Haruka KOMON

Student of Keio University, Japan
Exchange to The University of Queensland, Australia

My name is Haruka Komon and I am currently studying at The University of Queensland ("UQ") as an exchange student for one year. I am taking Tourism and Media Communication here while my major subject is Law in Keio University, which is in my home country. As the subjects I take here are totally different from my original course, everything here is new to me.

The reason why I applied for exchange programme at UQ is to study tourism and social media marketing, so that I can pursue a career in the near future to promote Japanese culture to foreign people.

It is often said that Japanese people are welcome by people in a lot of foreign countries and I am curious to see if this is true. Above all, I would like to join the tourism industry in the future, I thereby consider studying in Australia offers me great opportunity to acquire new skills that would facilitate my future career development.

In fact, my study here has given me special chance to think about not only tourism management, but also how to view cultural differences. Japan is a homogeneous nation, by contrast, Australia is a multicultural country. In one of the classes on tourism, I learned that 85% of Australian people supported multiculturalism. Beyond my imagination, people here take internationality for granted, and that surprised me. Immersing myself into this environment has offered me new perspectives. Culture shapes and affects the thinking of people, and different ways of thinking breed a wide variety of behavior.

It has been just two months since I arrived at Australia. However, I have already learned a lot of things. I like Brisbane, the people here and UQ. I am really looking forward to seeing new people, expanding my horizon, and exploring the paths which lead to my future! I appreciate my family, my home university, my friends' support, they really cheered me up. Last but not least, the Endeavour Scholarship enabled me to embark on this special journey, I am grateful for the grant.

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