 All right. It's 7.34 in the evening in Ann Arbor. So I think we'll start the program on behalf of the Rackham Graduate School and Ellis and A's Center for Japanese Studies. It's my pleasure to welcome you to this evening's or mornings event from Japan to Ann Arbor, which will be a panel discussion with four graduate students from Japan. We're really happy to have you with us. I'm Michelle Siegel. I'm with the Rackham Graduate School. And what we'll be starting with this evening is some remarks by Rackham Assistant Dean, John Godfrey, who will talk a little bit about international students and the life of the university, as well as providing some other important updates on how things are going. And then we'll have some greetings and remarks from Professor Yuki Shiraito, who will talk about the Center for Japanese Studies. And then we'll hear from our fantastic students about their research and their experiences in Ann Arbor. And there'll be plenty of opportunity for you to join in by asking questions, either using the chat function or by raising your hand if you care to do that. We have a manageable number of people joining us. So you can feel free to unmute and ask a question or raise your hand or write something in the chat function. So now it's my pleasure to introduce Professor John Godfrey, who's the Assistant and Assistant Dean at Rackham. And much of his work has focused on the needs and supporting international students at Rackham. John. Thank you very much, Michelle. And thanks to all of you. And on behalf of Rackham, I'm very pleased to welcome you and thank you for joining us this morning and this evening. I wanna start off by reminding us all, by reminding myself of the extraordinary history of students from Japan at the University of Michigan. Indeed, some of the very first international students to come to this university were from Japan and they arrived in the 1870s. And to think about what a remarkable time in the history of Japan and the United States for that to have happened. These people included Masakazu Toyama, who went on to become the fourth president of the University of Tokyo and then Japan's first minister of education. He received an honorary master's degree, master of arts degree from this university back in 1886, which was the first ever granted to a Japanese citizen by any American university. Ajiro Ono, another very well-known figure in Japan, came to Michigan in the late 1880s and he went on to become the first president of what was then the Industrial Bank of Japan and then later the Bank of Japan. He came here in 1887 and he did graduate study in economics. At the time, both of these individuals were here and Arbor had a population of about 9,000 people and the total university enrollment was about 2,000. So keep that in mind as I share with you some information about our international graduate students today at the university. Could you advance the slide? I'm just going to give you a quick overview to get to. And I know even our graduate students and actually many faculty don't have an opportunity to see this comprehensive view of international students at the university. This year, these charts give a very simple overview of the distribution of all students in the Rackham graduates and Rackham's graduate programs. Most of our students are in doctoral programs. We have a good and actually a growing number of students in very dynamic master's programs. This shows the distributions by broad disciplinary area, the two charts on the right, the broad disciplinary area of our students in both the master's and the doctoral level. Can you move it up, Ben? This year about, again, this shows our distribution of students by gender and by domestic and international students. And I want to direct your attention particularly to the right side of this page. And so you can see that over 40% of all master's students are international students and nearly 40% of all of our doctoral students are international students. And these simple figures in a way under-represent the importance of what's going on here. Is that our international students are absolutely essential to this university's position as a leading global university. The University of Michigan would not be what it is today were it not for its international students who have come here to study done very important research and contributed to the growth and the maturity of the university over many decades. Could you move it up one more, Ann? There are more than 8,500 students today in all of Iraq's programs that are in every school and college I should say except for the law school we do not have a program in the law school. And our students come from more than 100 countries. The largest share of these students are from East Asia notably the most the leading and this will not be a surprise to anybody here on campus at China, India, Korea and Taiwan. In recent years applications received from students in Japan have declined somewhat. Back in the early 2000s we received on average oh between 170 and 200 applications a year. And this has declined since 2016 by a little bit more than a third. So now it's about up to 120 I received each year. And this is I think attributable to many reasons including I think the problems that students have experienced in recent years with visas and concerns about the welcoming atmosphere in the United States but certainly not at this university. Ann, could you move it up? I just want to talk a little bit about the impact of the last couple of years and how the COVID crisis has really had a significant impact on our graduate students. The applications for admission to graduate school fell as a consequence