Patience, that’s what the past two months have been all about. When you aim for a scholarship such as the Monbukagakusho, you must learn to wait. Sure, it may sound as an easy challenge, but believe me, doing nothing for your goal is not an easy task. Noticed how I called doing nothing a task? Well, let me tell you how it ended up being that for me.
I think I told you about my application in the last post (the one published ages ago), well, in that time I was all hyped up. I was extremely focused and happy for being able to put all of my energy in the job of filling out my application. I thought “now I can share something real with my inexistent readers”, so I went ahead and posted the intro of the monbusho guide. Little did I know then what it mean to wait for three months for a definite answer.
At first, I had to finish my undergrad thesis and couldn’t get any concentration. I only read about the university I planned to attend and other stuff related to Japan (culture, language, daily life). Then (naturally) I got sick of procrastinating as my due date approached. I wanted to take the scholarship off my head, with almost everything related to it, including this blog (just having it on my firefox bookmark’s toolbar made me feel uneasy).
Then, I finished my thesis. I convinced myself that I needed to relax a little bit and enjoy some things I disregarded as important. The problem with this approach is that I started to become unattached with my dream of traveling to Japan. But wasn’t that what I wanted in the first place?
Well, I was wrong. Now I believe on “shikata ga nai”. It means “it can’t be helped” or “nothing can be done about it”. It’s a famous Japanese phrase that cames from the buddhist belief related to karma, which suggest that one must surrender to things you can’t control. In my case, it means that I must stop running from the task of staying still with my goal in mind. It’s a pain but if you accept this you can make use of the extra time and enjoy the calmness of having to wait.
PS: MEXT makes the definite decision by the end of this month, so I’ll be letting you know of the liftoff or hibernation of this blog..
Allez-y natore!!!
Like you, I am also waiting the decision from MEXT. The F5 key of my keyboard is almost worn out… waiting for an email that has not come yet. Cheers from Spain!
I know the feeling all too well. But it looks like my efforts have paid off. My university received notice yesterday from the university in Japan and has faxed me the documents that need to be signed. I’ve been awarded the Monbukagakusho as a Japanese Studies Student for Fall ’08 – Spring ’09. I hope you all will be able to say the wait was worth it once you hear from your universities as well.
I just read your previous post as well, I’m really amazed at your level of motivation and desire to help others in the same situation. I had originally applied for a study abroad program through my university and was nominated for a JASSO scholarship through that but the university in Japan denied the nomination so that they could, in-return, nominate me to receive the Monbukagakusho scholarship, which I had never heard of. By this time the deadline was only a week away, and spring break was just beginning at my university. I received the application through email and had to attain all of the required forms and fill out everything that week. But due to spring break, most of my professors had already left campus and I had to mail the forms back as soon as possible to account for the time it takes for them to arrive in Japan through the postal system. After several long days and nights I filled out everything in a hurry and got what recommendations I could. I’m not sure if this was better or worse than having the time to prepare for it.
Hello… Well I hope you will get your scholarship. I went trough the same problem just like you, all the pain and expectations. I am awarded with mext scholarship for 2009, but it wasn’t easy, just like E. said. I was very tensed trying to get all the forms on time.
E. where are you going to stay in Japan?
Now I just can’t wait to get to Japan. 9 more months
I’ll be going to Tokyo. Leaving this Sept. and staying for the full school year. I’ve been to Japan once before, when I graduated high school I went there by myself for two weeks staying in youth hostels. I got to visit Tokyo, Nikko, Kyoto, Kochi and Kanazawa.
上智大学で日本語と人類学を勉強いたします。私の興味は古墳時代の考古学や日本と朝鮮の関係でございます。私の大学はその事あまり教えられないから、自分で二年間に勉強しておりました。貴方達はどちらに勉強か研究になりますか？
Still have a few kinks in my formal speech, but I hope that was alright.
Wow, good for you. I have never been in Japan before, so I just can’t wait.
I have a question if you don’t mind. How did you learn Japanese if you spent only 2 weeks in japan? Do you got any tips or tricks, because I have to start preparing for Japan. I can speak a little, but that’s all…
I will hopefully go to Japan next April and stay there until the end of my Master studies, who knows maybe I even get to do my PhD in Japan.
Hi!
I’ve applied for the undergraduate scholarship this year. And thank God, my I qualified to take the test, and also took the interview. My co-applicant told me that when he applied for this last year, results were notified the first week of January the following year.
I was wondering how MEXT chooses among applicants. Do they choose, for instance, the top 500 or something of the applicants?
Or do they have something like applicants-who-got-a-weighed-accumulated -score-of-eighty-five-percent-and-above-will-pass basis?
I’m a double major of Japanese and Anthropology starting my junior year (undergraduate) in Tokyo. I purposely sought out a university that had a good Japanese and Anthropology program. So I’ve been studying the language for two years now in college, and I also do a lot of practice outside of class with visiting professors from Japan as well as my fiancee who is also a Japanese major at the same university. We use the ICU textbooks along with several supplements for vocabulary, kanji and grammar. My fiancee and I are some of the better students in the class, and we’re now able to get by in most situations completely in Japanese. We speak to each other about 50% of the time in Japanese despite our best/native language being English. She is currently teaching English in Japan as a summer internship and has successfully talked her way through many situations in Japanese including her friend’s visa problem at the immigrations office in Japan. We’re hoping that by the end of our third year we’ll both be proficient to pass at the second level or higher on the Japanese fluency exam.
If you want I can help you learn more before you head over, a high school classmate of mine asked me to help him learn more Japanese a few days ago and it has been going pretty well. As long as you know the basic hiragana and katakana then it’s all fairly easy to teach even over the internet.
Joff, I would think they must do it on a case-to-case basis rather than group selections. I had two classmates with grades fairly similar to mine that applied but neither of them were awarded it. Though I’m unsure how the application process works outside of the Japanese Studies scholarship and not positive on which my classmates had applied for. The Japanese university nominated me and I didn’t have a test or interview, but I’m sure that there must have been at least a few hundred students who look better on paper than I do and that were in the same pool.
[...] everything but the list’s contents is in japanese. At the time that I already applied I was desperate for information on the selection process. I wanted to know what my chances were, based on what I [...]