Studera utomlands

Hi everyone! My name is YiCheng and I’m a student in the Master’s in Biomedicine program. I will be finishing my last semester by exchanging to Japan from January to May, where I’ll be working on my master’s thesis project at the University of Tokyo.

A little about me:

I’m 22 years old and I come from Oslo. I was born in Malaysia but moved to Norway when I was 10. As such, I grew up there and studied my Bachelor’s at the University of Oslo, where I also had my first opportunity to go on exchange to the University of Queensland in Brisbane. I got accepted into KI while I was in Australia, so after finishing my semester, I came to Stockholm after the summer to begin my master’s. And now, here I am, with another great opportunity to exchange on the other side of the world again!

Why Tokyo?

I knew that if I were to go on an exchange, I would want to experience something completely different. I was mainly interested in exchanging to Asia, and as a master’s student, my options were either Japan or Singapore. Since I’m already from Malaysia, Japan was the option that interested me more. For exchanging to Japan, we had the option between the University of Tokyo and Osaka University. I visited Japan for the first time a little over a year ago and really enjoyed Tokyo which was why it was my first choice. 😀

The decision to go on exchange

Despite what it seems like, I was actually very hesitant to go on exchange at first. I applied mildly on a whim and had to decide whether to accept or not when I got the offer to UTokyo.

While Japan is a beautiful country, it is very culturally different from Sweden and Norway. Since I am doing my thesis there, I was mainly concerned about the completely different work culture and expectations, and everyone knows that Japan is quite infamous for its work/life balance. Luckily, my concerns were smoothed out after talking to others who exchanged there previously. They told me that their workload was manageable and that they really loved living there. That helped me make my own decision to go, and I thought, when else would I get an opportunity to live in Tokyo again? XD

Now that everything is solidified, all that’s left for me is to experience it myself! I will be blogging useful information you’ll need exchanging to UTokyo and try my best to capture moments of my life here that I can share with everyone!

See you around!

Introductory photo: My visit to Shibuya Sky in Tokyo, December 2023. Photo by: Yi Ken Chng