So, I've got a few stories to tell, just to teaze you guys. Walking 50km in one day, Missing the last train on a Sunday night, and the constant battle that is finding cheep food in Japan.
But before I tell those stories I want to talk about something a little more boring, my research. Friends you can zone out now. I'm writing this for those people trying to figure out if YSEP is a good fit for them. Why? Because I was one of those students once, and I wish I had more information.
So a bit about me. I was born and raised in Seattle, Washington. I went to school at the University of Washington (Thats in Seattle for you people with no sense of geography) and have never lived more than 6 miles away from my house.
In college I majored in Computer Science, with a minor in what amounts to bioinformatics, although my school doesn't actually offer a bioinformatics minor. I decided to do this program, not for the credits, because your not going to get many from this program, but for the experience, both in terms of intense research and in terms of living in Japan for a year.
I've been to Japan twice, once was an intense guided tour of Tokyo, so I know the city fairly well, although my language ability is poor. I took Japanese for two years in college, and can navigate the city and have basic conversations, but not much else. In terms of what the program and survival in Tokyo requires its more than enough, you could get away without any Japanese here, but more is always better.
My current goal is to head to grad school to get a PhD in bioinforamtics so this program was a good fit for me. Don't do this unless you want to get lots of research experience.
Ok on to actual life in Japan
Accommodations are amazing for the price, the dorms are twice as big at the UW for 400$ a month less. I decide to live in a double because it was slightly cheaper, but you can't go wrong with either choice. Also the location is fairly good. We are located in a town called Aobadai, in Kanagawa prefecture near Yokohama, but a 30 min train ride will get you directly to Shibuya, the time square of Tokyo, so entertainment is never far away. Also Aobadai was a town targeted by the train companies for development, so you can eat, drink and sleep there without ever having to go into Tokyo proper.
In short, where you live will be amazing. Don't worry about it. Also keep in mind your in fucking Japan.
In terms of locations to do research there are two campuses. The Suzukakedai campus, where all the biology research is done. Its about 10 min away from Aobadai by train. Also there is the Okayama campus, where everything else happens. Its about 45 min away from Aobadai by train, but closer to central Tokyo.
Ok, so on to research, without going into to much detail, and boring 99% of the people out there, I do Bioinformatics research, I like doing the computational analysis side of bioinformatics. Making up new algorithms isn't my cup of tea, neither is doing the actual wet work required to validate experiments. I was placed in a Molecular biology lab because the lab does stuff tangentally related to bioinformatics, and the professor is a baller at English. I regret a little not going more research into where I was going to work before I came, but I can't regret it to much because I did spent 30+ hour looking at labs I might be interested in and reading papers.
I should emphasize that spending that long looking for professors isn't necessary, but obviously the more you know the better off you'll be.
More on research later, once I get into it a bit more. My first impression though, at least for biology, this school isn't as well set up at the UW. Although thats not saying much considering the UW has one of the best Biology programs / Genome Sciences programs in the world. Don't let that discourage you though. Its still set up fairly well.
In general, depending on your research topics and major your millage out of this program will vary.
Alright, this post is getting long so I'll cut it off here. I'm mostly going to use this blog post about my life, but I'll try to include some tidbits about research from time to time. I'm also applying to grad school currently, so I might use this blog as a place to muse about that as well.
Prospective YSEPers, if you've got any questions just post them in the comments, I'll try to answer them when I see them.
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