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 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.

Dream vs. Reality

After the job fair

Drinking with Masa and Juri

FOOOOOOOODDDDD

It’s been a week since I came back to Japan. I am enjoying hanging out with my friends in Tokyo. At the same time, I feel weird because I haven’t seen my family yet even though I am in Japan. Well, I will see them soon so that’s ok.

The very first thing and most important thing that I have to mention here is about food. After I started studying in the US, I realized that food is everything. It is one of the happiest things for me to eat good and delicious food. No matter how busy my life may be going to be, I will definitely eat healthy and enjoy my life. The photo above is called, “Kaisendon,”which has a bowl of vinegar rice covered with different types of fresh fish. Since I am so crazy about eating fresh fish, it was super wonderful for me to eat this meal as the first dish to eat in Japan.

This past week was so tight because I did lots of things. Most of them were things that I have never done before.

Since I have been focusing on writing about job hunting stuff,  I would like to explain what the job hunting in Japan looks like and how it works from my own experience in this post. The job fair where I went this time was held by Mynavi, which is one of the biggest companies that contributes to facilitating  people’s job hunting process in Japan.

The Logo of Mynavi

The very impression that I got from this experience was that the job hunting process in Japan is well-organized and systematic, which makes things easier for new graduates because all the information that they would need will be provided through some companies like Mynavi. In addition, if one student wants to be hired by a relatively huge corporation, he or she might be able to realize it just by going to one of those big job fairs where most of large corporations would have their own booths. The scene was kind of like going to Walmart (job fair), looking at different types of products (companies) that it has, and choosing (applying) one from them.

According to one of my friends who is now working on her job hunting, there will be several interviews to be hired by a company that she has applied for. Each time the company will pick up fewer candidates for the next interview, and those candidates who could move on to the very last interview will be able to have a job there, maybe.

As I have mentioned in other posts, this sort of job fair will be held during a certain time of a year. Usually, it was around April or something like that. However, since the Abe Cabinet has changed it, next new graduates (those who will graduate in 2017) are going to have this process after August. Well, in my opinion, it doest matter if the time of a year has been changed. In any case, they will do job hunting with others at the same time, which would help them feel safer somehow.

Interestingly, relatively small and middle-sized companies usually will not come to the job fair. They seem to interview new graduates and other people individually and hire them outside of those job hunting rules that larger companies might have to follow.

Another thing that I have realized was that most of the companies that had their booths at the job forum didn’t seem to expect students to have professional skills or talents in some field of businesses. The way they promoted themselves to attract those students was to guarantee that they will train new employees and let them have some opportunities to master some skills that they want them to know after they got hired. The job fair that I went to was for students who have an experience of studying abroad. Thus, to my eyes, what they really expect us was a little bit of English skills. Not all of them didn’t expect us to speak perfect English.

Unlike the US, it is obvious that what college students learn and what companies want are not matched in Japan. It seems to me that American college education is more about preparing for jobs, whereas Japanese college education …… I don’t really know about it. I visit one of Japanese universities and saw many of students there enjoying using their spare time to do something that they want to do. For example, a part-time job accounts for a huge part of their academic life, which I think is good for them because it would help them to get used to the real working environment beforehand. The other is, of course, participating in some club activities or having an internship. I felt kinda envy because I was so busy in doing my homework that I got from my classes during the last school year. I know that I could have done some if I really wanted to do because I could manage time.

Anyways, I will try next semester.

Not every company hires new employees like this, and not every company will train new employees. As different people have a different purpose of life, each company has its own philosophy to hire new people in order to increase its productivity and sales. If a person’s dream is to be rich by getting a job at a big and famous company, he or she can do that by applying for a company that would satisfy his or her dream. If a person’s dream is to accomplish something very interesting and get yourself fired up like I wanna do in my life, he or she can join a start-up or a new venture business.

According to a statistics in a youtube video, people who are happier and satisfied with their job will earn less money than those who are less happier and satisfied.

I don’t know if it’s really true or not, but let’s see what’ll happen.

By the way, I watched a great movie by which I was so impressed and motivated on the plane from SFO to Tokyo. Please check out.

Click the photo!

P.S. I originally started writing this post a week ago, so the timeline is kind of weird. Sorry:)

Thinking about My Future 2

Life cannot be undone

So I was writing a new blog post a few days ago, and I came back to my blog, trying to find the draft that I thought I had written and saved. But I couldn’t find it, which means I have to rewrite the whole story. The post was kinda long because I was basically writing about what I thought about my study abroad. What have changed, improved, and found through this one year of studying at Chico State…. In addition, I was sort of promoting the good things about coming to Chico to study for future international students, especially those who might be going to come from Japan.

Also, that attempt led me to write what I think of other Japanese people who haven’t gotten out of Japan before. After one year of studying in the US, I have noticed lots of weird things about Japanese culture as well as how things work in Japanese society.

