Origins

As someone who wishes to live and work in Japan, there’s always been one major barrier – the language. The Japanese language is well-known to be incredibly difficult to learn, but its a feat that must be overcome to even question the possibility of moving to the land of the rising sun.

Me? I’m just your average 22 year old male finishing up his final year at university. I’m currently studying Aeronautical Engineering at Imperial College London and hope to be able to continue either in this, or a similar field at a research institution in Japan. As such I’ve done my best to pick up what I can of the language; I joined two classes over the last few years and am just about to complete a beginners class at my university. But this isn’t enough. I can barely understand what’s being said on my textbook’s accompanying CD let alone that of an actual Japanese person!

So, how do I quickly learn the language whilst keeping on track with my academic career goals? Amazingly, what seems to be such a simple question has anything but a simple answer. I did a lot of research into different possibilities, and even pondered the idea of pursuing a masters course at my university in order to be eligible to continue studying Japanese! It didn’t take long to realise that it probably wasn’t the best decision financially. Scratch that off the list.

What were my other options? After much research, I stumbled upon a few reasonable courses of action, the first of these known as the “MEXT Scholarship” – it seemed perfect for my situation, but unfortunately the deadline had passed. Next. Then came the JET Programme, a programme requiring me to teach English in Japan as an ALT (Assistant Language Teacher). This seemed somewhat promising, but didn’t offer me a direct course of learning Japanese and didn’t exactly bode well with my future plans. Regardless, I sent in my application anyway as it’s always a good idea to have a backup plan ready!

Finally, I came across the Daiwa Foundation. This foundation offers incredibly competitive scholarships for approximately six people per year to pursue a 19 month programme of language study, homestay and work experience in Japan, with the intention of bringing you up to JLPT N2 level from scratch. Incredible! It offers everything I’d been looking for, and then some. It seemed like there was light at the end of the tunnel after all. After countless failed job applications throughout the year, I’d finally found something that I really wanted. Something that I’d truly be able to show my passion for.

After an intensive five months from the start of my application, including three in-person interviews, I was offered the scholarship! Opening up that final email was both one of the most intense and gratifying few seconds that I can remember throughout my university life. I had sent probably at least 30+ applications over the year to various companies and firms, and each time I had been rejected. But I finally found the one thing that truly matched what I wanted to do, and they’d given me the benefit of the doubt that I could live up to their expectations.

As for the application process in detail – I’ll leave that to a future post. I’ve already rambled on far longer than I originally intended to. So in a nutshell, I’m one of the 6 “2015 Daiwa Scholars” set to leave for Tokyo in September. I hope to be able to use this blog as a means of documenting my journey so that one day I can look back at the memories I’ve amassed – something I regret not doing whilst in Singapore during my university exchange year – but again, that’s for another post!

Anyways, to anyone who somehow stumbles across this blog (and managed to make it through the above wall of ramble), I hope you find my future blog posts somewhat interesting/ entertaining/ <insert other positive adjective here>.

Stay tuned!