I wrote this piece on a late evening Nozomi superexpress train bound for Tokyo. It was a tough Sunday night after finishing a six-hour class at Ritsumeikan University in Kyoto. I have been a visiting professor there since 2006.

The class I taught was the 2019-2020 academic year's first in a series of eight policy simulation games, a shorter version of the 24-hour war game by the Canon Institute for Global Studies. Sunday's exercise was focused on the current political situation in East Asia with a special emphasis on the Korean Peninsula.

It is always great to be with and talking to young college students, especially freshmen and sophomores. They are naive and green in a good sense. Most of them were born at the turn of the century, maybe around 2000. They represent a new generation of Japan's youth in the 21st century.