One of the best things that happened to me when I come to
Japan is to meet new friends. I’ve never had international friends before, so the experience brought me special memories and feelings. I met many friends from dormitory, from master course, in Japanese classes and from my part-time job. Because I will graduate soon, in several months, I would like to write about them, to appreciate them who helped me had a meaningful two-year-stay in Japan
Nam Duhyun
The
first person I met in dormitory! We stayed in the same dorm for 6 months. He sometimes
knocked on my door at night just to ask if I have any problem about school,
life, study etc. I just wondered why he cared about that until I found out he
was tutor of dormitory and he was in the same master course! Later I received
lots of help from him: introducing around campus, filling out Japanese
documents (usually when engaging any activity, we have to submit plenty of documents,
and I would be lost without his help), finding new accommodation after moving
out of dorm. He even spent hours helping me carry luggage on the moving day! Perhaps he is one of the kindest person I’ve ever met. One thing I was inspired by him
was his ability to use Japanese fluently. Since then, I dedicate my free time to learn the language so that I can become helpful someday like him. He has graduated for one year now and went back to Korea.
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| Nam-san (middle), Park-san (left, Thai student, very close friend with Nam, also my roommate) and me. It was a little farewell dinner before Nam-san went back to Korea |
Ronnie
His full name is Katalo Ronald, but sometimes we call him Ronnie. He is an interesting guy from Uganda, Africa. I met him in the very first day of the master course, and we also have same supervisor, A/Prof. Fujioka. In the first month, in most of our conversations, I just kept smiling whenever he spoke because I could not understand his English. I had a theory, his English was too difficult or my English was so poor that I could not catch up. But anyway, now I can follow his jokes and pep talks so properly the language barrier has vanished. I don't usually meet him outside of university so all I see about him is that he is a dedicate student. I have seen him working on his computer, writing, making presentations... Well, indeed, I lost my patience seeing him editing things super slowly! But in the end, he always finished things faster than me. I respect him for his consistency, doing any task thoroughly and seemingly nothing can pull him out when he is focusing on something. When he has nothing to do, he talks a lot, and sometimes it felt annoying. However, if you have something to share, or you need some advice in life, then he is the right person to talk to. He really knows how to talk people out of their mental stress and usually he gives good advice. That is just my personal feeling; perhaps people would feel the same.
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| Ronnie (left) and his new friend, Sidy Ka. They seem to have interesting discussions. |
Hiroshi
Japanese student, bachelor, and will join WEE course next April, 2018. He always seem to be busy with lots of activities but never too busy to help other international students. He speaks English pretty well and we often have chats about languages, life and culture in Vietnam and Japan, planing of future and many others. We had some good time collaborating on a project about forward osmosis spacers. To me, he is the most friendly Japanese I have ever met.
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| Hiroshi Yamazaki (most right). It was a workshop where he and his teammates demonstrate a small research about developing spacer for forward osmosis membrane. |
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| Updated March 23rd: Graduation day, congrats to Hiroshi !! |
I would never forget to mention my dear Vietnamese friends who kept me from being lonely and exhausted. We have many trips together, we share almost everything in our daily life in Japan. Thank you for the time being together. I will be the first one to graduate, so I will be missing our Saturday dinners.
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| Dinner at our favorite ramen shop. We often visit this place not only because of the wonderful taste of every dish served, but also because of the warm welcome of the shop owner (first row, most right). The shop can be easily seen on google map by searching "ramen motomura" |
