At the second term of 2024-2025, it supposed is my last term as an undergraduate in CUHK. However, I spent that term as an exchange student at Kyoto Sangyo University (KSU) in Japan. As a result, I had to extend my expected graduation date by one semester, meaning that I will graduate later than my classmate who entered CUHK at the same year. But if you ask me whether it was worth it or not, my answer is: absolutely, it was very much worth it!
In KSU, the subjects I studied were completely different from those in CUHK. At CUHK, I was a student in Education Faculty, apart from those university general studies requirements, the subjects I studied focused mainly on Mathematics and Education. However, at KSY, I stepped outside of my comfort zone and chose to study some culture and linguistic stuff, such as Japanese literature, Japanese culture, Japanese language and translation. These are almost like completely different fields; I learnt a lot and enjoyed the joy of exploring knowledge from another perspective.
Student life at KSU was very different from that at CUHK. At KSU, the timetable consisted of five class periods, each lasting 1 hour and 30 minutes, with a 15-minute break between each lesson. It makes the timetable very regular, just like the timetable in Hong Kong secondary school. Experiencing this timetable had both advantages and disadvantages: the good part was that the regular timetable reduces the chances of forgetting the class as it is easy to remember. But bad part is that a regular timetable means that every student will do the same thing at the same time, such as having lunch, every student cafeteria was very crowded. Compared to CUHK, the workload per credit at KSU are much lighter, but the number of credit students can take in KSU is much higher than in CUHK.
During the time I lived in the I-house of KSU, I made a lot of friends from many different countries and experienced the life of living in Japan. In the past, I am just a visitor, rushing through different tourism sights, taking pictures, and then returning home. This time, I lived in Japan as a kind of long-term resident which I never experienced before. Staying in I-house and looking at the garbage-sorting instruction which I still cannot understand now; walking several kilometers with the friends in I-house to but groceries at a cheaper supermarket, complaining about why the vegetables and fruit are more expensive than meat; jogging through the Kamogawa River during the weekend; chatting in the I-house with different students from different countries, such as listen to Germans to share about the differences between West German and East German, or listen to the student from Finland to share about their mid-summer Festival, these were the experience that not a tourist can experience. These also made me realize that the world is much larger, much wider than I had ever imagined.
This exchange experience enriched my life and broadened my international vision, and I hope I can be able to share with my future students. I am deeply grateful that I had the courage to apply for this exchange programme. I am thankful to my family for their understanding and support. I also want to thank the support and assistance that CUHK provided to me for going to KSU as a exchange student. I am also grateful to everyone I met in Japan, without you, I would not have this precious and joyful experience. Thank you all and hope you all are being well!
