Newsletter No. 1409
News-Analysis
July 11, 2009

 

SENIOR OMANI DIPLOMAT VISITS TOKYO

Sayyid Badr bin Hamad bin Hamoud al-Busaidy, who holds the position of Secretary-General of the Foreign Ministry of the Sultanate of Oman, made an official visit to Tokyo last week. He was invited, it seems, because Tokyo regards him as an “opinion leader” in his country.

On the morning of the 3rd, Sayyid Badr met with Foreign Minister Hirofumi Nakasone and discussed the candidacy of Yukiya Amano to head the IAEA, among other things. The Omani official stayed in Tokyo for several days, holding talks with MOFA about “enhancing bilateral relations and aspects of co-operation in different economic, cultural, scientific, educational fields, as well as human resources development.”

Two other topics that received attention was the prospective Japan-GCC free trade accord and the possibility of signing a bilateral tax treaty.

SCHOOL IN THE DESERT

Suad Mohammed al-Mudhaffar (originally Mihoko Morita) is the first Japanese to obtain Omani citizenship, according to a profile published by Kyodo News in April. She established a private school in Muscat called the Azzan Bin Qais Private School in 1990, struggling to provide a good education for her students. At first, there were only five students, but she has built the school into an institution that now serves about 550 children. She explained, “While in Japan, I hated school because it was a place to do what it has decided, rather than to do what I wanted… I wanted to create a school where students think on their own and cultivate skills in their respective fields… I made a breakthrough in the impasse by freely using my own Suad-style persuasion skills with guts and enthusiasm, believing that there are absolutely no duds in this world.” Recently, this formidable lady published a book about her experiences, Sabaku ni Tsukutta Sekai-Ichi no Gakko (The World’s Top School Created in the Desert).