I spent the 2025-26 academic year at the University of Tokyo through USTEP. I went hoping to experience a different university, live somewhere new and travel around Japan. I did not expect the year to change the direction of my academic interests, the people I surrounded myself with, or the way I imagined my life after LSE. Looking back, it was genuinely a life-changing year.
Studying at UTokyo
One of my favourite things about UTokyo was the freedom to explore outside my degree. At LSE, as a Social Anthropology student, most of my academic life naturally revolves around anthropology. UTokyo offered a wide range of liberal arts courses taught in English, with even more options across different departments for students who speak Japanese. Alongside anthropology, I studied education, development, literature and photography, and carried out fieldwork on Chinese migrants living in Japan.
Education was the biggest surprise. I had never considered anthropology of education a particular interest of mine, but courses on comparative education, international development, migration and educational inequality gradually changed that. Much of the learning also happened outside the classroom. Through UTokyo, we visited JICA and a public night junior high school in Tokyo, and worked on projects involving migrant support, urban diversity and the Tokyo Metropolitan Government. The night school stayed with me in particular. Its students varied enormously in age, nationality, language ability and educational background, making “inclusive education” a very concrete question: how do you teach people with completely different needs in the same school, and how does someone who has left formal education find a way back into it?
These experiences led me towards questions about who gets to define a “good” education, what kinds of knowledge are considered useful, and how education intersects with migration, inequality and mobility. They have since shaped my dissertation and what I am considering studying after LSE, none of which I had planned when I applied for USTEP.
At the same time, I loved taking courses that did not need to lead anywhere. I took American fantasy literature and Photographing Tokyo simply because I was curious about them. UTokyo was very supportive throughout the year, and many of the experiences I valued most, particularly the field trips and institutional visits, came directly from the opportunities the university and my courses made available.
Finding a way into local student life
Outside the classroom, one of the most important parts of my year was joining a student organisation. I mainly speak Mandarin and English, while many Japanese student societies recruit and operate almost entirely in Japanese. At first, I would find a society I liked, open a page full of Japanese and assume it probably was not meant for international students. Eventually, I started emailing anyway.
The responses were much warmer than I expected. Some students were not confident English speakers either, so we used simple English and Japanese, and sometimes translation apps. I eventually joined Ichihime and became its only international member. The organisation works around gender gaps in education and career choices in Japan, particularly by giving younger students opportunities to encounter different educational and life paths. I shared my experiences of studying abroad and became involved in creating opportunities for students to practise English and ask questions about overseas study and university life.
What I valued most was that this was not an organised “cultural exchange”. I was simply another member trying to work with everyone else, sometimes with a translation app open between us. It gave me access to a much more ordinary side of Japanese student life and made me realise that not speaking a language fluently does not necessarily prevent you from entering a space where that language is dominant.
Living in Japan
I had expected to meet Japanese people in Japan. What I had underestimated was how many people I would meet from everywhere else. Tokyo brought together students from different countries and disciplines who had all, for different reasons, become interested enough in Japan to move there. Seeing the same place through people with completely different backgrounds became one of the most enjoyable parts of the year.
Spending a full academic year there also changed my relationship with travel. I went to Kyoto and Hokkaido, among other places, but I did not have to squeeze Japan into a single itinerary. Travel sat alongside ordinary weeks of classes, deadlines and life in Tokyo, and leaving the city made me increasingly aware that many things I had initially thought of simply as “Japan” were actually very specific to Tokyo.
Eventually, Tokyo stopped feeling like somewhere I needed to constantly explore. It became where I went to class, met friends, bought groceries, missed trains and occasionally spent a weekend doing very little. I am glad I stayed long enough for that to happen. It is easy to love a city while travelling; finding that you still love it once the novelty has worn off is something quite different.
Who would I recommend study abroad to?
Study abroad will not suit everyone. Moving to another country for a year means adapting to a new university system, language and social environment, and sometimes being very aware that you are an outsider. But I would strongly recommend it if you are curious about things outside your degree, want to experience living somewhere rather than simply travelling through it, and are willing to look for opportunities rather than wait for them to appear.
I would especially recommend it if you do not yet know exactly what you want to study or do afterwards. I went to Tokyo with no intention of specialising in education and came back wanting to work on anthropology of education. The answer did not arrive in one moment; it emerged gradually from courses, field trips, people and places I would otherwise never have encountered.
The year gave me much more than I expected: a new academic interest, friends from around the world, and a place I am still thinking and writing about. I have even started a series on my blog exploring our fascination with Tokyo through anthropology and geography. A year later, I still feel there is much more to understand.