As part of Shibaura Institute of Technology’s International Program, I spent three weeks in Surabaya, Indonesia, in August 2022 during my first year of undergraduate study. The host institution was Institut Teknologi Sepuluh Nopember (ITS). I worked with local students on embedded programming using Arduino.
This was my first time outside Japan. I learned that a willingness to keep a conversation moving mattered more than speaking perfect English. I also discovered that my existing technical knowledge could carry further across borders than I had expected.
Living there made another country feel less like a distant world and more like everyday life connected to Japan. Those three weeks significantly lowered my resistance to going abroad and became the starting point for my interest in international environments.