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ttog

I went on a job interview to a very interesting place yesterday. It was a science lab, I won’t tell you what that lab was. You know, if you tell your wish it won’t come true kind of stuff. But the communication with people who work there made me wonder about foreigners living in Japan. Three years in Japan is an achievement, I must say. The professors at my university lived in Japan more than ten or twenty years. But I speak for myself, living in Japan more than two years is an achievement. Why? Because it is a country with different language, food, lifestyle and even time zone. Being […]

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ttog

It is entrance exam high time in Japan. Not only future bachelors, but also the future masters are shivering with anticipation. If you think of enrolling into a Japanese university for your master’s degree and consider a two-year master’s programme in Humanities, this is just the right section for you. I won’t write about how to enter a Japanese university, every university provides detailed guidelines to the entrance procedures on their webpages. Instead I will provide information on what career choices await you as a foreign student enrolled in master’s courses in Japan. Not long ago I worked as a one-day assistant during a master’s thesis defence. And although my […]

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ttog

Recently I was scouted as a one-day assistant on master’s thesis defence at my university. My job was to guide the master students in and out of the classrooms where their evaluators were waiting for them. Like Vergilius who guided Dante Alighieri through his Divine Comedy. Most of the graduate students in my faculty are foreign students. I took the liberty of talking to them and discussing their dissertations and their career plans. The scientific fields are chosen based on the applicability of their results My argument is solely based on my personal observations, but it seems that there is a trend for choosing a scientific field when it comes […]

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ttog

New Year is a fur tree, a count down, presents and all-nighter all over the world. But not in Japan. In Japan New Year is celebrated in an extremely modest way, comparing to Japanese Christmas or New Year celebrations in every country. Here is a list what a foreigner can (or should) do to celebrate New Year Japanese-style. 1. Nengajo (New Year post cards) It stands for Japanese New Year post cards. Post cards are a inevitable part of Japanese culture, but New Year post cards or 年賀状 (nengajo) are a special aspect of Japanese post card culture. The Japanese have been sending post cards to each other since Showa […]

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yushima_kawaiimono

More and more English translations have appeared in the present-day Japan . These translations make my life a lot easier. But there is one thing bothering me. As a foreigner in Japan you can’t help notice that an English translation is sometimes longer than the Japanese phrase. I’ll give you an example. Here is an instruction for worshiping one Japanese god in the temple. View this post on Instagram See, the Japanese phrase is longer for some reason and an English phrase is very short. #mylifeinjapan #japanese #languagelearning #translation #instablogger #gaijinworld Annaさん(@thetalesofagaijin)がシェアした投稿 – 2018年12月月21日午前4時00分PST See what I mean? The Japanese phrase is longer for some reason which makes you doubt […]