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Meeting New Japanese Friends!

Hey there, it’s me again – live from Tokyo! The past week has been an absolute blast at our internship; all six QUT students are absolutely loving our time in Japan (for some context about our trip, feel free to read more here).

The company we’re on our program with (Mitsui & Co., one of the largest general trading organisations globally) has organised many awesome events and sessions for us, students, to participate in. We’ve had some incredible visits so far to museums, traditional Japanese restaurants, and a lot more.

However, a few days ago, we had a very special visit. On Thursday 29 of June, we had twelve students from the Tokyo University of Foreign Studies come along to our building and chat with us about life and education here. They were all studying a degree based on Oceanic relations (think trade, but specifically in the Indo-Pacific region), which I thought was super cool.

We started off our morning with some very simple icebreakers, such as playing ‘human bingo’ (long story short – you write down things like your favourite food or favourite movie, and have to find other people in the room that have written the same thing to ‘bingo’) and making marshmallow towers out of spaghetti pasta.

However, we then transitioned to what’s called a ‘World Café’ set up. Three round table discussions were had based on three different themes:

  • What will the world look like in 2047?
  • How can Japan and Australia jointly contribute to this vision?
  • How will you personally develop in your career to help achieve such a future?

It sounds pretty serious, but we had some fun too. We all drew out our ideas on some butchers paper – from commercialized space travel to hybrid fruit crops developed for third world nations. It was awesome to think ‘big picture’ and discuss the future with our new Japanese friends, and built a tangible bridge between the two cultures and how we could work together to realise our own futures. 

But business aside, we’ve now all added each other on Facebook, followed each other on Instagram, and even went out for ramen a couple nights ago (if you don’t know what ramen is, do yourself a favour whip out Google stat). It’s been lovely to make such friendships with students like us – just in another part of the world! I’m sure we’ll all be able to see each other in the future, on Earth, or anywhere else conceivable in the galaxy! (Okay, that’s probably a little far fetched for 2047. A girl can dream).

 

3 Comments

  1. Brittany Paull Reply

    Hey there! I was just wondering how you found out about this internship, and how you applied? Was it through QUT? What is its duration? And also, what year are you in? Sorry for all the questions! Thanks 🙂

    • Izzie Reply

      Hi Brittany, thanks for reaching out! I found out about this internship through emails from the QUT Business school. However, it’s also communicated to IT and Law students. The program goes for two weeks in total, but some of us were lucky enough to travel individually afterwards. I’m a final year student (third year) 🙂 Hope this helps!

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