皆さん、こんにちは。イタリアからグループ１９のアレッシアです。このポストには自分の経験の振り返りを共有したいと思います。

Hello everyone! I’m Alessia from Group 19. In this post I would like to share about my personal experience during this two months long journey!

I decided to apply for a variety of reasons. I first read about this project during the end of the winter terms and I was looking for new stimulus and motivation. This project managed to keep up with every expectation I had.

My group’s theme is 日本語教育 and it was a kind of a shock reading it the first time, as well as being asked what it meant to me. All I could think of was “What is that? Where do you even start? There are a lot of smaller theme!” but, after reading everyone’s opinion I managed to calm down and slowly collect my thoughts to understand and make light of this enormous mess called 日本語教育。
I was able to work with an awesome team, eventually becoming friend with other italian and japanese students, to whom I owe everything for not backing out along the way. We worked together, shared parts of our cultures and days with each other, laughed and discovered new things, feeling as close as we could despite being hundreds/thousands of km apart. We were able to come up with numerous topics and every week and discuss, share our ideas and hopefully acquiring a little bit more knowledge of ourselves in the meanwhile.

I was able to practice every day by writing or speaking in Japanese. It was (and it most definely isn’t, even now) difficult, but I managed to open up to try to communicate with everyone, despite my anxiety and my ever-existing feeling of inadequacy. Being put in a group with so many different language level was a bit scary, at first. Step by step, I tried to say something more complex, different and out of my comfort zone. Reading comes naturally to me, but putting my own words together…well, it really doesn’t. In spite of that, I can proudly say that I did more than I could ever immagine when I first applied for the project. I still have a long way to go, I didn’t reach that step in which I feel confident enough in using Japanese without the fear of making hundreds of errors (believe me, I do make around that number), but it still feels good to have reached this point.


The 自由会話 lessons were a bit difficult to me. It doesn’t really come naturally to me to express what I want to say in Italian…and in Japanese it is even worse. However, I learned lots from this lessons. From new words, new topics, differences between cultures, every person with whom I shared that time with has given me something. I wasn’t much of a talker, but I was a good listener. If you are one of those people, know that I’m really grateful for all the help, knowledge and patience you have granted me in those times.

To conclude, this experience was a great challenge and has helped me develop a different approach in how I study, see and use Japanese.
I’d like to express my gratitude to everyone.
To the Italian students, thanks for trying with all your might, despite the mistakes, the hurried times in which you searched the exact word you needed or heard, and thanks for helping each other when someone wasn’t able to express their own thoughts.
To the Japanese students, thanks for sharing everything you had during this journey, for the early rises or late nights you endured to participate in our lessons due to the time zone, and for all the patience in understanding our efforts in speaking your marveillous Language.
To Professor Mariotti, the Junior Coordinators, The Japanese Foundation and everyone else that helped. Thanks for the opportunity. We managed to live the experience of 留学, and despite the fact that the one we experienced is a small part of the usual one, it is still a bit of normal in the sea of uncertaintly that is this difficult time.
Last, but not last, to my Group. Thanks from the bottom of my heart, for everything.


Thank you.　ありがとうございます。
For the last time
皆さん、お疲れさまでした。よくできました。