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教育プログラム|学生生活
An increasing number of Japanese companies are currently establishing offices overseas. With these developments, the kind of human resources that these companies are aggressively looking for are those who can handle themselves overseas and develop new business avenues.
Ritsumeikan Asia Pacific University (APU) is a place where students gather from all over the globe, work and study together, and develop a deeper understanding of each other while overcoming differences in nationality, religion, culture and more, around the clock. The international outlook that students develop through this process is a tremendous asset for those looking to lead a career on the international stage.
We spoke with APU graduates Nadeeshani Sashikala Abeysekera (Nadee) and KANO Mai, both of whom work for businesses expanding overseas.
I have been working as the international coordinator at the Fabrics and Homecare Business Unit at Kao Corporation since spring 2012 in charge of international marketing in Taiwan, Hong Kong and Australia.
I work in the Medical Materials Group of the Healthcare Materials Division at Mitsui Chemicals. I am primarily involved in medically related B2B overseas management. My clients are mostly businesses in the USA, Europe, Korea, and India.
Through my experiences at APU I was able to overcome my resistance to different cultures. Nearly half the students on campus are international students, so it’s an environment where having a different cultural or linguistic background is nothing special. There are many opportunities for group work and discussions with students of different nationality. Every day we would work together as a team to bring together different opinions and complete our project.
Working with international students helped me to recognize our differences, listen to what the other has to say, and understand their viewpoint. In this way, we were able to achieve something greater together. I believe that this process is the basis of global business. In Taiwan, for example, we have staff members in charge of local marketing and without their support our business would never succeed there. They are the ones that best understand the local tastes and preferences. While drawing on their ideas and opinions, we also convey our strategy and the company’s intentions. In this way, we think and act as one.
Working together means that you need to accept the other members while at the same time emphasizing your own views. The environments we grew up in are all different and we all hold different opinions, so it’s only natural that we should also have disagreements.
Yes, it seems natural to us now because we have experienced getting to know people better through disagreements.
That’s right. Getting our thoughts and views out in the open helps us to better understand who we are dealing with. In fact, some of the people that I disagreed with the most are the people that I now get along with the best. Working with different nationalities is by no means a burden - I actually find it to be very enjoyable. I’m not sure that I would feel this way, however, if I had not experienced what I did at APU.
International students would often ask me “what do you think?” Up until high school, I assumed a certain level of general knowledge that did not need to be spoken to be understood. But at APU this was not the case. You need to be able to explain your opinions clearly and this made me think, more than I had ever done before, about why I think the way I do. It’s strange but the more I came to understand myself, the better I became at actively sharing my views and opinions. I really wanted to speak well with my friends and have them understand me better, and I feel that this desire naturally sped up the improvement of my language and communication skills.
APU also equipped me with presentation skills. There are endless opportunities to present in front of people in Japanese or English, and this helped me gain more confidence speaking in public. Indeed, in my current job I often have to give monthly report presentations and I am able to deliver these without getting too nervous.
I also enjoyed the job interviews I went through. I was used to expressing my views as a university student so I always got excited thinking about what I would be asked next. There were so many things I achieved at APU that I wanted to share with them.
I volunteered with an Australian and Indian friend for the Multicultural Camp, a two-day one-night exchange event involving an even split of international and domestic students. Through these experiences I was able to make friends in the truest sense of the word.
APU has an environment where you can enjoy many international experiences, but if you are not careful you will find yourself always gathering with people from the same area or country as yourself. Therefore I always kept it in mind to find opportunities to interact and exchange with international students. The camp is currently still part of university extracurricular activities, and I am happy to have been one of the original members.
The international friends I made at APU are some of my greatest assets. For example, they are vital when it comes to developing a marketing strategy that appeals to people of different cultural backgrounds.
I was a Resident Assistant (RA) at AP House, the university hall of residence, and was responsible for the support of house residents and the planning of exchange events. My job was to ensure that house residents from all around the world enjoyed a trouble-free life in AP House and Beppu City. Whether it was explaining how to separate flammable and inflammable rubbish or providing assistance to students when they were sick, my role as an RA included a wide range of responsibilities. Dealing with problems that arose due to cultural differences was by no means an easy task, but when I think about it now, these were great opportunities to improve my cross-cultural communication skills. It seems that every time I travel overseas I bump into someone at the airport that I spent time with at APU. Even if we don’t know each other well, it seems like we can become friends just by knowing that we are both from APU. It is reassuring to know that no matter where I go overseas, I will always have a friend.
As a first year high school student I competed a one-month home-stay in Malaysia. Ever since then I have wanted to become a “global citizen” and have wanted to improve not only my language skills but also develop an international outlook. I was searching for a university that would help me achieve this goal and I discovered APU. Half the students here are Japanese and half are from abroad. We can study together for four years with students from over 50 different countries and regions, not just one particular region. Classes are held in both English and Japanese, and as our English proficiency improves we can take specialist subjects in English. APU is a unique university and a place where we do more than just learn languages. I believed that if I studied at APU I could become the kind of “global citizen” that I had envisioned. I feel that I’m steadily getting closer to achieving this goal.
At the time, APU was still a new school from which no one had yet graduated, so at first my parents were not very enthusiastic about my decision to enroll here. But I was already captivated by APU. My mother took me along to the Open Campus day and I emphatically tried to convince my mother that “this is what I want to study, and it must be at APU”. Now my parents agree that I made a good decision in coming to APU.
In my case, I considered universities in the USA and Europe and also APU, but it was APU that most interested me. The deciding factor was the APU environment where I could meet so many different people. While studying at APU I never felt as though I was a “foreigner”.
Yes, at APU you forget about people’s nationality and you don’t worry about where people are from. You just get along with people as fellow human beings.
I want to work on the global stage, so I’d like to work for an international company in the USA, Europe, India or somewhere else. My goal is to be in a position when I can hear the thoughts and views of our clients firsthand, ensure that their needs are being meet speedily and smoothly, and in this way develop greater relationships of trust with them.
I would first like to achieve more in the regions I am currently in charge of, namely Taiwan, Hong Kong and Australia. Then I would like to help bring better Kao products to people around the world with the pioneering spirit that I developed during my time at APU.