath as the tenth incarnation of Lord Buddha as has been believed by the Hindus. And their advent to Odisha focussed mainly to have a glimpse of the Buddhist circuit here, he added.