A mapping of my mind (low-level)

So in the last post, I summarized all of the goals that I would like to accomplish by the age of 30. Taking only the headings and put them into a list looks like this:

1 — Enjoying working
1.1 — Designing everything
1.2 — Working collaboratively
1.3 — Learning by designing
1.4 — Sharing the concept of design
1.5 — Experimenting with typography

2 — Establishing a base
2.1 — Defining where to live
2.2 — Eating healthy
2.3 — Building a home library

3 — Developing rich relationships
3.1 — Finding design (but not limited to) peers
3.2 — Being a mentor to somebody

It was very curious for me to realize these items on the list look very similar to the famous Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs.

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1 — Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs

This image was taken from google search.

So above, there is a diagram of the Hierarchy of Needs.

Adapted from the original diagram

I personally modified this content into a format that is suitable for what I was doing: trying to figure out lower-level or actionable goals in order to achieve those higher-level goals that I summarized last time.

A series of diagrams that I am going to use for this exercise is not really optimized for viewing on the web. I put the link to the pdf version of this diagrams at the beginning and end of this blog post. So please feel free to download and review it.

There are three major types of needs: Basic, psychological, and fulfillment. The lower level needs essentially support the existences of those higher level needs by removing any concerns regarding those basic needs from a person’s mind.

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2 — My Hierarchy of Needs

Applied my goals into the framework.

 

By replacing the types of needs goes under the three major need types and their descriptions with the list I made in the last post, I was able to visualize how I am perceiving my goals psychologically.

I intentionally kept the list numbers that I used in the last post. Notice that the order of the higher-level goals does not quite much with Maslow’s diagram, suggesting that there is a different prioritizing rules in my mind. Apparently, self-fulfillment need, which is to enjoy working, ranks the highest priority, while basic needs and psychological needs are the second and third highest respectively.

This analysis implies that no matter how satisfied I may be with basic and psychological needs in the future, it is impossible for me to just be 100% happy with my life without fulfilling the self-actualization necessities.

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3 — My Hierarchy of Needs in Timeline

Rotated 90 degree to the right.

 

This is where things get interesting. I was seeking a way to figure out which of the high level goals I should be focusing on first because what Maslow’s diagram suggests to me is that without satisfying the lower, basic needs of my own, it is unlikely that I will be able to concentrate on the higher level needs or goals.

By rotating the diagram of my hierarchy of needs 90 degrees towards right, it, in fact, became a timeline! 

By refining the layout and typography of this new time-based model slightly, it looks like this:

Enter a caption

 

I was attempting to proportionally scale the timeline in this one. This is mainly because there are only 7 years until I become 30, but with this overall gestalt of the diagram,  it could imply that I may be spending my first few years on satisfying only basic and psychological necessities, which can possibly be true, but not totally accurate.

Different lengths of the lines indicate the differences in their time span.

Going back to the original diagram by Maslow, the boundaries between each level of needs are actually more ambiguous and loose than clear and rigid, which essentially means that those hierarchical needs often overlap and interact with each other. They concurrently coexist, but their individual time span differ.

So the point here is that this framework that I completely made up is very useful in determining priorities among many personal goals and a general timeframe for achieving them. However, it is not as helpful in figuring out details steps necessary for those high level goals by itself. Although I mentioned the crucial limitation of this exercise, I found it okay because there is not much practical value planning step by step actions that will be carried out in the future.

No one knows what exactly would happen in the future anyway.

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4 — A new summary of my high level (+ low level) goals

Now that I have discovered which of the high level goals should be named first. I briefly went over the summary and added some low level tasks and actions that may be required by the high level goals. The new summary should look like this:

1 (2) — Establishing a base
1.1 (2.1) — Defining where to live
1.1.1 — Moving back to Japan 
1.1.2 — Defining which city or prefecture I want to live 
1.1.3 — Looking for a job (that cares about and practices design) or start one
1.1.4 — Finding a place to live that fits my needs (commuting time, price, space plan, etc.)
1.1.5 — Purchasing furniture 
1.2 (2.2) — Eating healthy
1.2.1 — Buying kitchen equipment 
1.2.2 — Finding a good local market
1.2.3 — Establishing a cooking routine
1.2.4 — Discovering and learning new recipes 
1.3 (2.3) — Building a home library
1.3.1 — Taking back all of the books that I have currently to Japan
1.3.2 — Allocating a room for work and books
1.3.3 — Buying or building a nice bookshelf 
1.3.4 — Researching good books to read all the time
1.3.5 — Finding a cheap way to import books in English to Japan

2 (3) — Developing rich relationships
2.1 (3.1) — Finding design (but not limited to) peers
2.1.1 — Working for a firm that employs design practitioners
2.1.2 — Actively networking
2.1.3 — Creating opportunities to collaborate with new people on various projects 
2.1.4 — Expanding my network not only in japan but also overseas
2.2 (3.2) — Being a mentor to somebody
2.2.1 — Constantly working on projects solving socio-economic and business problems
2.2.2 — Increasing a visibility online
2.2.3 — Acquiring a master degree in design (?)
2.2.4 — Preparing useful learning materials
2.2.5 — Leading and managing a product and services that requires a team

