Making Connections Abroad
During our trip to Japan, we visited different universities and made many connections with the students. One prime example is Keio University, which one of the top schools in the country. Most of the students were pretty proficient in English, so it was easy to get to them know them and to learn more about them.
Most of the students were really friendly and some were really easy to talk to. One of the students I talked to had a pretty good interest in anime, but it was a little sad that most of them didn’t play video games. It was amazing to connect with students who shared some of the same interests as you, even though you’re world’s apart from each other. Keio University was probably one of my favorite places to visit during my study abroad experience, I hope I get the chance to connect with more people as our trip continues.
Posted on May 15, 2012, in Site Visits and tagged College, Culture, Japan, Michigan State University, MSU, Study Abroad. Bookmark the permalink. 1 Comment.
Aaron Preston 
It was a lot of fun meeting all of the students at the three different Universities (Keio, Waseda, Kobe City). Although, the language barrier was an issue at Waseda, it was still a neat experience overall. It was nice just to see what their lives in Japan was like, not to mention their lives as students too. For me, video games was a nice connection to them, but when I talked about famous baseball players from Japan (Ichiro Suzuki, Yu Darvish, etc.) a lot of the students really were impressed that I followed them and especially were impressed when I told one that I got to see Ichiro play a while back. It was neat too when some of the Japanese students were very big fans of American celebrites (e.g. Nicki Minaj, Lady Gaga, etc.), but my favorite was at Waseda when two students were huge Foo Fighters fans (one of my favorite bands). It was a lot of fun just making those connections and even more fun to at least keep future contact with.