First report: Ms. Nathalie Brandenberg

First months

Presentation
My name is Nathalie Brandenberg, I’m a graduate student in the Life Science College at EPFL, and I’m currently doing my master project in Japan, at the Institute of Industrial Sciences (University of Tokyo, Todai), in Prof. Takeuchi’s laboratory, the Biohybrid Systems laboratory. My master project’s field is tissue engineering.

Arrival in Tokyo, first impressions
As soon as I went out of the customs, I was impressed by the Japanese skills for organization. Indeed in the plane I was worrying a lot about how I could reach my accommodation without getting lost at least a hundred of times. I quickly noticed that my worries were useless because the transportation system is perfectly organized and described. Already here I felt a little less afraid about the vastness of Tokyo.
After having reached the city center, I actually took a train to join my apartment. Once again, the organization and the obedience of Japanese people surprised me. Indeed people queue very carefully in two lines on the train track in front of each yellow marks, which indicates the sides of the trains’ doors, a very strange thing from a freshly arrived foreigner point of view.
Also, the most surprising thing that I noticed quickly is that a few people speaks english. But, strangely, when I asked my way to some people, even if they didn’t speak english, they tried to explain me how they could and if still didn’t understand, they just brought me to the place I would like to go. This contrast is really something special to Japan.

Administrative Set Up
After the initial moving in my apartment, I did some administrative things like registering myself to the ward office to get my resident card. Also, the banking problem was solved in the first weeks, I opened an account thanks to the help of my apartment manager, which speaks english very well (hopefully!!). The funniest thing is that the bank have an e-banking website, which is very convenient but there is no english translation. So, the first time I used it I should register to the website. I took a whole saturday afternoon to complete the registration, playing with google translator and another firefox add on for live Japanese translation. The experience was hard, but retrospectively very funny.

Arrival in the Lab

I was happy to start my master project after having done some tourism in Tokyo (see left picture). The laboratory I’m working in is nice and well known. All the people are very nice but there are only two foreigners (including me) for about forty lab members, so at first it was difficult to communicate and understand as they were all speaking Japanese. Anyway I got used and I started little by little to talk with people (at least but not last the english speakers), and I became more and more integrated in the lab. Now, it is really nice and the atmosphere in the lab is great and motivating.
Japanese people’s social life is strongly merged to work’s life. A fact that was very surprising for me as in Europe work and social life are well distinguished. Also, Japanese young population is not used to go out the weekend evenings, which was very very surprising as well for me.

Daily Routine
After I started to work in the lab, I met more and more people, and I started to have a kind of a routine. And I felt more and more like being part of Japanese everyday-life. For now, I really enjoy the life in Japan, for many aspects. For example the food is varied and really fine. The people are always so kind, and the cities, even Tokyo, which is really huge, are safe and very enjoyable.