3 (1) — Enjoying working
3.1 (1.1) — Designing everything
3.1.1 — Taking every project as a design project
3.1.2 — Clearly defining an area of my speciality in design
3.1.3 — Learning design theories and knowledge of related fields 
3.2 (1.2) — Working collaboratively
3.2.1 — Effectively utilizing human resources as well as my network
3.2.2 — Developing a fluency in other areas of professions
3.2.3 — Developing skills in facilitating conversations 
3.2.4 — Being open-minded
3.2.5 — Leading and managing a product and services that requires a team
3.3 (1.3) — Learning by designing
3.3.1 — Learning design theories and knowledge of related fields + programming 
3.3.2 — Leading and managing a product and services that requires a team
3.3.3 — Asking lots of questions when working with others
3.3.4 — Documenting my learning
3.3.5 — Being open-minded
3.4 (1.4)— Sharing the concept of design
3.4.1 — Keeping sharing thoughts on design online
3.4.2 — Talking about the value of design to non-design practitioners
3.4.3 — Leading and managing a product and services that requires a team
3.5 (1.5) — Experimenting with typography
3.5.1 — Keeping polishing and learning typographic theories and skills
3.5.2 — Always applying a careful typographic treatments to anything I make
3.5.3 — Appreciating and learning typography in history
3.5.4 — Purchasing books on type 
3.5.5 — Learning typography in Japan

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5 — Final thoughts

In determining the lower-level tasks, I realized one thing: my self-fulfillment goals are too abstract and talks only about things that I want to learn about design. Thus, it lacks a notion of what I want to do with it. In some other parts of the list, I mentioned solving socio-economic problems, which I think implies something.

So I thought of them:

1. Redesign education and learning systems
2. Design a sustainable system that bridges a gap between Japan’s local economy and global economy
3. Greatly simplify any required legal, social, financial, and medical processes that people need to go through
4. Understand, visualize, and explain many systems that embrace a negative feedback loop
5. Learn and document histories
6. Design a place where people can come and work on their personal projects and collaborate with others

Design Thinking.

Another month has passed. It is so hard to create a post out of my mind although I certainly enjoy the process of putting things together into an unified writings. I tend to let my thoughts float around in my head until they come into a single solid idea. It is almost impossible for me to instantly come up with a great thought.

Writing is the last step of finalizing the concept that came to my mind. It allows me to make my unorganized thought much more constructive and sophisticated. I believe that this is undoubtedly parallel to what designers including me practice. We identify a specific problem our clients  or we want to solve. In the meantime, we also figure out the target audience. Then prioritize the main focus and develop a best suited solution for this particular problem. There are a lot more small steps involved in this process. However, the last step designers take is to design. It is simply a tool that enables us to communicate a message with audience better and clearer.

I think
the history of humanity
has always been accompanied with
D E S I G N.

Everything we currently have in our lives is designed. Only nature is created through its own different design system (although we can alter its system by modifying genetic information or simply destroying them nowadays). In particular, graphic design must have been at the very center of how we communicate because we have created languages or types throughout the course of our history. How we think, write, and talk is heavily dependent on this unique linguistic capability. Since we conceive our languages in this way, it would not be too much to say that our languages are in fact the form of our cultures and dominate our societies.

More and more people in different parts of the world speak English as a common way of communication. Also, people in my home country are desperately studying the language to master. At the same time, it seems like the Western culture is actually taking over the entire culture as more people learn to speak English. Once people start speaking a language that has been developed based on a particular culture, I assume that their way of thinking somehow gets closer to the culture in which the language is spoken. As this examples shows, it demonstrates how strong the effect of languages is to us. Therefore,

T Y P O G R A P H Y 

— the art and technique of arranging type to make written language legible, readable, and appealing when displayed

is essential and effective in our society because it definitely affects how people perceive and absorb information thought the linguistic communication. It could possibly create a movement with the power of typography.

Why am I writing something like this? Because this is what I am learning at my university, and this is what I am going to utilize to make myself living. So I really don’t like when people ask me what my major is and they thing of it as something purely artistic.

THEY ARE NOT FINE ARTS.

Anyone can
make things look pretty,
draw illustrations,
and call those things “design”
if they wish to.

However,
they never achieve what true design can do;
design can make things functional, communicative, and then appealing.

This is not the best example, but you can see how it works.

Today’s post was kind of strange, but this is how I feel. Some say that the things that I share on my blog from my experience are mostly bullshits. I don’t really care how they perceive my intellectual, or possibly philosophical, activities because I know that I try to make myself clear here. Nonetheless, the point I was trying to make mightn’t have been clear enough. So let me end this post with a quote that perfectly describes what it is.

“Styles come and go. Good design is a language,not a style.”—Massimo Vignelli

Expand.

Hello, everyone. It’s been about a month again.

The 2016 summer vacation is going to be over in just 2 days. Although I have done fairly a lot of stuff during this vacation, I don’t really have a feeling of accomplishment. However, it doesn’t necessarily mean that there hasn’t been anything that’s worth noting. It is just that I didn’t make many tangible stuff such as some design works.

Through the experience of job hunting, I think I have spent an enough duration of time and felt so-called, peer pressure, to be fully a Japanese again, by which I mean I am a regular Japanese who hasn’t not yet exposed to any other worlds other than Japan. I don’t think that being Japanese isn’t bad at all. They are acknowledged as one of the nicest people by most of the countries. Nonetheless, I don’t think that it’s not me; all the characteristics of myself cannot give a full play with just one single identity. I cannot easily comply with common sense and social conformity.

A couple weeks ago, I took part in a volunteer camping program organized by a NPO organization called, KATARIBA. The NPO has been holding a successive tutoring sessions in my hometown since the massive earthquakes hit there. The tutoring sessions are mainly held in the areas where the damage by the earthquake was enormous. Many of the junior high school students to whom I talked there have lost their houses due to the natural disaster, and they still go to school from nearby temporary shelters maintained by local governments. The camping program I joined was also organized by KATARIBA; they cooperated with the principle of one of the middle schools that they work with and decided to have this program as an extend of their volunteering. The aim of this program was to give some joyful time and inspirations to those students who have experienced the difficulties because of the earthquake by incorporating one of Katariba’s main enterprises into the study session that they have been holding.

