From 29 July to 1 August 2026, Kokoromachi Co., Ltd. and BNET-TECH Company Limited jointly organized the four-day Hong Kong study tour, “Gerontechnology: Hong Kong and Japan Side by Side.” Two student teams from Japan, Synora and HearLink, took part in the programme.

Learning Across Universities and Technology

During their stay, the students had the opportunity to visit several of Hong Kong’s leading academic and innovation institutions.

At City University of Hong Kong, they toured the campus, visited a special game-themed exhibition, and attended an admissions briefing to learn more about higher education and university life in Hong Kong.

The students also visited The Chinese University of Hong Kong, where they attended a lecture by Prof. Thomas Chiu on the learning sciences. The session introduced examples of how educational technology is being used both inside and outside the classroom, and gave the students a chance to think about how technology, education, and entrepreneurship can connect.

At Hong Kong Science Park, the students visited the HKSTP Experience Centre and saw examples of technologies currently being developed and applied in Hong Kong.

Together, these visits gave the students a broader view of how research, education, technology, and business can work together.

Seeing Hong Kong for the First Time

For the Japanese students, this was also their first visit to Hong Kong.

One of their first impressions came from seeing the city from The Peak. Hong Kong’s landscape was very different from the urban environments they were familiar with in Japan.

Mountains, the harbour, residential buildings, and skyscrapers all sit remarkably close together. Buildings extend vertically along the hillsides and around Victoria Harbour, creating a dense cityscape that left a strong impression on the students.

Experiencing a city with a very different geography and way of using space was itself an important part of the study tour.

Taking Their Ideas to an International Stage

A major part of the programme was participation in the BOC Life 11th Golden Age Expo & Summit (2026), organized by the Golden Age Foundation at the Hong Kong Convention and Exhibition Centre in Wan Chai.

As part of the Expo, the students competed in the Hong Kong International Health & Elderly Care Robotics Competition 2026.

Both teams presented their projects in English to judges, visitors, industry professionals, and older members of the Hong Kong community. For the students, this meant explaining their ideas to people from a different cultural and linguistic background and responding to questions in English.

Both Japanese teams achieved strong results.

Team Synora had previously finished as runner-up at the Tokyo finals of the Hong Kong–Japan Youth Gerontechnology International Exchange Competition. In Hong Kong, the team presented Mimamori, an intelligent sensing system designed to support older adults living alone, and won first place in the student category.

Team HearLink presented its project, Sound Up, and also performed strongly, finishing among the top four teams at the judging stage.

Beyond the results themselves, the competition gave the students valuable experience in presenting technical ideas in English, answering questions on the spot, and communicating with an international audience.

They handled the Q&A sessions with confidence and demonstrated a strong understanding of the ideas and technology behind their projects.

Looking Ahead: Continuing the Exchange

The programme does not end with the competition.

BNET-TECH Company Limited will launch the Intergenerational Gerontechnology Innovation Academy (IGIA) with the support of Kokoromachi Co., Ltd. The academy is intended to give students opportunities to continue developing their ideas after the competition, while building connections with industry, businesses, and other organizations working in the gerontechnology field.

Through the competition and the academy, students, professionals, NGOs, and organizations from Hong Kong and Japan will continue to explore how technology can respond to the needs of an ageing society.

Kokoromachi Co., Ltd. has also been selected as a member of the EDU-PORT Nippon Support Project, an initiative promoting Japanese-style education internationally. Through this initiative, Kokoromachi will continue working with partners in Hong Kong to introduce Japanese approaches to inquiry-based learning and create more opportunities for students from both regions to learn together.

The 2026 programme showed how much students can gain when they are given the opportunity to take their ideas outside the classroom and present them in another country.

We look forward to building on this year’s exchange and welcoming more students from Hong Kong and Japan to take part in the next Hong Kong–Japan Youth Gerontechnology International Exchange Competition.

Through continued exchange, we hope young people from both regions will not only develop new technologies, but also think more deeply about the people those technologies are designed to support.