of COVID for international student applications that is. Our applications, the number of applications have increased generally year by year but COVID had a very significant impact on international student first time enrollment. We have seen though since 2020 in this past year we have seen enrollment increase particularly with our master's students and our PhD enrollment has managed to remain fairly stable in large part because of how doctoral students are supported by the university because they contribute so importantly to research and teaching. Ann, could you go to the next slide? In fall 2020, over 1,000 international students were unable to get visas because American consulates around the world shut down and because of international air travel was interrupted. And all of these students either deferred to come this fall or they had the option of beginning their studies from their home countries. And I'm really proud to say that this university took the lead nationally among all of its peer universities to facilitate international student participation even though they were not able to travel. The arrangements were made to allow students simply to defer or to attend classes remotely from their home countries when this is possible. And truly exceptionally this includes doctoral students who were able to begin their studies last year and who were supported by fellowships or by appointments as graduate student instructors or research assistants. And they were able to with that support to join the university. And many of these students finally succeeded this summer in getting their visas and arriving on time for the start of the fall term. I can only say that this has been an absolutely unprecedented 18 months in the entire history of the graduate school in order to accommodate international students and to fight for their interests as best we could. Anne, are we have anything else? Well, okay. So I'd like to turn this over to the students who are actually the center for this evening's discussion and to thank you very much. Again, you all are absolutely exceptional and invaluable to this university and success and to the success of every student no matter what nationality at this university we're extremely proud to have you and to welcome you into this long tradition of Japanese scholars and scientists and researchers who have come to Michigan. Thank you very much. Thank you, John, so much for those comments and the background I always learn so much from hearing you talk. And now Professor Shiraito is gonna bring greetings on behalf of the Center for Japanese Studies at Michigan and then he will be introducing our students. It looks like he has an internet connection issue. He just looked off, but I think that he will be coming back. He's on campus right now, so he should be okay. Okay, I know he is gonna share some information about the center, but maybe what we can... He's back. He's back? Yes. Okay, hello. My Zoom froze. Let me share my slides. Hopefully this time works. Okay, sorry about that. Can you all see the slide? Okay. Mishiganshu kara konbanwa. Nihon no minasama ohayou gozaimasu. Honjitsu wa kono event ni go sankaitadakimashite. Taigen arigatou gozaimasu. Watashi wa Mishigan daigaku Nihon Genkiu Center no Associated Director o tsutomete wo yamasu Shiraito Yuki to omojimasu. Koko kara wa Ego de mochi agimasu. So let me briefly talk about the Center for Japanese Studies here and then let me move on to introducing student panelists today. So the Center for Japanese Studies was founded in 1947. We will have 75th anniversary next year and we are actually the oldest Japanese Studies Center in the United States. We have more than 70 faculty members across disciplines, including humanities, social sciences and even in the medical school, we have a faculty members. So my field is actually a political science. The current director's field is psychology and we have many other disciplines as specialities. We have Toyota visiting professorship and we actually started having postdoctoral fellow starting this fall, which is quite an achievement for us, I believe. We have been continuing holding, we have been continuing holding the Thursday lecture series in the virtual format since the pandemic started and until this semester, we are hoping to have in-person lecture series next semester. And we also have a lot of PhD students across departments have interest related to Japan. So that's a kind of a research side of the Center for Japanese Studies. It looks like he's having an internet issue again. Okay, he's not able to join us in the next moment. Yuri, maybe you can introduce the students. My first, oh, he's gone and I think he's coming back. Could we wait for 30 seconds? Sure. Thank you, he's back. I'm sorry, I don't know what is going on. Where did I froze? After the research part. Okay, so, okay, so I didn't, let me just, let me just avoid using full screen mode. Okay, I'm sorry. So that's it for the research side of the Center for Japanese Studies. On the education side, we have, not necessarily all students are affiliated with the Center for Japanese Studies, but for, among the entire university, we have more than 1,000 students in more than 100 Japan-related courses, which is a quite large number, I believe. And among those 1,000 students, about 400 students are taking Japanese language courses. And for the master's students, we have actually the Area Studies Masters Program. And in the 2021 cohort, there are 27 Area Studies Masters students and actually five out of 27 are in Japanese Studies, which is actually the second largest group in that cohort. So we regularly send students to Japan. So in the academic