Me Doing A Little Presentation about My Life

On the first day of the camping, I got to a chance to have a presentation about my life in front of a group of students, and it was one of the KATARIBA’s original programs that they usually do for high school students in order to have them consider their lives by listening to stories from their seniors. It’s been a quite while since the last time I gave a presentation in front of people, so I was a little bit nervous to do it. Although I tried to design my stories in a way that attracts the students and gives them an inspirations to think for their future, I am not really sure how much they could absorb and learn from me.

However, there was a very interesting thing happened to me after spending 2 days with them. It was not them who have learned a lot and thought of their future from me, but it was me who have really experienced and learned many things from them. Those students with whom I spent time have diverse opinions, personalities, preferences, and dreams. Since I was the only one among the staffs who have an experience of studying abroad and can speak English, they asked me questions like, “Do you think it would be impossible for me to start studying cooking in France right after I graduate from middle school?” I said to them that. “No, it is absolutely possible for you to accomplish your goal as long as you work hard.” The answer I gave them was the very phrase I always say to myself.

It was a little sad that most of the students who personally told me their stories and dreams started their questions with “Would it be impossible?” Because this implies that they don’t believe what kind of possibilities they have with their life; it is too early for them to give up on what they want to realize.

I know that I feel the same sometimes. I am afraid that I cannot fully realize and enjoy what I want, but I think it is ok to feel that way. That pressure gives me a strong motivation to work and learn harder  in order to break the wall ahead of me. I believe that people can become better and better as long as they think they can.

The fist step to an ultimate goal would be a very small step; however, the accumulation of those small steps can take you thousands miles away from where you are currently.

I began teaching students in Kumamoto as a volunteer so that I could help them and my lovable hometown, but the truth was that they helped me to rethink who I am and what I want to be. I hope that the time I spent with those teenagers was able to give them some sort of realistic images of what they can actually be if they work hard enough. Although I am still just a student, I should have been able to do that.

Expand My World.

In closing, I would like to thank the staff members whom I have met through KATARIBA for offering me this amazing opportunity. I don’t know how far I can go, but never stop trying.

 

Keep Going My Own Way.

One Way? No, I Go My Own Way.

Hello, people!

It’s has been a while since my last blog post.

Spring 2016 has already started and a half of the semester is over. I am on my spring break now and just came back from my road trip to Portland, Oregon a few days ago. It was a very beautiful experience to visit Portland; this road trip definitely made me realize that there are bigger and more exciting places other than the cities and towns I know where I could possibly have more interesting opportunities.

Unlike other huge cities, Portland is, in my opinion, very neatly designed and developed in terms of the coherence of the city’s appearance, its accessibility of the nearby towns, and its cleanness. Although it looked that car is still the most commonly used transportation there, Portland seemed to put some emphases on its city train and bicycles as other usable transportations inside the city.

One of the most striking things that I have experienced in the city was the cafes there; they are different from the regular cafes that people would usually imagine. They are categorized as so-called ,”the third-wave coffee,” which is a movement to produce high-quality coffee, and consider coffee as an artisanal foodstuff, like wine, rather than a commodity (from wikipedia). I thought that Starbucks is selling a pretty expensive, high-quality-looking coffee already and fancy, but those coffee shops are self-owned and have different styles that they strive to show. My friends with whom I went to Portland were pretty nerdy about coffee and really really impressed by the quality of the coffee they tried in Portland. Thanks to them, I think I started getting the different tastes of various coffee like I did with beers.

 

As I began this blogpost, it has been about three months since the last post. I have been simply just so busy doing my school stuff this semester. Well, I think I had few chances to make some updates on my blog so that I could have told my recent stories.Nonetheless, it’s been really busy for me.

The reasons why are as described below.

One of the reasons is that I started a graphic design internship at the CMT Design studio on campus this semester. This is a very exciting experience because I get to design most of official posters and other kinds of print-based media on campus, and the internship gives me a great hands-on experience that will help me improve myself as a graphic designer. I did not expect that working and communicating in English with my coworkers and clients, which is not my first language, is such a hard and fun thing to me. I believe that though this internship, my ability to clearly convey my thoughts in English as well as my graphic design skills have gotten better. Currently, I am working for 12 hours a week, but I am going to work for 20 hours next semester, which will definitely keep me busy until I graduate from Chico State. However, by the time of my graduation, I am assuming that this internship will give me a fairly good understanding of how graphic design industry works in a real life and a strength in print production.

The other reasons is of course, five of my classes, and all of them are upper-division courses. As getting closer to graduation, classes I have to take are getting slightly more difficult and time-comsuing. Right now, I have 4 major-related courses and 1 upper-division general education class. 3 of them are really a project-based classes which I am enjoying taking because they are my major classes and the projects my professors assigned us to do are just simply fun to work on.

The rest of 2 classes are the one that I have some problems with.

One is called Communication Criticism, in which I have to make an argument against any sort of media work on the basis of media analytic methods explained in the class. Analyzing a medium of any kind is a very fascinating subject; looking at different components of the medium and trying to understanding its deeper meaning allow me to recognize the complicated patterns of the media that people consume on their daily bases. However, the thing is that my professor is just too specific on what she wants us to write on our papers and her explanation to clarify what she wants is not clear enough…, which makes it harder for us to understand her point.

