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In her first blog, Cerys writes about what a day in the life looks like as an exchange student studying at Osaka University.
A month into my study abroad year at Osaka University, Japan, I’m just starting to adjust to the warmer and more humid climate, Japanese food, language and cultural differences, and of course getting into an everyday routine! Just as the stereotype goes, I’m finding the academic culture is harsher here, with hours of homework from each module (of which I have to take a minimum of 7!) on top of multiple assignments, presentations and tests. On the bright side, living in a dormitory with students of all different backgrounds, ages, and speaking different languages provides nearly endless opportunities for fun social outings and groups of amazing people to explore the city and its surrounding areas with.
To showcase a weekday day-in-the-life for my time here, I chose Tuesday as this is the day in which I have the most classes across multiple of the university’s campuses, as well as a break for a little exploration in the middle.
I started my morning by waking up to the view of the nearby mountains from my dorm window, and going about my regular morning routine (outfit, makeup, brushing teeth, breakfast, you get the gist) before heading off to my first class of the day.
My first class – a psychology seminar – is on OU’s main Suita campus, a relatively short walk (by European standards anyway) or a 20-minute journey on the Monorail from the dormitory. I love to take the walk to Suita campus when the weather is nice, mainly for the views: once you get past the first 5 minutes of roads and petrol stations, most of the route goes through a backroad lined with lots of beautiful trees and nature, and even a bamboo forest along part of it!
Once I finished my much-dreaded presentation on electroconvulsive therapy (not a confident public speaker here!) and the following discussion, I had a break for several hours before my afternoon class at 13:30. Me and a new friend from the psychology seminar spent this break by heading downtown to a rabbit café we had been recommended by one of the research students. If you ever go to Japan, the animal cafes (especially the cat and rabbit cafes) are definitely worth a visit – of course it’s best to stick to the ethical ones who treat their animals well!
The café was decorated with lots of rabbit-related antiques, artwork, furniture, books, and even the glasses for our tea had rabbits printed on them! Most importantly, the café’s resident rabbit was totally adorable: he was called “Kawaii” (可愛い), the Japanese word for “cute” – which we thought was a very fitting name (I mean, look at him!).
After our time slot in the rabbit café ended, we headed to a nearby 7/11 to get our go-to quick lunch: onigiri. If you don’t know what these are, they’re basically rice triangles with some kind of filling (usually fish, plum, or seaweed) and wrapped in seaweed, a perfect lunch choice for when you’re short on time!
My next class (Society and Big Data) was on Toyonaka campus, the smaller campus a little further from the dormitory, but still easily accessible on the train and Monorail. This class is super interesting – the professor is fun and engaging and the students are such a great mix as well. We found out about our group projects – using Google Trends and R to do some analysis about trends in social/health data in our home countries, which sounds quite interesting!
After class, me and two of the girls from my group walked to catch the Monorail back to the dorms. Before my final class of the day (human-centred design), which was online and only ended at 7pm, I made sure to get some work around the house done like taking out the rubbish and doing dishes and laundry. Once that final class ended, I caught up on the set work (as I had a busy week of assignments and tests coming up), and then was surprised by my French roommate baking baguettes in our shared kitchen. Good bread is hard to come by here in Japan, so freshly baked baguette made by an actual French person was a very welcome reminder of home.
Finally, I end my day by cooking dinner, this time Japanese food (as it’s of course much easier to come by and much more affordable), watching some TV, and chatting with some of my friends here.
As different as Japan is to the UK, I feel I am already settling in well – the women’s everyday fashion and food here is right up my alley, and I definitely appreciate how much cleaner the streets, trains and metro are here than back home! I hope the rest of my year will be just as exciting as this first month has been.