Tokyo Institute of Technology

My first month here, I have been at the Tokyo Institute of Technology. I was put in the grad school office with many masters-course students.

It seems, US grad students have it lucky. 16 grad students were crammed into this office. However, not everyone is in the office at once. Many of the grad students generally show up between 10 AM and Noon, and stay to 10 PM, midnight, or even 2 AM. Unlike in the US where the late hours are where a place is empty, the office would be much more crowded between 8 and 12 PM than between 8 and 12 AM. I was also impressed that some students would commute 1 to 1.5 hours each way and still stay 10 hours at the office. Because of such commutes, it is also somewhat common for students to stay overnight, and they have cots and futons which get pulled out for such occasions. 

Tokyo Tech itself seems to be somewhat of a nerd campus, comparable to MIT or Caltech. I think this is confirmed by it having only 10% female students. The grad students as a whole seem to work very hard, of course since I went to undergrad 'where fun comes to die' I can't really say much. After undergrad, if they do well on exams they go to master-course, where they spend 2 years to get a masters. After master-course they decide if they want to job search or to do phd-course. Job searching is a big deal because once you start with a company, it is considered unloyal to switch to a different company.

The students are all nice. I think when I first came I overestimated the differences in etiquette. At any rate, they had a welcome party where I had to give a power point to introduce myself. They then had fun getting me to eat strange japanese food such as natto (fermented soy beans). They continue to compliment me on my use of chopsticks and good english. My phonetic pronunciation of english during Karaoke is apparently quite excellent, as is my english rap.

Respect.