Culture and Experience – Expectations for the DLSU-NITAC student exchange program

The NITAC-DLSU student exchange program promises both excitement and opportunities for us student participants. It is not common place to be presented an opportunity to travel abroad for academic and professional services; this is a chance to look forward to and taken seriously.

For this reason, my parents and I have taken serious consideration and preparations for the trip. We have agreed that brief lessons in essential Japanese comprehension – mainly reading katakana and would be supplementary, if not imperative, to the trip. Most of the preparations can be credited to my aunt, who had lived in Japan for more than 30 years. It was through her that I was able to draw a general picture of current Japanese culture.

What I personally look forward to the most is exploring the contrast in academic and cultural mind sets between us Filipino students with a fast-paced lifestyle from DLSU and the Japanese students from NITAC in the bay-side city of Kobe. In this vain, it would also be evidently refreshing – after a whole trimester in the DLSU Manila campus - to indulge in the Japanese lifestyle, especially with Japan’s general cooler and relax atmosphere.

In conclusion, I hope my preparations prove helpful and expectations succeeded. However, the experience presented so far has been very fruitful: learning to read basic katakana and recording our expectations for the trip is a wonderful experience; and I can only imagine the experiences to come for the coming trip.