year, 2018 to 2019, 224 students traveled to Japan. We funded 15 of those students and about 20 students experienced internship program in Japan. Of course, unfortunately, except for faculty members and students who have Japanese nationalities because of the travel ban imposed by Japan, almost no study or research trips to Japan by U.M. students and scholars have been possible since spring 2020. So I want to sort of beg your support, any form of your support matters, financial support for students' virtual study abroad program. Some language program in Japan are providing a virtual option to the students abroad and oftentimes the students have to sort of secure their stipend or their fellowship in the United States. Also, the scholars cannot travel to Japan in order to sort of field work, archival research, and other kinds of research activities in Japan. And therefore, support for research activities while being outside of Japan, such as purchasing materials and things like that would be very much appreciated. Even just expressing emotional support for our students would be very helpful because in some cases, in the time of the pandemic, international students are easily targeted by xenophobic comments and attacks. And therefore, just emotional support would be very much appreciated. So thank you very much. That's it about the Center for Japanese Studies and let me turn to introducing today's student speakers. So let me reverse alphabetical order of their last name. So Mizuho, please, excuse me. So we have four students. Mizuho Takayama, a master's student in aerospace and engineering. Kana Otani, master's student in public policy school. Tsuyoshi Kano, a PhD student in the School of Information and Shugo Kaneko, a PhD student in aerospace engineering and scientific computing. So I ask students to speak in that order. So please, Mizuho, please go ahead. Thank you for the introduction. I actually have a bad internet connection, it seems. So I try to connect the internet right now, but if you find some cutting off, can you like remind me so that I can repeat it up? Thank you very much. So I was actually expecting the last person to speak. So my contents would be kind of like more unique, my unique experience, but I hope you guys enjoy my stories. So good morning in Japan. Good morning and good evening in the US. My name is Mizuho Takayama, majoring in aerospace engineering. So when I first come to the US, I was 19 years old and things are changed every year, especially this year by due to our topic of pandemic. So one change was the Japanese education for the non-Japanese student. I've been teaching Japanese for six years and three years are in the University of Michigan. What I feel was my office, our environment like atmosphere changed between before and after pandemic. Last year, I thought the student who had in person class first year and online course for the second year, I mean this year, they asked me, they asked in the office server about like how I feel like the difference, the particular changes for like subject ga or subject ha for the same sentences or how to write the kanji more immediately. I felt they are interested in speaking in Japanese and interested in speaking in Japan study abroad and enjoy communicating and expressing themselves in Japanese. So my office hours are like joining three people together and discussing their Japanese. This year, we are teaching the student who have trained all online from last year to this year. This study will like other years, but I felt there was a slightly inside of change. I observed their insight into especially grammar and pronunciation. One student asked me why does my reflection of the sentence for this and must and some specific words differ from my instructor, which is correct. And I'm so surprised that I didn't notice the difference when I talk with the instructor. So students instructor from the west side, I mean Kansai region and I'm from the east side, I'm from the Kanto region and he noticed that the difference of my like a slight pronunciation without the study of dialect study or any note study abroad experience. I have never asked that before with specific words for pronunciation differences, especially if students only study Japanese for two years, just only two years. This reminded me that students in online environment are closer to their instructor and they carefully take care of the lectures for each lectures and there is more space to focus on reading, pronunciation and grammar. The student also looks really free to get to set their goals. That's what I observed in my Japanese teaching. Oh, I also have exciting things for Japanese study, for Japanese language. We usually have around 100 students for each level, first year Japanese and second year Japanese, but only for this year. We got the 200 students which is twice as much as usual for the first year Japanese. It amazed me a lot and grateful that we have many students interested and I'm hoping more students can do not my class, but the University of Michigan, the Japanese class. Let me talk now about my study at the University of Michigan. The other pandemic change is research environment. My major is aerospace engineering and because of many of you guys of the health, I had two research opportunities right now in the University and at the Toyota Research Institute. By the way, I didn't know like there is a visiting Toyota professor like Professor Yukisan said. So, yeah, for my research topic, now I am conducting the experiment of fluid simulation to investigate how to solve fluid equations more accurately. We are considering that we don't have enough accurate and enough efficient