The other one is called Philosophy of Science. This class is, as you can imagine already from the title of the class, complicated. The major problem I have with this class is not the ideas that each philosophers who had examined science from their philosophical views present, but rather their choices of words in their writings. Yes, philosophers. They are the kind of human beings who really want to show off the fanciest terms and words that they know in order to explain what they had in their minds, which most of the time creates some sort of bullshits and could have been described  in much simpler ways that everyone else can easily understand. Looking up some of the words that I found insanely difficult to understand takes me lot of unnecessary time.

Ironically, I started liking some of those philosophers’ ways of writing because as you can see, they look fancy and sophisticated in a way. Haha.

Anyway, there is one thing that I would like to point out here in this post.

There is only one year left until I leave the world of academia and begin working. Most of my friends in Japan and some in other countries have started looking for jobs. Looking them and hearing some stories from them, I realized myself being a slightly scared of not doing the same thing that they do. I guess there is a certain feeling of conformity that I have developed without knowing it. I am pretty sure there are several people who are feeling the exact same way I am.

I am just focusing on what I want to do right now, and this concentration has significantly changed my view of life: there is no one way to reach my goal. 

I think that I just got to the point where I started grasping the concrete and solid objective that I would like to accomplish in my life. My goal is still pretty vague, but I know which way I am going for.

Everything I can have from my experience including this time’s road trip, my classes, my internship, and many others is meaningful. Each of them allows me to expand my world and see other possibilities.

The point is that you do not have to stick with one sole plan that most of people would take; you can decide how you approach to your goals.

What Is Learning?

Look through

Hello! Another three weeks have passed, and only 4 weeks left until the end of the semester! I am so happy that Fall 2015 semester is about to end.

Looking back the last few weeks, I have a couple things to mention.

First of all, I passed the Graphic Design portfolio review, and officially I am in the Graphic design undergraduate program at Chico State! Also, I am most likely to be able to finish my degree in Spring 2017, which is about 1 and half years from now.

These are my works for the portfolio

Although I was very happy and satisfied that I passed this review as I had planned, I have to say that there was something that my works lacked, but other students’ works had. As a graphic designer, I often go and look at other people’s design pieces online in order to get some inspiration for my own works. As I find more and more interesting and very creative pieces of works on the Internet, I realized one thing: each designer has his or her own taste of design that other people cannot easily imitate. 

I think those uniqueness of different designers are born from their diverse experience in the real working environment as a graphic designer.

I saw the same kind of pattern at the portfolio review. About half of the students there had most of their design pieces from the classes that they took here at Chico State like me. However, another half of them had their own design pieces that came from various different working experiences, and  I clearly saw them in their works. It was very obvious that they spent a lot of their times improving and policing their design skills and creating great works for their clients. The time they worked as designers can be 10 times than the time I did. Tiny details of their works told their stories. It was so fascinating to me even though they are also students who try to develop their skills.

Unlike fine arts, the purpose of graphic design is to clearly communicate and convey a message through text and visual elements on 2 dimensional surface. Therefore, if  you look at one graphic design piece more closely, you will notice how logically each element is placed and organized on a sheet of paper. In addition, I believe that the beauty of its visually designed logic can be as beautiful as that of fine arts.

I think that this is where I want to reach as a graphic designer. I want to tell a story through my works, which I haven’t really achieved yet. I am not worried that I couldn’t get  that point, but the portfolio review made me realize that I will have to work even harder than before.

Second thing is about the Halloween!

Last weekend I had an awesome Halloween party in Chico! When I was in Japan, Halloween was nothing but a just regular day to me. However, here in Chico, it is a pretty big deal. People dressed up! Well, people dressed up. That’s pretty much it. Looking at some people’s creative costume was quire interesting.

Since it is way easier for me to talk about Halloween with pictures, I am just gonna post some of the photos of my Halloween experiences(btw, I was a sugar skull this year)

So yeah, it was fun!

Okay let’s talk about today’s main topic.
Today I would like to talk about learning.

We are Homo sapiens. We, as one of primates, have the ability to learn, which is a great advantage in terms of survival. This is one of the main reasons that human species have been developed so much on this plant despite all the destructive natural disasters we have to go through.

So what I try to claim here is that learning is a basic function as a human; we all know hot to learn basically. It just all depends on how effective the way of your learning is. I think that learning accounts for a decent amount of our life because every day we learn something and will use some tips that we have learned from that experience.

One of my professors at my former college suggested me to watch a YouTube Video, called “Myth#1: College is where you learn how to learn.”

In this video, the YouTuber divides learning into several steps.

1. Basic instruction
2. Practice
3. Perform or create
4. Feedback
5. External reward
6. Go back to step 1

Looks pretty straight forward right? All we need to learn something is conduct each step and try it again.

Among those steps, I think the idea of getting External Reward was quite interesting because as this YouTuber mentioned in this video, a lot of people would reward themselves after they finished some works. It can work to some degree, but the power of getting external reward is way stronger than self-rewarding. He defined external reward as something that you don’t have a control over. Because you don’t have any control over it, you wouldn’t be able to get any rewards unless your work is appreciated by other people – so called social approval. This idea is totally applicable for both graphic design and this blog.

As I mentioned earlier, it is simply not enough for me to just learn from the classes I am taking right now. Hands-on experiences as a graphic designer will be definitely necessary for me.

Speaking of learning, there is one great quote I always think of from one modern Japanese philosopher, Yukichi Fukuzawa. He is the guy who is on the ¥10,000 bill.

In his book, An Encouragement of Learning, 

They say, “Heaven did not create a man above or below another man.” It means that Heaven created all human beings equal and there was no difference among people. As the lords of creation, they could use all things in the world by exercising their own body and brain for their clothing, food and housing. Freely, unless they bother others, they could live comfortably. That’s what Heaven created.

