Sepyan From Indonesia -April 2017 admission
Hello everyone, my name is Zulfikar Muhamad Sepyan called as Viki who is an Indonesian and 19 years old. I would share one month experience in Kyoto University with pleasure.
I arrived in Japan on April 3rd. Honestly I was so excited to feel Japanese ambience for my first time. Anyway, thank Kyoto Daigaku (Kyodai) for getting me a tutor and the guidance perfectly to manage my documents as a new comer which giving me amazing feeling . As I expected, every single piece of my documents could be completely organized by the officers.
Furthermore, when I attended the guidance class that informing about what-to-do for my first time in the university, Kyodai gave me complete information about that. It is clear that Kyodai has lots of experience to look after students even for whom cannot speak Japanese at all, like me. However, those were still not beyond my expectation.
On April 10th, I was faced with my daily University activities: such as attending in the classes. The class would be easily searched and I could reach the university from my place on time, or even earlier, considering Japanese morning classes start later than one in Indonesia, that what I thought. However the reality was not as easy as I thought. Actually I got late and lost. The reason I woke up late was jetlag phenomenon (Japan’s mean time is 2 hours faster) and It was heard for me to read the classes’ locations written in Japanese.
That was such a terrible experience of mine as I represent my country. So I pushed myself to be punctual afterwards. Unfortunately, the jetlag phenomenon stuck for a while and I became so much worried because I do not speak Japanese well. Fortunately my classmates were so benign; they would tell me the location of each class before it starts .
Talking about classmates, to be sure that they were so kind (and this really is beyond my expectation). I thought the international class would be filled with pupils from diverse countries. The real condition said it was not: I am the only student who does not speak Japanese in my class. Moreover , I was the only student in Japanese Elementary A class, the most basic Japanese class.
I was frustrated and lonely; those mixed feelings were deep inside my heart. Nevertheless, it was over and it was changed after a week following those classes’ flows. I realized that professor seemed understanding my feeling. Because they ask every single pupil to be active in classes and eagerly forced us to speak English always. Plus, my classmates who were so delight always willing to help in Japanese affairs. Thanks, my fellow sensei and tomodachi!
All in all, even though you have the same feeling as mine, I suggest not to be afraid of taking your first step on Kyodai. Although you need to start it over from beginning, always try to keep it in your mind, you have many people giving you a hand. I also think that Kyoto Daigaku fits with its abbreviation, “Kyodai”. As Kyodai means “siblings” and Kyoto Daigaku has given me such siblings in Japan.