solution enough efficient solver to solve the fluid. So I am investing how we can improve the accuracy of the solution using my research and algorithm that I am doing for my fluid research. And I also research structure simulations. For example, I simulated the Japanese style origami or apply or mirror origami which is Japanese like Japanese people try to fold like big strengths like strong fire strength than usual origami. And this simulation exciting is real quite exciting to me because what I folded when I was childhood applied to a new engineering design. In addition, my simulation reveals that the origami of balloon or basket increased their ability for emerging design for the energy absorbance purposes. So I am excited that some art can be a next generation of aircraft or vehicle design. So my future research goal is to improve the accuracy of simulation to contribute to safety engineering. So this semester I am doing graduate studies. I am an instructor for Japanese and doing those two research and I am taking the class. For me, that is quite busy schedule for usual. But thanks to the improvement of the remote environment, I can have more chance to work and study. I don't have to go to travel to the classroom every day. So last things I want to mention about the pandemic was like this year, the big things happened to me like I lost my little sister due to disease and she was only 23 years old. And that makes me consider what if I am diagnosed with COVID-19. But if I catch COVID-19 today or even now, I am kind of really scared about that. And that is what clarified my understanding of how to live without any regrets or any sorrow with keeping safety. And I believe that the task applied to this pandemic may decrease my outside activities, but still I got more time and it gave me more challenges and opportunities than ever at the University of Michigan. Again, I also state my mind that thank you very much for giving me this opportunity to let me stand here and share my story. Thank you very much. Thank you very much. Thank you for sharing the story. Okay, well next panelist is Kana Otani. Please go ahead. Thank you for inviting me today and I am super honored to be here. My name is Kana Otani. I am a graduate student at Florida School. I don't have a specific story like me so I will just talk about my background and why I came here and what I am studying. I studied to work with the ministry before I came here. This program is actually one of the programs that I have been provided by ministry. Actually this is the second time to live in Michigan. Five years ago I was in Northern Michigan University for a year as a student. So I knew for the school had a public policy program in the University of Michigan. Uniquely MPP program doesn't require students to submit any thesis or do some research projects. So I don't have any specific topic of my research but MPP students can choose policy concentration from five different choices like analytical methods, international policy. Currently I am seeking international policy and international economic development concentration because I am interested in international aid and public diplomacy. So that's why I am taking those classes from Florida School and from Michigan University I guess. And I came to another last year so it was totally under the COVID station so everything held by online so I couldn't attend any passing class but still I could see my friends sometimes so it was a great opportunity. Mostly I was taking classes from Florida School and the analytical skill which is super important for successful policy analysis and the public policy institution and the process. But this semester I am taking classes from outside Florida School mostly. As I said earlier I am taking the class from CIS and OZEL and I am taking one from business school. I am enjoying taking the critical introduction to Asian studies. I had no background knowledge about anthroposes or neuroses so it was quite new and I was super struggling with reading those assignments or participating in discussion and I was trying to talk with other students who have different background academic background from me and currently I try to write the paper about the feminist Orientalism and Orientalist feminism in Afghanistan by using the U.S. media or White House media. I have been participating in Afghanistan and the U.S. tried to use women as a tool to justify their intervention. It was quite interesting by connecting the college and the concept from the history. I am happy to take outside Florida School class and I feel like those flexibilities are a very attractive point of University of Michigan so I am super glad to be here. That is all my silly. Thank you. Thank you very much. Hello everyone. My name is I am very honored to be here. I briefly explained my research and my life in another because I just guess some of you may be here in Michigan. I am a doctoral student in the School of Information Research. If I just say very, very simply we research how technology changes our lives. My research is about information technology for international development. In other words, how we can use technology to change our lives. My research is research on IT human resource development and IT industry development. Especially in Bangladesh and Rwanda, that is my research field. For example, I had research on what kind of bottleneck exists in Rwanda, and my main motivation to come here in Michigan was one of my practical experiences in JICA, Japan International Corporation Agency, and I was in Bangladesh and I was in charge of Rwanda. I had some kind of interest. Another one is my advisor. My advisor was a