But now, observing human societies, there are the wise and the foolish, the poor and the rich, the noble and the plebeian. What does make these differences?

It’s obvious. The book named Jitsugo-kyou says, “A man cannot have wisdom without learning. A man without wisdom is foolish.” In other words, the difference between the wise and the foolish depends on how they learned. And there are difficult work and easy work. People consider a person who does difficult work as the upper class and a person who does easy work as the lower class. The work using brain is difficult and the work using body is easy. So you can say that doctors, scholars, governmental officers, merchants who do big business and farmers who hire many peasants are the upper class.

If you are the upper class, you can be rich spontaneously. And from the lower class people’s view, you seem far beyond their reach. But there is nothing but learned wisdom in the difference between your and their ability. Heaven did not set up the difference. As a proverb says, “Heaven does not give fortune to a man, but to a man’s workings.” And as I have already said, there is no natural difference among people. A person who learned well and has wisdom can be the upper class and rich, and a person who did not learn and has no wisdom become the lower class and poor.

(English translation is from http://mage8.com/magetan/susume01.html)

I am not sure if he was a Christian or not (because he used a word, “heaven,”), but this idea is very appealing to me because basically his argument is that the harder you work and learn, the better your life is going to be. The difference between a wise man and a foolish man is the learned knowledge.

To be honest, where you were born could be an obstacle that makes you suffer somehow. However, as long as you work and learn very hard, there is always a way to achieve your goal. Learning is a key to success.

The premise of my blog is to share things that I learn from my life with other people.

I will keep doing this and learning more.

Thank you for reading:)

What Makes You Different?

Can you realize you difference?

Hello! It’s been two weeks! Always got surprised at the fact that time goes so fast.

Speaking of time, it’s been one and half year since I started studying in the United States. what has been changed in myself? Well, I think there are quite a lot. I have never gone outside California yet. I haven’t been to other countries besides the US and Japan for a travel. For the most of time, I am in Chico, concentrating on my studies. It’s very fun because I can feel that I am absorbing and accumulating so much information from my classes and found them useful for my future.

However, I think I need to see different cities and world more often. Right now, the only way to reach out the world is the Internet. I know that it’s not enough. To fully feel and perceive something new or unfamiliar to me, I must experience and see it with my eyes.

Of course, Chico is a beautiful and wonderful place, but it is not enough for me.

A beautiful sunset in Chico.

In my past blog posts, I discussed the reasons why I decided to study in the US (This post was written in only Japanese) and the gains from that decisions.

Now that I have talked about these two aspects, it is high time to talk about what could make myself different from other people. Here I compare myself to other Japanese international students at Chico State as well as those who go to study at different universities and colleges in the US and other nations.

It would be interesting to analyze the same thing, but with American students and international students from other countries. However, my next big obstacle in my life is to get a job in Japan. Thus, I would like to do this with only other Japanese students.

Let’s start this discussion with looking at a statistics about the number of Japanese students who have an experience of studying abroad from the Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science, and Technology (MEXT).

According to the date that is provided by the MEXT, there are over 60,000 Japanese students who study overseas in 2012. China is the most famous destination county among other countries with over 21,000 people. About 20,000 of them are in the US, and it marks the 2nd place, followed by the UK, Taiwan, Germany, and etc. This number includes all kinds of studying abroad programs.

This information is collected from the MEXT’s home page. Click the image for the full version of the PDF (It’s all Japanese).

With this graph above, what we can know is that there are lots of Japanese students who study abroad for less than one year. The white part is composed of those who have gone overseas for less than one month and accounts for the biggest portion of the each bar. The interesting part that I think I should point out is that the third section from the top of each bar, which has a gray color comprises the second biggest portion of those bars. 

What this suggests is that the number of Japanese students who use an exchange program for their studying abroad is increasing and accounts for a quite a bit portion of the overall studying abroad population. Since the Japanese government’s global education policy is to encourage more and more students to go overseas, this information suggests that the policy is working.

To be honest, that might  not be something that I am really excited about it because one year of study abroad experience is long enough for international and global Japanese companies who seek for new employees.  Unlike me, who is here in the US to acquire a degree and stay here for more then 1 year, those who use an exchange program go to their universities in Japan and know how the Japanese job hunting system works thanks to the plenty of information. For companies, if they could find those Japanese students at a career forum, it would be much better for them to hire them because they could possibly reduce the cost that they would have to spend to hire somebody like me (4-year studying abroad).  In addition, now those exchange Japanese students can participate in the global career forum in Boston or LA, which used to be open only for those who study in the US for s longer period of time. In my opinion, it seems that those exchange students tend to be from top ranked Japanese universities. I am not sure about this perspective, but as far as I know,  this tendency is true.

In short, as the number of Japanese exchange students go abroad to study increases,  the 4-year studying abroad program could possibly become less valuable.  This is how I feel like now.

I know this sounds like too pessimistic. Yeah it does because i am a pessimist, but a positive pessimist. So I would like to think about how to differentiate myself from them or rather how I can increase my value.

First of all, I am not a top-ranked US university student. If one said I am a student at UCLA, most of Japanese people would recognize its name. However, I am in Chico. Not many people are most likely to recognize Chico (It’s ok though. I am proud of myself being a Chico State wildcat!). Second, well I think there is no second here.

Anyway, the point is that the value of a top-ranked university itself is really really strong. Because it is a common sense that the better college you can get in, the better you life is going to be.

I think this is one of the most important notions that I need to think about. Obviously if I were a student at one of those top school, I would think what makes me different because going to those school will automatically make you different. Considering that the idea that a  better school equals a better life is a common sense, to great extent, it is likely to happen once students graduate from those universities.

