A new phase of Nikkei Youth Network, a new phase of my life

I am here writing to you today from the navel o South America. A country called Paraguay, in one of the oldest japanese emigration colonies called La Colmena.

I am here because of two reasons:

1. I have become a father again with a new baby boy called Ryugi Andres Uchimura, who was born on the day that I arrived to Paraguay, where my nikkei paraguayan wife is from.
2. We are in the making of a new NYN Project called Samuraidea. Hence, have closed our Tokyo office and moving to Viña del Mar, Chile to be closer to starting Samuraidea projects in the Americas.

I am writing this post to tell you specially about point 2.

Since we started NYN in June of 2010 ,our main goal is to unite and create an international community of nikkei (click here to read on what we think is nikkei) to make projects that impact the world, so that we can create new solutions to the world’s small and big problems with a multicultural/multifaceted nikkei point of view.

Our fist phase was to start to find and connect these innovative, fun, creative, action-oriented, passionate and trustworthy nikkei people from around the world to NYN as the conductors of our common goals. As with any great endeavor, it is more important to have the right people on the ship before knowing where you are going to go.

Our second phase, which we have decided to start this month, is to build a platform where we can truly put our joint strengths (wisdom, money, connections, skills, etc.) into action. In other words, we are creating a crowdfunding/cloudsourcing platform called Samuraidea where we can make nikkei projects into reality.

Designed by our great NYN designer, Jay Horinouchi

Samuraidea.com

Through our platform, you will be able to be either a project leader or a supporter

Time has come where we cannot just celebrate our identity as Nikkei, but to put our insight, views, ideas, values and skills into practice to better our world. With all these new tools and the bigger acceptance of our identity, it is the perfect chance for us to use our collective power to do things that we wanted to do but couldn’t do alone.

On the same time that we started Nikkei Youth Network in 2010, I also became a father for the first time, and interestingly now that we finally start the second phase of NYN today, my second son has been born on the same day I arrived to the airport in Asuncion, Paraguay.

NYN is a both professional and personal life goal for me. Having a second son is even a bigger responsibility as a father, but this new Samuraidea project will require as much responsibility and effort as well. Having my life goals clear, I am ready to start this new journey with all of you and am very eager to show you the Samuraidea platform, but you will have to wait until October when we present it to you.

In the meantime, we are looking for volunteer translators (english, spanish, japanese, portuguese), programmers, bloggers, and project searchers, so if you would like to be part of this new endeavor, please leave a comment below.

Kongotomo yoroshiku!