kind of leading researcher in Bangladesh. That is why I chose here. In recent years, COVID affected my research a lot. I conducted a field experiment in Bangladesh. I planned to go there to monitor, but the project was suspended due to the pandemic. Fortunately, that was good enough to write my dissertation. I could write my dissertation so I could write my dissertation, but I'm sure when I want to publish it, it's enough or not. Finally, regarding my life, I like a number a lot, but I don't know about university housing. I guess some of you may have visited Northwood, a very beautiful place. I think Northwood didn't change since you were there. There are still many old wood houses, beautiful and wide grounds with square and deers. Thank you for inviting me. I'm very appreciative of you. Thank you very much. Thank you so much. Our final speaker is Shugo Kaneko. Thank you, Professor, for introducing me. Hello, everyone. My name is Shugo Kaneko. I'm a PhD student in aerospace engineering. The same department as Mizuho. My name is Shugo Kaneko. I'm a PhD student in aerospace engineering and design of aircraft. I'm trying to establish how to let the computers find the best design automatically using applied mathematics, physics, models and simulations. Right now, specifically, my research application is on the systems and I'm going to go into the detail of the research today because I was going to keep talking forever. Aerospace is what I do and I'm very happy about it. I started my PhD program in fall of 2019, half a year before the pandemic. I think it was fortunate for me to have at least half a year of the face-to-face connection with my advisor and my fellow student in the lab. I think that face-to-face, the connection made my remote work much easier and comfortable. Since this summer, I'm finally back in my office in the North Campus. Actually, I don't have to be on campus to do my research because my topic is all about problems and theories, but I still appreciate the random in-person discussions I sometimes have with other students or post-docs in the lab, which was pretty hard to do when everything was online. Before starting here as a PhD student, I did my undergrad in Japan in Fukuoka. I started here as an exchange student here at U of M in Japan. This is my second time studying here. When I first came here as an exchange student, I knew nothing about another, nothing about Michigan and I had been using all of my time and energy to just take classes, do homework and adjust to the new culture and survive. I started here as an exchange student here at U of M in Japan. I did my undergrad exchange here, but now as a RACM student, and recently I have some time and energy left for the weekends not to do the research or homework, but actually do explore the city and Michigan. That's pretty nice. My research topic is challenging, but very interesting to me. I am spending good time outside of the campus as well. Overall, I'm very happy to have an opportunity to study in Michigan. Thank you. Thank you very much. We have some time for Q&A. If anyone in the audience has any questions, please submit to a chat or you can use a raise hand function to ask questions. While we are waiting for the question from the audience, let me ask one question for the students. This is actually a question I was asked when I was a grad student. When you first came to the United States, what surprised you the most? Anyone can start? I will start. I would say everything was big, like people, cars, houses. Now I kind of get used to it and I feel everything is small back in Japan, but the first time I was surprised was the airport. Interesting. I agree with you because every time I go back to Japan, I'm surprised by how small the portion in restaurants is. It's an interesting answer. Anyone else? Let me go. In my case, I was a little bit different with others. Before coming to Ann Arbor, I was in Bangladesh. That is one of the most congested places in the world. Anywhere, many people live in bad air pollution and bad water. After coming here, I liked the environment in Ann Arbor. With green, blue sky, and not so many people. I felt always like a haven. That was my memory. Thank you. Very interesting. Do you have anything to say? I'm sorry. My question is about the difference between Japan and the US. You can talk about that. Would you repeat the question? What surprised you when you first came to the United States? What surprised you the most? Not the first, but recently I live in the kind of I'm not living in Ann Arbor. I live in Ipsilanti area. I hear some gun shooting once a week. That's my surprising recently. Wow. Thank you. That's quite an interesting experience. I tried to come up with something, but I just come up with the number of Christmas party you guys have. In Japan, we have just only one with family or friends. 