However, it is still possible that students from a middle university can attain the same level of life.

According to an online article, “Does It Matter Where You Go to College?” by JORDAN WEISSMANN from the Atlantic, 

The big surprise: Selectivity didn’t matter. Academic siblings ended up making just about the same wages after college regardless of how choosy their school was. In fact, where the students applied, and their final class rank in school, were much better correlated with earnings than their school’s admissions standards. If you were smart enough to get into Yale, or even take a shot at it, you were probably smart enough to earn like a Yale grad.

The academic sibling here means students who marked the almost same academic level. Therefore, wherever you apply, it is still possible for you to earn the same amount of wage.

However, the study the author used pointed out that although the admission standard itself does not completely explain about how successful a student is going to be, he or she will not be able to make up for school’s resources that he or she could have acquired by attending one of those top universities. Because those top schools’ tuition fee tend to much more expensive than that of those middle rank schools. They have more various school resources, such as libraries, labs, computers, and of course, people.

These connections with other people are the biggest factor that makes everything different. 

It took me really really long to get this conclusion, but yes, this is it. This is why I wrote I wanna get out of Chico sometimes at the beginning of this post. No matter how hard I try to make myself more different and more valuable, there is a certain limitation. I am pretty sure that the more connections I make, the more experiences I will be getting.

Now I know what to do.

Get out my comfort zone!

So get out my comfort zone and let’s start connecting with more people!!

Thank you for reading.

What’s Your Story? #1

New Angle, New Challenge, New World

This is a new blog series that I am going to meet and interview a bunch of people and listen to their life stories (now only at Chico State though).Curiosity is one of the strongest traits that we, human beings, have. The more knowledge I absorb, the more I wanna know. Recently, I just cannot stop reading and watching new things from books and online. Everything is very interesting and amazing. And now I want to know more about other people’s life. Every single person has a fascinating story to tell. I can acquire and digest new knowledge based on my own perspective, but it is like always looking at stuff only from one side. Can you eat the exact same thing every day? Nope, I can’t. What other people are thinking and experiencing in their live is something that adds a great spice to my brain. It’s like that. So well, why don’t I start listing to them?

I am so excited to kick off this new series with an incredible person’s story!!

Photo credit: taken by Miri Lin and edited by Akira Motomura

• Name: Makie Sato.
• University: Dokkyo University, Senior Student
• Major: Communication (at Chico State) and Liberal studies (at Dokkyo University)

In this interview, my focus was mostly on asking about her studying abroad. Therefore, questions I asked during the interview were designed based on that purpose.

1. Why did you want to study abroad?

When I asked her this question, the answer she gave me was pretty simple, “Because I’ve wanted to do it since I was little.” She explained to me why and how she has become interested in foreign countries and English. Until 5^th grade, she said she was a typical elementary school kid who loved to play outside, sing songs, draw and create random things.

However, when she was in 5^th grade, she started going to an English conversation class where she learned the fundamental of English. The interesting thing about this English conversation for children was that she didn’t just play and sing songs in English: she actually learned the rule of English pronunciation, which most of Japanese people don’t really know about. Her teacher at that time was a young female English teacher who had been to the U.K. for studying abroad. According to her, she was her life changer.

Thanks to the unique curriculum, she came to be able to figure out how to pronounce an English word that was new to her. None of her friends then could do that. This experience changed her dramatically. She told me, “it was like a chain reaction that I suddenly loved studying because it was fun!” One time when she was at middle school, she decided to be in the first place on a big exam that almost all the middle school students in Japan was going to take, and she did it by scoring a full mark on the exam. Amazing!

It was her senior year of high school that studying abroad became one of her choices after her graduation because it’s been her dream. There were two options that she could choose from: studying abroad or staying in Japan to study for the entrance exam of Japanese universities.

However, it was 2011, the year when a huge earthquake happened around the northern east part region in Japan and a tremendously massive tsunami attacked and destroyed cities. Because of the natural disaster, she made a decision to stay with her family in Japan.

Next year, she got accepted from her current university, Dokkyo University and stared her college life there. Nonetheless, her passion towards studying abroad was still growing out of her mind. And finally, after she talked about it to her family, she decided to do it with her family’s strong support. She told me how thankful she is to her parents and siblings for giving her this great opportunity of studying in the U.S.

2. Why the United States?

There were several options of destination countries for her. However, she chose the U.S. as her destination country because she wasn’t really attracted by the British English accent. She felt life the American English was suited for her. In addition to that, she didn’t really wanna go to somewhere very cold. So, California was the best option for her. Well, nothing can beat this awesome weather of California lol

3.How has your experience of studying abroad changed yourself?

She told me that there are a couple things that have been significantly changed due to her studying abroad in Chico. The first thing is that she has more freedom. Before coming to the U.S., she belonged to a huge A cappella club, called OLFM, at Dokkyo University, in which she was one of the charges to lead the club. She said that she had so much pressure from her responsibilities as a charge because every single action she took would affect other members of the club. For example, if she hadn’t showed up at a meeting on time, the other members could have become less punctual and badly affected the operation of the club (She didn’t do any of this actually!! Good!). Always being right had been stressing her out and made her worried so much about how she was being seen by others. However, now she is free from any of these responsibilities, and it seems that she enjoys what she is doing without thinking how she is seen by others.

Another thing that she has changed though this studying abroad is that she began caring about and taking a look at herself. She used to try to fill up her weekly schedules with tons of activities and sleep about 4 hours a day when she was in Japan because that way, she didn’t have to think and worry about things that she truly want.

