The Japanese ARGIA subscriber is called Sho HAGIO. He lives in the province of Fukuoka, 1,000 kilometers from Tokyo, where he receives the magazine. The same question we asked Flemish Karel Sterckx a few weeks ago was also sent to Japanese by email: How and when have you learned Basque and how are you subscribed to ARGIA?

Sho has visited the Basque Country for the first time in 1984, when he was a university student. During his stay he was associated with some young Euskaldunes through which he met ARGIA. When he returned to his village, wanting to maintain his relationship with the Basque world, he asked them what could be the best way, and the young people proposed a weekly that went from Zeruko Argia to ARGIA. At that time, of course, our language was not strange. At first he says “for intellectual curiosity”, he began to learn Euskera; and after being in Euskal Herria, he has followed the news through ARGIA and has maintained the language. The first subscription was made in 1993, and although it has not always been paid since then, it continues to receive the weekly. He adds that the ARGIA project has welcomed the changes made in the last year.

However, he prefers to speak of culture rather than language. Or rather, when speaking of language, it speaks of culture, entering the latter. He sees great similarities between Basque and Japanese cultures, which pushes him to know and learn more. He says that it's often a system for keeping cultures alive to receive new things from other cultures, but at the same time we don't like the unknown, so we try to look for similarities between cultures to feel more comfortable. Shok has done so with our culture and underlines the structure of language, the importance of ancient customs, the use of house names or the importance of auzolan. These values and characteristics are also important in Japan.