Journeys for Knowledge

As a final part of my first year at OIST, the graduate school organized a tour of Japan, where we would visit other major Japanese universities and network with them to see how the rest of Japan runs their PhD programs. Naturally these classical universities would run things a little differently from us, so it was a very enlightening experience.

Our main stops were Kyushu University (Fukuoka), Osaka University, Todai (Tokyo), and Hokkaido University (Sapporo). Most days there was barely enough free time to get dinner, but in Fukuoka we had a good day to explore the city and surrounding landscape. At Kyushu University we realized that many PhD programs in Japan are starting to realize the importance of educating their students into being internationally capable, including immersion in other countries. It was a very nice start to a turbulent trip.

On that note, the next morning as we were preparing to leave, a typhoon decided to park right over us, forcing us to stay indoors for half a day and miss half of our program in Osaka. By the time we got to Tokyo, we were reasonably optimistic about meeting students from Todai, Japan’s most prestigious university. Unfortunately, they ended up treating us very poorly, almost as if we were just a burden to be done with. In addition the students were entirely medicine focused, so very few of us had relevant topics to discuss.

Disheartened, we flew out to Hokkaido for our final visit at Hokkaido University. In many ways, it felt like a combination of UC Davis and UC Berkeley, with the focus and scale of the former, and the deep history and lore of the latter. Sapporo was by far everyone’s favorite city to visit, even if we only had one night to look around and see the city lights. Luckily I still managed to get my fill of Hokkaido cheese, and have already begun to make plans to return in the near future.

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