24th or something. When I stay with my host family, they have a bunch of all in ten. We have couriers, we have these friends, the husband's couriers. I went to the Christmas party in the United States. It lasted until 28th or something. That is quite surprising stuff for me. Interesting. There is a question in the chat? I'm seeing it. While we were talking about the first question, we got a question in the chat function from Nihon Takahashi. Could you share your hard experience about English or anything else? Nihon can go first. I can go. I had a very hard experience, especially in English. It was my first time to study abroad. The first mandatory class for PhD students in school of information was a weekly three-hour discussion class. In the three hours, only we had discussions about some papers. We graded every week about how did you participate in the discussion. Every week, I got three to one. At the beginning, I was always low grade. I was so frustrated. I made a kind of tag with non-native foreign students. I remember Chinese and Taiwanese. We studied together every week to overcome the situation. I remember it was super, super hard. But good memory now. Well, overcoming is always a good experience after years, I think. I don't want to experience that. Okay, anyone else? I have some related experience about discussion stuff. Especially on Zoom class, it's super hard to engage at a discussion point. I had experience talking with my friends after the class and they said why don't you say anything? You have such a great comment on the discussion. I was not confident enough to say something because I am not sure I can catch what they said in the class. I was super hesitant. If I made some comments out of the topic, it's super embarrassing stuff. It was super hard. After this semester or something, I feel like if I say something wrong, the professor can do that. They can collect stuff or they can enhance my topic. I just give a shot. That's the story. From the side of someone who has taught remote classes, it's most embarrassing that no students speak up. Silence on Zoom in a class is just very, very awkward. All instructors would appreciate if you speak up. If you speak anything. You shouldn't be hesitant to do that. Is there a comment? Yes, I also had difficulty for English. Of course, pronunciation is really difficult and writing is difficult. I think the most difficult part is explaining our implication. It's really hard, I think. We can express our opinion, but in the same sentence, it's hard to express my mind. If I speak Japanese, I can imply my feeling in the same sentence with opinion. But for English, it's really hard. I have this opinion because I have this mind or something like that. That's my heart for English, I think. Thanks. Shugo, do you have anything? Not specifically. Of course I had, but I don't remember anything I didn't like. I now think, first, I have never had any type of group, student group discussion in class. Also, in the worst case scenario, we could just use the equations, numbers, and programming languages to discuss no English. I don't do that, but I could do that because of the discipline that I study. I think my life has been easier for me. We are about time, but we have one last question from Shoma Matsui. Do you have any advice for students in Japan who want to come to the U.S. or study abroad? This is not about Michigan or U.S., but more general going to study abroad. I'm not sure, Shoma, if you are a student or you're working, but in my experience, when I worked, I didn't have time to improve myself. That's one of the biggest frustrations of me. After going to study abroad, it was super busy, but you can use 24 hours for only about yourself. That's priceless for me. Please come. Thank you. Anyone else? I guess most of the students who want to come but not, they are worried about their language skill or they are worried about if they can catch up the class. I think it's important to convey your opinion or just like, if you show you're trying, maybe they're going to try to understand and they're going to help you. Don't only your English skill just come and practice in the daily life. That's going to be your great experience in your life. Thank you. Thank you. No academic sites. First, pack nice Japanese food and anything you like. You don't need any text book. Just use a PDF or text book, but bring the food. It's expensive right here. It's hard. I know a lot of Japanese students chose to not buy a car but I personally recommend it. I think that's actually a very good point. I totally agree. I agree with the Japanese food. We should bring a lot. Maybe for undergrad or something like that. With limited budget, I feel like study enough in Japan and come to the U.S. because when we come to the U.S., especially maybe only me, but I feel like occupied with the cultural difference, environment or something. So prepare enough in Japan for the U.S. to come to study abroad. Great. Thank you very much. We are running out of time. At the end of the event, Susie is going to make closing remarks. Go ahead. Thank you so much to each of you for being here. Thank you so much. Thank you so much. It's really impressive and wonderful to hear how you navigated learning cross-culturally, living and working and teaching and studying and doing research in a completely different culture and environment. We are so privileged to have you here with us on campus. It's a real honor to have you here. Thank you so much for being here. I'm going to talk about the center for Japanese studies. Michigan is a big place. There are 17,000 graduate students. It's easy to get lost in a big place. The center for Japanese studies is a place that can be a home away from home. Make a big university feel smaller. I hope that will continue to be the case going forward. It's a place that creates a home away from home for Michigan alumni. In Tokyo and Japan, we regularly had events with over 100 alumni. With many luminaries and prominent people addressing the alumni community. I hope when all of you graduate and become part of that alumni community, you will join us and continue to share your insights and experience with us. We will all meet in person and we won't have to do these over Zoom in the near future. Thank you again so much for your time and generosity and sharing your experiences with us. Thank you very much. Thank you very much. Thank you, everyone. Have a good rest of your day or good evening. Thank you very much.