In the last post, I told that i would continue writing about Public Relations and other related stuff, but I would like to change it. This time I would like to discuss things that are mentioned above. Topics that I’m gonna write are basically coming out of the research on job-hunting stuff that I was doing.

A Scene of Japanese Job Hunting (Source: google image)

The very first weird thing about the job-hunting in Japan is that college graduates are not going to apply for a job based on their major or what they have learned in their college. So basically most of them just go online and find a company that might be treating them well once they got hired, but the job that they would have is totally not relevant to their majors.

Let’s say you are an science major and have been studying chemistry for 4-year of your college life. What kind of job is he or she going to get? It’s pretty much anything like working in an office of a bank. This kind of thing can easily happen in Japan because those companies (if the size of them is relatively big) are likely to train them after they hired new graduates so that they can let them know how they want those graduates to work in those companies. It’s quiet interesting. I found this from a bunch of Q&A websites so the credibility can be questionable. However, I believe to some degree, the job-hunting system works in this way.

I am afraid that I may be forced to do a job that is not what i really have no idea once I’m hired by a Japanese company. I would like to know what I am going to do for the company beforehand. This is highly possible if I get one from a big company.

I would like to work somewhere I can fully exercise my specially, which is graphic design, and hopefully work as one of the core members of the company. To realize this, it would be better for me to apply for a smaller company or some sort of start-ups.

The second thing is the uniformity of Japanese job-hunting.

Toko Keizai Magazine with a picture promotes students to be ready for job-hunting season (Source: google image)

http://www.tofugu.com/2014/11/17/japanese-must-wear-black-suit-job-hunting/

The link above explains well what I mean by the uniformity of Japanese job-hunting.

There is only one time of the year when new college graduates can look for and apply a job. It is usually around on April (the Abe Cabinet has changed the time of the year so that students can focus on their studies; this is mentioned in the link). Students wear the same black suit, have their hair cut very short, write a bunch of resumes, take companies’ literacy tests or some sort, and worry about if they can really follow the “unwritten rules.”

New graduates feel so pressured this time of the year because this is like an entrance examination of college. If they fail it this year, they have to wait for a year and the possibility of being hired somehow gets lower (this is mostly true for big corporations).

Considering getting a job after I graduate from Chico State, this scares the shit out of me because there is absolutely less amount of information that I can easily reach from where I am, and finding somebody who has gone through this overwhelming process with the same situation is even more difficult. It seems better for me to work in the US for a few years after my graduation. This sounds a lot easier (I think the reality of getting a job in the US is also as difficult as that of Japan).

The third thing is more about students with the experience of studying abroad.

According to the Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science, and Technology-Japan, the number of Japanese international students has been decided since 2008, which reached the highest number: about 83,000 students.

Right now in total about 60,000 Japanese students are studying other countries such as China, the US, the UK, and etc. about 20,000 out of the total study as a full-time student and are trying to get some sort of degree (Bachelor, Master, Ph.D, etc ). There are less students who study under this situation currently. In contrast, the number of Japanese students who use an exchange program from either their college or study abroad agencies has increased (Approximately over 36,000 students). I don’t know how long those students are outside of Japan to study.

Source 1: http://www.mext.go.jp/a_menu/koutou/ryugaku/__icsFiles/afieldfile/2015/03/09/1345878_01.pdf (the link is written in Japanese)

Source 2: http://www.cas.go.jp/jp/seisaku/ryuugaku/dai2/sankou2.pdf (the link is written in Japanese)

Anyway, those students who have some experiences of studying abroad will definitely try to promote that experience as their strengths when they apply for a job. Normally, the proficiency of English can be the first thing that they will emphasize on because they believe that people who can speak English are more likely to be hired, and I think this is true in most cases. What I mean by “most” is that companies might possibly consider those students as troublesome because they have experienced different cultures and standards where they are allowed to speak up more often. In addition, as I have seen in myself, exchange and international students sometimes get overconfident in their potential of English and tend to look down the system of Japanese society. They (including me) sometimes think that they should be treated differently from others who have never gone overseas.

There is a bunch of students from other countries in Japan, and they can usually speak more then 3 languages at business level and have some sort of speciality that they can perform when they have a job. Some of them are seriously trying to get a job in Japan, but it is still very hard for them for some reasons.

The link here deals with those reasons well: http://www.japantimes.co.jp/news/2015/06/10/national/international-students-face-job-hunting-hurdles-japan/#.VXygn8b7qWP

Compared to those more skillful international students in Japan, those who have studied in the US for one year as an exchange student wouldn’t simply be attractive enough to those big companies in Japan that are internationally famous. Being able to speak some English isn’t enough. We need both English and something else.

I think here is both Japanese job-hunting environment and Japanese students who are studying abroad need to work together so that both of them can have benefits. The system should be more easier and suitable not only for those who graduate from Japanese college but also for those who will graduate from college of other contries. And those international students should respect the way of job-hunting in Japan to some degree. There is certainly something wrong, but if you wanna get a job in that environment, you gotta accept it.

That’s it for today.

Thank you for reading!:)