The Hard Struggle of Asian Exchange Students at MSA

At the Maritime Safety Academy (MSA), we promote collaboration and strengthened liaison among the various countries and regions of Asia on efforts to grapple with problems of ocean security, such as piracy and arms theft at sea. As part of this effort, JCGA accepts exchange students from many countries and collaborates with various marine security agencies on personnel training. At present Southeast Asian nations are moving to establish their own Coast Guard services. JCGA expects exchange students trained at this institution will serve a crucial role in this important undertaking.

Acceptance of foreign students initiated as a measure against pirates

Today, somebody said a cheerful, delightful hello to me on the way home from the academy. I looked around, thinking that the speaker's intonation was somewhat strange, and I saw two foreign students riding bicycles, Mr. Meniado and Mr. Shu. They seemed to be going downtown to buy shirts. They did not look nervous or tense any more, the way they used to when they first arrived here.
In the wake of the Alondra Rainbow incident of 1999, there is growing concern in this country over the safety of marine transport in Southeast Asian sea areas.
As a result, the Japan Coast Guard started to advance mutual cooperation and the reinforcement of solidarity with respective countries in order to take action against pirates and the armed robbery of ships. As part of the efforts, the Japan Coast Guard Academy has been actively cooperating to train the personnel of coastguard authorities in various Asian countries, and to improve naval police forces in the entire region by receiving foreign students and providing training for marine crime control.
The academy started receiving foreign students in April 2001. Mr. Kiatopas (Thailand), one of the first, is still at school as a student in a regular course. Mr. Meniado (the Philippines), Mr. Shu (China) and Mr. Shannon (Malaysia), are students accepted by the academy for the second term.
Their future hope is to study navigation or engineering. However, before they acquire such professional knowledge and skills related to marine safety, they must first overcome the hardships of Japanese language training for one year. They take Japanese classes (including "Japanese affairs") for a total of 597 hours for the year, and in addition, they take mathematics and physics in the first semester and an introduction to marine safety in the second semester for a total of 144 hours. They are also assigned mountains of homework and supplemental studies. This is no easy matter. Even if they study Japanese very hard for one year, it will be difficult for them to understand all the advanced special lectures given by the faculty in Japanese. It will be necessary to strengthen a backup system for special classes on the faculty side by providing materials in English.

Encounter with foreign cultures

No, it is not just Japanese that will be difficult for them. Just living in a foreign culture is very difficult. At the academy, foreign students must become familiar with group behaviors, and more importantly living at the dormitory. There were even some foreign students who were about to take a bath with their spats on. They do not only feel ashamed of being naked, rather that they are not allowed to be naked for religious reasons. Speaking of religions, there are problems with prayers and food. The dormitory cafeteria gave careful consideration to soups and went to the trouble of changing meat dishes to fish dishes for Muslims. We should also consider a special space for them to offer prayers, and make special efforts to accommodate the designated times of their prayers. They cannot live without a large number of people who support their lives. Even in the International Exchange Planning Department, which consists of nine instructors and one full-time secretary, one instructor is assigned to each foreign student in order to support them academically and personally. Students in the regular course and trainees also lend foreign students a helping hand of their own free will.
In addition, their national characteristics and customs are different. Although the foreign students were sent from organizations related to marine safety in their respective countries, their sense of time is different from the Japanese sense of time. When foreign students mingle with disciplined Japanese students at the academy, their easy-going attitude stands out. Our students are always required to move briskly in rising at 6:30 am in the morning, doing gymnastics, seating themselves before the chime sounds to signal the commencement of class, standing up, saluting and seating themselves again. For practical navigation training, it is natural that students are sometimes severely cautioned because they are students and trainees at the Japan Coast Guard Academy, regardless of whether they are foreign students or not.

Pleasure of studying abroad

Our foreign students have a strict school life, but of course they also have places where they can relax. For the first foreign students, our instructors, students and trainees invited them to a party for social exchanges once a month and they had very lively discussions. When the students visited marine security facilities in Maizuru, Kyoto, they witnessed the strict training of personnel working at the forefront of the field. On the other hand, they saw old streetscapes and visited shrines and temples in Kyoto, experiencing Japanese culture firsthand. They also took part unannounced in an athletic meeting held by the Host Families' Association of the Kure National College of Technology. In particular, host families from the Kure Premier Club invited the students for home-cooked Japanese meals and listened to their complaints which the students could not make at the academy. Foreign students who invited their wives and children from their home countries might have had difficulty in paying their rents, but they were able to develop neighborly ties like those among Japanese, and blend into their local communities through residences set up for their families and schools their children attended. On the way back to their home countries, some of them called Japan "their second home country" and were reluctant to leave Japan, while other students reflected on their bittersweet memories. Mr. Kiatopas, who remains in the regular course, now speaks Japanese fluently blended with our local dialect, and he has become accustomed to academy life, so much so that he calls his peers doki meaning classmates.

Present and future exchanges with foreign and Japanese students

The exchange program at the Japan Coast Guard Academy has as its main purpose the training of counterparts, but just as important is its influence on Japanese students and trainees. Looking at the program from the viewpoint of Japanese students and trainees who shared quality time with foreign students, I do not think that their mutual relationship as a whole was entirely satisfactory because some foreign students had slightly bitter memories when they left Japan. When foreign students feel irritated, Japanese students must also feel irritated in the same way. However, I think that Japanese students and trainees benefit greatly from exchanges with foreign students in spite of such conflicts, or I should say, owing to such conflicts. As one Japanese trainee said: "While eating the same meals, sleeping in the same place and living a similar life, my impression that they were foreigners started disappearing. Though our cultures are different, I reconfirmed that we are the same human beings." I think that he is right. It is often said that we should acquire an international way of thinking, though this does not mean that we should be able to speak foreign languages fluently. Of course, foreign language skills, especially English language skills are extremely important, however what is more important is the experience of going through the same pleasures and hardships in the same environment. The experience as human beings, not as foreigners and Japanese, is what is valuable. These kinds of human-to-human relations will surely develop into nation-to-nation relations. I would like Mr. Meniado, other foreign students, and Japanese students and trainees who live together with the foreign students to work as bridges between their countries and Japan, and I firmly believe that they will.
In order to strengthen law enforcement on the sea, such as crackdowns on pirates, there is a movement now to station coast guards in Southeast Asian countries. Foreign students who studied at the Japan Coast Guard Academy are expected to play an important role in this activity