{"id":73,"date":"2013-11-01T12:32:21","date_gmt":"2013-11-01T16:32:21","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/japaneseprogram\/?p=73"},"modified":"2013-11-01T12:32:21","modified_gmt":"2013-11-01T16:32:21","slug":"alyssa-young-fall-2012-and-spring-2013","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/japaneseprogram\/2013\/11\/01\/alyssa-young-fall-2012-and-spring-2013\/","title":{"rendered":"Alyssa Young: Fall 2012 and Spring 2013"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Alyssa<\/a><\/p>\n

Majors: EAS and Political Science<\/p>\n

My first experience studying in Japan was when I was fifteen and I spent my sophomore year of high school studying in Fukuoka, Japan. Then, last summer (2012), I went back to Japan for the first time since high school. I received two scholarships to fund my study abroad experience. One was the Bridging scholarship, and the other was the Pasona Internship Program Scholarship.<\/p>\n

Through the Pasona Program, I had the opportunity to complete a summer-long internship at a well-known toy company in Tokyo, Japan. I learned about Japanese business-manners, work-culture, and business in general.<\/p>\n

From Tokyo I went straight to Nagoya, Japan, where I studied for two semesters at Nanzan University, which is one of Dickinson\u2019s programs. Actually, hearing about this program as a prospective student influenced my decision to choose Dickinson College. While I was there, I made the best of my experience. I entered the most challenging Japanese language classes, took a seminar with Japanese students, tried Japanese culture classes such as tea ceremony, and dabbled in club activities.<\/p>\n

Instead of a homestay, I was placed into one of the dorms located next to campus. I was afraid that living in a dorm would give me less opportunity to speak Japanese, and more to speak English. As it turns out, I lived in a close community of foreign and Japanese students, who taught me a lot about how young Japanese people live. My roommates were Korean and Japanese, and we made dinner and spoke Japanese together every day. I could not be more thankful that I had the chance to live there.<\/p>\n

While studying abroad at Nanzan, I also worked a part-time job a few days each week. I was ecstatic because the caf\u00e9 I worked at was a place where I could work closely with Japanese people in a professional environment while challenging my own language ability. Furthermore, chatting with the local customers was my way of engaging the community.<\/p>\n

The 12 months I spent in Japan taught me innumerable life lessons and skills. The key to study abroad is: always staying open to trying new things, realize that there are amazing opportunities for those who go looking for them, and to immerse oneself completely in the culture.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Majors: EAS and Political Science My first experience studying in Japan was when I was fifteen and I spent my sophomore year of high school studying in Fukuoka, Japan. Then, last summer (2012), I went back to Japan for the first time since high school. I received two scholarships to fund my study abroad experience. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1278,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[86488],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-73","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-student-reflections"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/japaneseprogram\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/73","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/japaneseprogram\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/japaneseprogram\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/japaneseprogram\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1278"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/japaneseprogram\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=73"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/japaneseprogram\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/73\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/japaneseprogram\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=73"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/japaneseprogram\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=73"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/japaneseprogram\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=73"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}