This article is also available in: 日本語
Rooted in Rights, an advocate group of human right for people with disability, invited me to feature in their filming projects in February when I was in Washington interviewing Disability Rights Washington*. I grabbed the chance and said yes right away! I am very lucky to have this opportunity to talk about the employment-related challenges people with disabilities faced in Japan. Through working with Rooted in Rights, I shared the issues in Japan that I have noticed and my vision to change that.
The film was just released yesterday. You can watch it here. You can turn on caption by clicking setting, on the lower right corner.
Accessing Employment in Japan with Mizuki Hsu
How did you like this clip? Please feel free to drop a comment below.
It would be nice to know you ideas.
It would also be great if you can share this with your friends or family to help creating awareness.
I would like to share the stories behind this clip.
This clip is actually filmed with these professional tools. Rooted in Rights mailed them to me from Seattle to Syracuse, where I live now.
The clip was filmed in April, when Jeff visited me in Boston. I did not think I could do it by myself so I asked Jeff to help me. At the moment I received the filming kit, I knew that this is a very serious deal. I am very happy that I asked Jeff to help me.
The problem is that I did not know that filming a clip would take so much time. One of the reasons is that I was not able to memorize the lines in English and I did not prepare well. I assumed I am able to just say all the lines smoothly in seconds since this topic has been on my mind all the time. I was very wrong. The clip is about 3 and a half minutes but we actually had filmed it for more than 10 hours. (Of course, Rooted in Rights then had edited it for even much longer hours!)
We filmed it in the hotel room that we stayed in Boston. We actually moved things around so it does not look I was in a hotel. In order to get enough light on my face, we actually direct all the lamps in the hotel room to light up my face.
During the day, I was visiting organizations and schools for my research. I also visit some places for sightseeing. In the evening, we were actually very tired. Jeff in particular is a very morning person. He is very not good at staying up late. He also had some difficulties with jet lag at the time. He fell asleep several times during filming. I am glad that we did it together. Thank you, Jeff!
Last, but not least, I would like to thank Rooted in Rights for giving me this opportunity. I will carry out my mission to improve the employment situation for people with disabilities.
* You can read the interview article of Disability Rights Washington in here.