However, her life as an international student in the U.S. is not as easy as the one that she has in Japan because she has to figure out a way that works out for her. Unlike in Japan, everything is not laid out here, which allows students to have the flexibility and also requires them to have the responsibility.

Now she has some more time to consider what she really wants to do in her life and is able to try everything she wants to without any hesitation. This more free life that may be derived from the U.S.’s individualistic culture encouraged her to think about herself. I think that it is one of the most difficult things for us to face ourselves. We tend not to do it because it’s easier. I am happy that she realized the significance of facing herself through studying abroad.

4. What’s your life goal?

Finally, I asked her what she wants to do after she has completed her undergraduate program. She said she wasn’t sure because she hasn’t figured out her passion yet. However, she mentioned that she is looking forward to going to a school to teach students English and let them know how fun it is under the teaching program offered by her university. I am sure she will be able to do that!

After this first interview

Through this interview, I found that each person has each different and dramatic life no matter how they look very normal to me currently. Some of them might say to me that their life is not something special like people on TV, but I don’t think so. People have made different and important decisions at the different period of time, and all of them must be very significant to them. Those decisions are the ones that have shaped each person’s personality.

It is very important that you are yourself as a main character in your life.

I am still not sure why I decided to start this interview project, but with this experience, I think I will find something very meaningful to me.

I don’t know how much I could convey how impressed I was with her story though my words in this post, but I will continue to improve the quality of my writing in order to let readers have the same experience I have:)

Opportunity Costs of Studying Abroad

Hello, everyone. Thank for reading the last post.

I published the last blog post about how I see American Culture both in English and Japanese, and quite few of you read the post. I was amazed how many people liked it and put some comments on my Facebook feed. It really gave me a huge motivation to keep this blog updated so that I am able to share what I am experiencing here in the US.

Not all people can have this experience of studying abroad, which makes me feel like it’s one of my responsibilities to share what I have learned and seen with my families, friends and every single person who is interested in the world outside of their world.

A few days back, one of my friends in Chico shared an online essay about moving abroad. The essay was about “5 Depressing Side Effects No One Tells You About Moving Abroad.”

I took a look at the essay and actually partially agreed with it because sometimes I feel the exact same way as the author of this essay described about her experiences of moving abroad.

This semester I am taking a Microeconomics class for the first time, and I just had an introductory lecture today. In the lecture, my professor explained the concept of “Opportunity Costs.” I was just listening to his explanation without thinking what it means at first. However, as he talked about it more, I realized that this concept definitely has something to do with the weird thoughts that I had gotten from my friend’s post on FB.

He defined “Opportunity Costs” as the best alternatives that you could have instead of what you actually choose to do. So, it is something that I would give up on in order to do something else. For example, going to a college to get a degree is something you don’t have to do, but you decide to do for your future, even though you could have started working right after you graduated from high school and earned money for living.

In that sense, I am sacrificing the 4 years of my life to study in the US in order to get a Bachelor degree here, even though I could have decided to go to a Japanese university.  If I stayed and studied in Japan, I would be able to have more working experiences and internship opportunities at a Japanese company while I was an university student. I could have got to hang out with my friends and loved one in Japan. Instead, I am here.

I am not regretting any of my choices that I have made so far in my life. I am not taking the life I have now negatively. I would never do. However, I believe it’s very important to think about this.

Therefore, this time in this post, I would like to consider and discuss what good things I have personally gained from studying abroad, which takes me opportunity costs.

I briefly read this article, “25 Reasons to Study Abroad“by Laura Tucker. There are some good reasons that I can use in order to dig down what I think is important. So if you are interested in, just take a look at it.

First thing first, English. This is the one that most of universities and study abroad agencies  are emphasizing on as the biggest benefit of studying abroad. Whenever I tell people that I am studying at Chico State, which is an American University, they would automatically think that I am in the US either to study English at a language school or major in English. That is fine, but I am not. I am a graphic design major.

I assume that those who speak English as a second language would understand that English has become a TOOL, NOT the PURPOSE of Going Overseas. 

For most of Japanese international students, being able to speak English well is a big deal because there are not many people who can actually do that in Japan except Returnees.

You’ll understand that your tool (English) is useful enough, your ability to accomplish your purpose (absorb new exciting experiences) will be greatly improved. This is the time when you really reach the point at which you will notice the importance of English as a tool. At this point, you will find and fulfill the real purpose of your study abroad.

In Japan, it seems that being able to speak English is something that people need to a global citizen. I mean it is certainly necessary to communicate, but it is not the most important thing. What it really matters is the ability to understand cultures, religions, customs and traditions of other countries.

Taken from google

Second, you will have a plenty of time to enjoy your journey of self-discovery. For most of people, lifetime in college is something that can be the most valuable time of their life because it is when most people leave their home and start living by themselves. No one will cook for you. No one will do laundry for you. No one will clean up your room. So you have to do everything by yourself. Instead, you would have more freedom. It is totally up to you how you will spend your time at college.

At this moment, most of you would actually begin to think what you wanna really do with your life like l am doing right now. I am still looking for it.

Studying in a different country is a big experience. Every single one of your experience will change you in some ways. Some people might be able to feel their growth day by day, but other people might not be. Often times, it is better to talk to someone you can trust because you would really want somebody to listen to your story when you get stuck.

For the time being, my purpose is to acquire as many practical skills as possible.

I think this is the biggest thing of studying abroad. This is completely different from the second aspect I have just discussed above. By saying “Learn About Yourself,” I mean that you would learn who you really are – where you are from, what your nationality means to you, what religion you have in your home country, what tradition you have, what kind of personality you appreciate most, and etc…

To me, knowing my identity as a Japanese was the only way that I could go through from the struggles that I had at the beginning. Those struggles were like homesick, loneliness, and that kinda stuff. By accepting and loving my home country, I started accepting and learning other cultures.

