Ali Syarief’s relationship with Japan goes back decades.
Ali Syarief is more than an Indonesian who has maintained a long-standing connection with Japan. Japan has become an important part of his intellectual, professional, and cultural journey. This relationship began with academic experience and gradually evolved into a lifelong engagement with cross-cultural understanding, friendship, and the study of society.
From Hiroshima to Cultural Exchange
In 1991~1992, he pursued studies in Communications in Hiroshima. His experience there allowed him to encounter Japan not merely as an economically successful nation, but as a society shaped by discipline, respect, social responsibility, and a remarkable ability to balance tradition with modernity.
Yet his relationship with Japan did not end with his academic experience.
Over the years, Japan became an important part of his work as a journalist, writer, cross-cultural practitioner, and lifelong learner.
Through his work in cross-cultural communication, Ali has been deeply involved in people-to-people exchanges between Indonesia and Japan, including activities with LEX Hippo Family Club, an organization whose approach emphasizes language learning through human interaction, shared experiences, and living together across cultures.
For Ali, language is not simply a matter of grammar.
Language is a doorway to understanding people.
Japan as a Place of Learning
What distinguishes Ali Syarief’s relationship with Japan is that his experience has gone far beyond tourism.
He has returned to Japan many times, staying with Japanese families, participating in community activities, meeting young people, academics, host families, and ordinary members of Japanese society.
These experiences have shaped a simple but powerful belief:
If you want to understand a nation, do not only visit its landmarks. Stay with its people. Share their meals. Talk with them. Experience their everyday lives.
This is why homestay and people-to-people exchange have become an important part of his work.
For Ali, Japan is not simply Tokyo, Kyoto, Osaka, or Hiroshima.
Japan is also the family that opens its home, its dining table, its conversations, and its everyday life to someone from another country.
That is where culture truly comes alive.
Japan and the Question of Indonesia
His long engagement with Japan has also led Ali to ask a larger question:
How has Japan managed to build a modern society without completely losing its cultural identity?
This question has become a recurring theme in his writing and thinking.
He sees Japan as a source of reflection for Indonesia—not as a model to be copied mechanically, but as a society to be understood.
Why can discipline become a social habit?
Why can cleanliness become a shared responsibility?
Why is public service so closely connected with respect for others?
How can a society preserve its traditions while continuing to embrace change?
And perhaps most importantly:
What truly makes a nation progress?
These questions have transformed Ali’s relationship with Japan from a relationship between two countries into an ongoing intellectual journey.
From Language to Human Connection
For Ali, meaningful language learning does not necessarily begin with textbooks.
People learn languages because they want to connect with other people.
This philosophy resonates deeply with the approach of Multilingual Natural Immersion associated with LEX Hippo Family Club.
Children and adults learn through experience, interaction, repetition, curiosity, joy, and human relationships.
Language therefore ceases to be merely an academic subject.
Language becomes a lived experience.
Ali also believes that cross-cultural communication is much more than the ability to speak another language.
Cross-cultural communication is the ability to understand people who are different from ourselves.
Writing About Japan from an Indonesian Perspective
Ali’s long experience has also found expression in his writing about Japan and Indonesia–Japan relations.
Among his book projects is:
Why Japan Matters: A Foreign Perspective
The title reflects his perspective: Japan is not viewed solely from within Japan, but through the eyes of an outsider who has spent years experiencing its people, communities, culture, and everyday life.
His Japan is therefore not an idealized or romanticized Japan.
He is also interested in its contradictions, social changes, younger generations, pressures of modern life, and the challenges facing Japanese society.
That is precisely what makes Japan fascinating.
A nation does not become interesting because it is perfect.
It becomes interesting because its people continually struggle to find balance.
Japan as Friendship
Ultimately, Ali Syarief’s relationship with Japan can perhaps be expressed in one word:
Friendship.
Friendship between families.
Friendship between communities.
Friendship between cultures.
And a friendship built not primarily through formal diplomacy, but through people meeting people.
That is why the exchanges in which Ali has been involved go beyond official delegations. They include homestays, camps, cultural performances, travel, shared meals, conversations, and everyday encounters.
In his view, Indonesia–Japan relations cannot become truly strong if they are built only by governments and corporations.
They must also live at the level of ordinary people.
People-to-people relationships are the foundation upon which lasting international friendship is built.
Japan and the Discovery of Self
There is a paradox in cross-cultural travel.
We travel far away to understand another society, only to discover something about ourselves.
Japan has given Ali Syarief that experience.
The more often he returns to Japan, the more questions he brings home to Indonesia.
Questions about discipline.
About simplicity.
About family.
About work.
About education.
About culture.
About how human beings can live together with dignity and respect.
And perhaps most importantly, about who we are as Indonesians.
A meaningful journey abroad does not necessarily make us want to become someone else.
Sometimes, it makes us understand ourselves more deeply.
Ali Syarief: Indonesia–Japan as a Lifelong Journey
For Ali Syarief, Japan is no longer simply a country he visits.
Japan is a place of learning.
A place to meet people.
A place to build friendships.
A place to test ideas.
And a place from which to look back at Indonesia with a different perspective.
Throughout his journey as a journalist, writer, and practitioner of cross-cultural communication, Japan has become one of the important bridges connecting the different worlds he inhabits.
He first came to Japan as an Indonesian.
He returned carrying experiences from Japan.
But more importantly, every time he comes home, he brings back a question:
“After seeing how another society lives, what can we learn from it to make Indonesia a better place?”
Perhaps that is the deepest meaning of Ali Syarief’s relationship with Japan.
It is not simply about how many times he has been to Japan.
It is about how much of what he has learned in Japan he can bring home to Indonesia.
