International Community and Classes: Peijun Li, The University of Western Australia

Academic Experience

Peijun Li (second from left) at the Matriculation Ceremony with fellow international students.

During the spring semester, I have taken the Intercultural Perspectives on Japanese Society course, which has impressed me a lot. The course is conducted by Japanese and international students are able to study with domestic students, which provide us Japanese learners a great environment to improve our Japanese language skills comprehensively.

Moreover, in my home university, although we have a few Japanese culture study courses, we don’t have any field trips in our classes. However, in this class, professor will take the whole class on field trips, which are related to the topics we are studying at the moment. For instance, while we were studying Japanese religion, we went to the Karamatsu Shrine. Before that, I had never expected that every decoration in shrine has their own special symbolization and meaning. I have to say that it’s amazing.

Favorite Memory

Yozakura or viewing cherry blossoms at night.

AIU is a very small university, which give me an opportunity to make friends easily.

Most people you will meet every day. The funniest thing is that at home, we usually say long time no see with someone we haven’t met for several weeks or longer. But, at AIU, if you don’t see someone over 2 days, then it’s time to say おひさしぶり (o-hisashiburi).

Everyone gets very close and you can make lots of friends as long as you like to make friends. Furthermore, there are many interesting parties during the semester, which allow you to relieve your pressure and have fun with your friends. Comparing with AIU, my home university is too big to make new friends. In lecture, students just come and go.

Being an international student has benefited me that I am able to receive much more incisive opinions in class. Due to the different background and different life experience, my classmates always raise points that I hadn’t considered before, which also a fantastic chance to broad my horizons. To be honest, I wish I could stay AIU longer and it’s the greatest moment of my whole uni-life.