Internship in Japan

Nadezhda Lesnik, a student of Faculty of the Humanities, about her internship at the University of Toyama (Japan)

My internship at Toyama University in Japan runs from April 6 to August 31, 2022.

I became much more fluent and confident in speaking Japanese, learned a lot about the language and culture, and was able to hone the skills that I lacked before the internship. Classes in Japanese, constant communication with native speakers and immersion in the language environment helped me learn to grasp information much easier and even start thinking in Japanese. I also was able to make many friends and visit many interesting places, and I managed to travel to Tokyo, Kyoto, Osaka and Nara, as well as to the sea and mountains around Toyama.

For me, this internship turned out to be an invaluable experience both in terms of my professional growth as a culturologist, and for personal growth. Living independently in another country within a different culture taught me a lot, including greater autonomy and independence, attention to cultural differences and peculiarities of the worldview, understanding that things that are obvious to me may not be close to the people around me at all - and vice versa.

I am grateful to our university for this invaluable experience and sincerely hope that in the future as many students as possible will be able to go on an internship in the country of their studied language, because this, in my opinion, gives the strongest impetus and the greatest motivation for growth in the future.