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On February 15th JR announced a release of an IC card that targets foreigners in Japan. This commuter card is dedicated to those who use public transport for a short time period. It’s called “Welcome Suica”, and, apart from its designs that features Japanese sakura, it benefits its users by providing prepaid public transportation services free of deposit. Normally, you pay a 500 yen deposit to have an IC card issued. But in the case of Welcome Suica foreign guests are welcome to take it as a Japanese souvenir. It covers all the areas that are covered by SUICA and PASMO, including buses, trains and underground. The sales start in […]

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One of my colleagues moved into the new apartment the other day. She said that she had to read the contract together with the owner for an hour. That’s what Japanese apartment contracts are! I should probably mention this more often, but Japan is an incredibly bureaucratic country. Their mind set on putting everything on paper, that’s why there are a lot of manuals and contracts. The bureaucracy has its plusses, once the deal is made you are fully protected by various papers. But there are also minuses, such as no one dares to set off the right path of a manual, for example. The rent contracts are part of […]

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It is the entrance exam high time in Japan. Not only future bachelors but also the future masters are shivering with anticipation. If you think of enrolling in a Japanese university for your master’s degree and consider a two-year master’s program 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 defense. And although […]

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Recently I was scouted as a one-day assistant on master’s thesis defense 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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When you speak Japanese with your Japanese friends you can’t avoid this question: “What Japanese do you like most?” or as they say it 好きな日本語はなんですか？ (Suki na nihongo wa nan desu ka?) I am always at a loss. What do they want me to say? There are different dialects in the Japanese language, there are different idioms, different characters, onomatopoeia, polite speech, not very polite speech – it all qualifies as Japanese. So how exactly should I answer this tricky question? I’ve asked my Japanese friends and here is what I found out: The answers may contain but are not limited by a word or phrase with a pleasant meaning […]