Hello, everyone! How’s your day today? I hope you have a great day.  So, talking about a life of an exchange student, have you ever thought of doing grocery shopping with international friends? Or having unique stationery like stapleless staplers? Or…accidentally strolling across your neighborhood and getting a warm welcome into an-old-Japanese style house? Actually, I had also never thought and imagined about that before. However, these are all real and indeed pleasant experiences that I have had. Now, let me take you to have a glance of my exciting journey as an exchange student in Japan.

My name is Pratiwi Prameswari, an exchange student in the College of Policy Science at Ritsumeikan University. My original major at ITB is Urban and Regional Planning. During my stay at Ritsumeikan University, one of the most interesting classes that I took is International PBL Seminar. In this class, I needed to work together in a group with members from different majors and countries. We got big two projects to solve, a business case and a campus case. We shared new knowledge and perspectives to solve the problems. The amazing thing about this class was that you can choose and create your own stories with your international friends during the projects. For me, the unforgettable thing during this class was spontaneously going to the grocery store after a group meeting. My group had decided to sell Japanese, Thai, and Indonesian flavor portable food for a business project. However, we didn’t have any idea about the price of the materials. So, we spontaneously went to the nearest grocery shop in the evening. Even though we aimed at only checking the price at first, we ended up sharing stories about each other’s traditional foods and buying some raw materials for the prototype. It was a sudden yet exciting thing for just taking a single class.

Japan has also never failed to surprise me for its technology and unique products. I’ve always been amazed by many products in Japan. Here, many common products have gotten a deeper attention and been turned into masterpieces. One of the simple examples is stationery. You can find a bunch of unique stationery products, such as erasable highlighters or erasable pens. The unique stationery that grabbed my attention was the stapleless stapler. I’ve never seen a stapler without metal staples and I really like that idea. 

Another thing that I love about Japan is the culture and the friendliness of the people.  Japanese people are very nice and helpful. Japan has also preserved its cultural heritage very well despite its development of sophisticated technology. One day, when I was going back to my apartment in Suita, I accidentally found an old-Japanese-style house with a huge wooden gate. I stole a glance at the house and a woman came out. The house turned out to be a Japanese cultural heritage site. She smiled and asked me whether I want to go inside or not.  I decided to go inside. The entrance fee was surprisingly free and the house was very huge. She was very nice to me and showed me everything around. Even though it was hard for her to explain everything in English, she tried her very best to explain everything. It was a really nice and exciting experience.

However, this is only a small part of my amazing experiences. I strongly recommend you to take your chance to be an exchange student here to get your own experiences. Get your own interesting stories, learn many new things, and experience the excitement of living in Japan! Many amazing journeys are waiting for you to be discovered.