[Study in Japan Report] By Peggy from UNZA (Zambia)

Peggy Chamucisa our former exchange student from University of Zambia, who studied in Japan from April 2024 to July 2024 wrote an essay of her stay in Japan.

My name is Peggy Chamucisa. I am 22 years old and I am from Zambia. I studied and stayed in Japan from April 4th, 2024 to July 29th 2024, I was at Tokyo University of Foreign Studies as an exchange student.

I was invited by IAfP for my airplane tickets. In addition, I was a recipient of JASSO scholarship for my living expenses. My life in Japan is divided into two parts. Mostly I spent my time studying, I was taking courses of Development studies and International relations. During weekends, holidays and free time, I did different things related to social life. Below are some of the things that described how my life in Japan was.

I came to Japan in April and was very lucky to witness the cherry blossoms which only lasted for two weeks, but it was beautiful and I enjoyed it very much. I learned Japanese which is very different from my mother tongue in term of the structure of the sentences and letters. But the most important thing is that I liked the Japanese language and wanted to learn more about it and the people of Japan. The time I spent studying Japanese was a good time for me to learn more about Japanese culture, especially the norms and values of Japanese society. Even though studying Japanese was quite difficult, and it required to spend extra time studying it privately, I still liked studying Japanese and it helped me to get a lot of new vocabularies within a short period of the time, this helped me to get along with other students from different countries and cultures especially the Japanese students.

I was also lucky to be invited to a lecture by Chihiro Sensei, I was invited to talk about my country Zambia to the Japanese students, it was a very interesting and exciting experience I enjoyed talking to the Japanese students about my country and how beautiful and wonderful it is and the students where very interactive and asked interesting questions. I also enjoyed learning other courses like climate change and Development with Dr Glorious. This was one of my favorite courses and I never missed any of her classes because it was always interactive and interesting, I got to learn a lot about other countries and their living conditions in regard to the climate crisis the world is facing. It was interesting to know the different problems each country was facing and what policies they put in place to resolve it, I got a lot of ideas that I might use for my country’s climate crisis.

Apart from studying, I also visited different places in Japan, places like temples around Japan, parks and also historical museums. On weekends I mostly visited the park, luckily there so many parks located near the school so I mostly took a walk with a friend to the park. And there we would have picnics and sometimes little discussions with my Japanese friends, I always looked forward to weekends. I had a good time to learn more about Japan and its culture. As a country Zambia is a Christian nation so it was a really good experience to learn more about the Japanese religion by visiting different temples, I lent more about buddhism and also other religions like Shinto, it was exiting to know that these religions have existed for more than two centuries in Japan. I also got to see different festivals including children’s day that is held in May to celebrate the health and wellbeing of children.

I also took part in different activities like volunteering to participate in an English teaching camp for children, going to gatherings of different races and interacting with different people and teaching them and also learning from them about their culture and country. During my time in Japan I lent the true value of keeping time. Unlike other nationalities Japanese people value time and I got to know why during a cultural exchange part that was hosted by JICA, on my way to the party’s location I delayed to reach the train station and the train left me but luckily another train arrived shortly and I was able to reach the party on time, this was a good experience for me because I realized that even a second in life is of importance and once an opportunity passes you, it might never come again.

In addition to all the above is that I enjoyed the flower festivals that were held from when I arrived and also the cultural exchange with Japanese students as well as international students and having friends from different countries. This was very good for me because there are stereotypes that I had before meeting new people from other countries that changed through interacting with different people from different places. I realized how good diversity is because I got the new insight into different things from different places of the world from people whom I was interacting with, this helped me to open my mind and see how we are interconnected despite the different backgrounds and nationalities.

Despite all the small challenges that I faced during my stay in Japan, challenges like language barriers, at first it was really difficult to communicate with the locals in Japan but thanks to the Japanese language course I could at least speak basic Japanese and it helped me connect with the local people. Another challenge was that it was very hot and humid, but as time passed I got used to the extreme weather. Apart from these two challenges, my stay in japan was amazing, full of interesting experiences and I have benefited a lot from it not just in my academic life but also in my social life and it has changed my perspective of the world. I want to address my sincere appreciations to the African Studies Center, to JASSO scholarship administration, All the people that helped me to go to japan and to all my friends in Japan.