Step by Step, Plans for Study aboard to Japan

Japan is a country that have interesting culture and high technology. However it’s a small country but the citizen have good work ethic and the best in team work. That characters which had built Japan up, they never stop when their work haven’t finished and it’s like we can say “An American professor easily can defeat a Japanese professor, but ten American professor in team work can’t defeat ten Japanese professor in team work”. The Character of Japanese are formed since in childhood so it’s become a habit and then the way of life, whatever sector they are struggling. The characters and habits of Japanese is one of reasons to study overseas at Japan, so besides we get the knowledge (sciences and technologies) we can get mind set (include characters and habits) of Japanese too. So we can help to build Indonesia like Japan use it.

Certainly when we want to study abroad at Japan mainly with scholarship, we must prepare many things such as immigration documents (passport and visa etc. if you haven’t before), academic documents (academic transcript, research proposals, and recommendation letter), curriculums vitae, essay relate with study, certificate of health, letter of acceptance, certificate of proficiency (TOEFL, IELTS, or JLPT), and much more. Furthermore we should prepare how to communicate with our supervisor or professor, adaptation with Japanese culture and food, adaptation with weather and season, etc. The point is we must have qualify that university and scholarship needed.

The documents is surely we have to prepare and even on our hand after we have an idea to study aboard. The first and the most important is language proficiency. When we want to have language proficiency we must make the language as our habit every day. For the example if we want to improve our English ability we must use English everyday. We just try to listening English music, watch English movies with English subtitles, play a game like RPG genre with English conversations, write our love letters or messages in English, and the enjoyable to do is I often listening VOA English Report from YouTube and try to speak as the reporter. Although we can learn English with self-taught, it’s still to learn in language center to make our English ability improve perfectly. Because when we improve English ability with autodidact it’s only use to communicate in English, and the listener is know everything what we mean without care about the grammar. Even though besides we tell our ideas in oral to make the listener understand, sometimes we have to write our idea and it’s important to care about the grammar. So study English in language center is highly recommended when we want to improve English perfectly. The point if we want fluent in English make it as habit anywhere and everyday.

  Study aboard to Japan is difficult but it’s possible for common family. Scholarship is one of ways for everyone continue their education in Japan. So we should to collect the information how to apply study in Japanese University. The first, we can visit university’s website and looking for the admission and scholarship. It’s better to compile the information on our databases, what are general requirements and specific requirements that university needed. The databases are very useful to prepare ourselves with every university requirements.

LOA or Letter of Acceptance is magic letter that we should to have it when we want study aboard not only Japan but also anywhere. When we have it, 99% we will continue our education because many scholarship need LOA when we want to apply it, but depend on our effort to struggling too. How to get the LOA? It have many way, the challenging way is we have to find a professor and communicate if we have ideas and want to help his project that relate with our field. Usually the professor will request us to make a research proposal, and certainly we must create it. For example, your field in undergraduate is material physics you can get LOA with find the professor that have or may be have projects in material science, you can find it in the website of university. After that it’s depend on our communication with the professor, something that we must remember is the professor surly busy man so we must patient when contact the professor. After we create good communication and the professor begin interest to our ideas, create our research proposals however the professor isn’t request. At the right time you should ask that you want to help professor’s project and to become our supervisor. If the professor accept the ideas and proposals, we will be given the LOA.

Knowledge of Japanese culture is important to prepare. Because if we have it, it will be easily after we arrive in Japan and have to adapt with the Japanese culture. We can watch Japanese-themed movies and documentary videos, join to Japanese cultural exhibition, listen Japanese radio, etc. to know the Japanese Culture.

It’s all summary the story of my preparation to study in Japan. Ganbatte Kudasai!!!

Margi Fitriawan, Department of Physics Semarang State University, Material Science and Engineering Kyoto University 2017. ^_^

Youth Connection 2016 - MITI Kluster Mahasiswa