Often times, we, Japanese international students, don’t know about our culture and tradition very well. We know the general stuff, but not the details of our culture, history, and tradition. We would be often very surprised at the fact that most of people in the US and other countries know who they are and they talk about it. It is something that most of Japanese people should be embarrassed. If you don’t know yourself, how could you understand other people?

I came to the US for the first time when I was in high school. It was only 10 days of staying. Everything about the US looked amazing and beautiful to me, and I hated Japan so much when I went back to Japan because Japan didn’t have what the US had.

However, the longer I stayed in the US, the more I love Japan.

This sounds very typical, but trust me. This is what you really need to realize.

Those things that I have mentioned above are the ones that I have gained from what I had given up; from the opportunity cost I spent. Pretty good, huh?

That’s it for today. Again thank you for reading!

I will upload the translation version of this blog post later.

The interview series will begin soon……

Why Am I Blogging?

Hi, everyone:)

I have only a week in Japan and then will go back to Chico to start a new semester as a junior student there. About three and half month of the first summer vacation felt a very long time at the beginning, but when I realized, it is about to end. What have I done during this break? Did I accomplish anything very meaningful to me for the next semester? I am constantly asking these questions in my mind. I think that I can feel my growth of this summer a few month later because it’s intangible; it’s always hard to actually feel.

In the last post, I wrote, “a purpose is always needed” as the title. By putting my then thoughts into words, I started getting out of my laziness.

It really gave me an opportunity to remember the reasons why I created this blog and come up with a new idea about expanding the potential of this blog.

However, before talking about the new idea, I would like you to know why I am blogging and the benefits of blogging in this post.

It’s been a year and half since I began this blog with WordPress. Initially, I was in a small class offered by a very kind and knowledgeable professor, Mikhail, at Lakeland College Japan. In that class, he explained to his students how to write a resume in English, encouraged us to have a talk on some of the interesting businesses or websites, and introduced LinkedIn, one of the biggest social media focused heavily on creating professional networks. And there was making a blog. Of those activities, blogging was the most attractive to me. Why? I didn’t really think of why, but now I have gradually realized the benefits.

Nick Scheidies, who used to work as a writer at Income Diary and is currently a project manager at Next Level Ink, wrote a great post on the benefits of blogging, and he mentioned the 20 biggest benefits of blogging in that post.

So by using his article, I would like to summarize my personal top 5 benefits of having a blog.

1.Getting A Better Job

This notion is quite amazing. According to the data used in Nick’s post, 9 out of 10 companies actually do some online research on new employees’ social media, whether they have a blog or a LinkedIn account. I believe companies would do this secretly so that new candidates cannot know about it. Thus, potentially having a blog can be an advantage for getting a good job. However, the chances will lower if you write a very random stuff without any in-depth thoughts.

2. Becoming A Good Writer and A Published Author

Just two years ago, I wasn’t even able to write a single page long paper. I mean I could, but it was extremely difficult for me to get it done. It took me forever. However, now I have become a relatively a good writer in both English and Japanese. I keep writing this blog in English because to me, English writing looks much logical than Japanese most of the time, and its structure is very simple. Therefore, it helps me to organize my vague thoughts, which at the same time improve my writing in Japanese. Constantly writing a blog has lots of benefits that were mentioned above.

In addition, a good thing about blogging is that I can get an instant feedback. If I had to submit my post to a publisher to get a feedback, it would cost a lot and take a long time. However, thanks to the development of the Internet, everyone can be a great author for almost free! This is an amazing thing. If you can get a good amount of people visiting your website, you will be able to make some money.

3. Becoming An Expert in A Field That You Like

Everyone can start a blog, but not all one of them have a specific interest to share, which tends to attract more people. So I believe it is totally ok to start your blog with something random. I pretty much began my blog that way. I have been writing and sharing what I have randomly experienced from my studying abroad. Sometimes my post is about design, but in other posts, I talk about job hunting, my academic, and other stuff that I feel like I wanna share. However, I think that I have gradually got closer to what I truly wanna do. You will figure out something that you are really interested in. So don’t worry about it right now. Just do it.

As you find something interests you, you will be constantly learning new information about the subject and feeling more motivated to write about your blog. That is when you actually start seeing this benefits of blogging.

4. Building A Network

As long as you publish your post to the Internet, where tons of people can have an access, there are always readers of your blog. The number varies depending on how great your writing will be, how often you will update, and how specific your blog is. I made a post on how to use social media to promote your website. Link is here. There’s another link in that post, which explains more about promoting a website via social media.

More trafics you will get, more people will comment on your great posts. Some of them might directly contact you in order to talk with you. Although you should know the risk of getting to know unknown people online, it is usually good people trying to contact you. They might wanna ask you for a help or simply wanna help you out.

It is also very important and effective for you to reader other people’s blog. They can possibly give you an insight for your next blog post and expand your network as well.

5. Gain Influence 

This is kind of similar to the number 4, but you can influence others, express yourself, make others understood yourself. It’s fun to see people follow your suggestions that you might put on your blog, and hear them say, “your blog really helped me!”

Politicians, TV and movie stars, great athletes and musicians can influence people. You think it’s impossible for you, don’t you? Well, you can actually.

So here we go. I have discussed some of the benefits of blogging. You can learn more benefits on Nick Scheidies’s post. Link is here as well.

Thank you for reading.

P.S. By midnight, I will try to create a new blog that I am going to translate the original post here and repost on.