My Life in Japan / SANGOKU KAIDAN

• Yongon Yee (2nd year, Department of Imaging Arts and Sciences)
• Shiori Ishizuka (2nd year, Department of Industrial, Interior and Craft Design)
• Jacques Seki (2nd year, Department of Industrial, Interior and Craft Design)
• Mitsuki Tamura (2nd year, Department of Design Informatics)
• To Cho (2nd year, Department of Science of Design)

Living the student life -- getting up in the morning and heading off to school, taking classes and working in groups to resolve issues. Working late in a part-time job and then heading home again. By showing you this video of one totally ordinary day in an overseas student’s life, we’re aiming to give you a picture of the actual life of an overseas student. We wanted to show a range of different situations in a typical day living in Japan.

Students thinking of coming to study in Japan say that their biggest concern apart from the language is whether or not they can get used to the lifestyle in a country that is not their own. This video captures the everyday reality of life for overseas students living in Japan and also explains the Japanese lifestyle for students coming to Japan. It may serve to alleviate a little of the unease felt by students from ASEAN countries and anyone else interested in studying in Japan. The fact that this student is here as an individual as well as being out there in the community working part-time is something that anyone who has been a university student in Japan can relate to and is probably one of the most important steps to getting used to life in Japan. So when we filmed the student, we were conscious of the differences in the way he appeared when relaxing on the way to his job or riding his bicycle to school, when he was engaged in discussions with other students at school, and when he was hard at work in his part-time job. We also thought that one form of cross-cultural communication is the way that things like streetscapes or vending machines -- things that Japanese see as perfectly normal -- appear through the eyes of foreigners. We were hoping to gain fresh insights from things that are integral to everyday life without including things that are generally recognized overseas as classic Japanese landmarks or as being typically “Japanese”.