Photo by Billy Kingsley

Mine Yoshizawa (right), internship coordinator for Vanderbilt's U.S. Japan Center for Technology Managment, pursues a map of Tokyo with graduate student Molly James and Joe Driscoll, '96, MS '98. James and Driscoll are former interns in the program. Yoshizawa teaches the Japanese language and culture to interns the semester prior to their departures to Japan.

Pack light, enjoy the karaoke, eat any food placed in front of you, learn from your colleagues, and immerse yourself in the culture and history of the country.
That's the advice of Vanderbilt students who have done a summer internship in Japan through the University's U.S.-Japan Center for Technology Management.
The U.S.-Japan Center at Vanderbilt was established in 1991 as one of only four such centers in the United States funded by Congress. There are now 12 such centers at major research universities across the country that share the goal of creating a corps of American scientists, engineers, and managers with significant firsthand experience in Japanese industrial and technology management practices.
The Vanderbilt program is a well-oiled machine under the leadership of Kazuhiko Kawamura, director of the Center and professor of electrical and computer engineering. In addition to engineering students, students from the Owen Graduate School of Management and the College of Arts and Science have done internships.
The interns learn the basics of the Japanese language and culture at Vanderbilt. They attend classes taught by Mine Yoshizawa, internship coordinator and a native of Japan, three hours a week for about three months.
"The course serves a survival purpose, so first they learn to introduce themselves, order food, and buy things," she says. "We also teach them how to ask directions and numbers up to 100,000. Then we spend time talking about the culture of Japan."
Complicating matters is that there are three different alphabets in the Japanese language: Katakana, Hiragana, and Kanji. Vanderbilt interns are taught Katakana and Hiragana and find Katakana the most useful in Japan. Kanji is very difficult to learn. Even native Japanese need more than 10 years to learn the basic set of about 2,000 characters. Therefore, Yoshizawa teaches only "survival" Kanji, a minimum number of characters to help them during their stay.
Yoshizawa schedules monthly seminar luncheons where former interns and faculty give talks describing their experiences to those who will be going to Japan the following summer.
"The one thing you'll probably have is a welcome party," graduate student Molly James tells future interns. James was an intern in the program two years ago. "Everyone in your department welcomes you and you are the focus of the attention that day. Unlike the United States, you socialize with your co-workers after work. It is a great way to get to know people."
James, a biomedical engineering graduate, spent her internship at the Cellular Technology Institute of Otsuka Pharmaceutical Company in Tokushima City, located in a rural area. Her research involved characterizing an antibody used for the treatment of skin melanoma. She also worked with the institute's bone marrow research group.
Japanese food got a major thumbs-up. Typical dishes include rice, fish, squid, and sushi. The more exotic dishes include jellyfish and the poisonous puffer fish. If the puffer fish is incorrectly cooked, the person who eats it dies. James tried it, found it an enjoyable delicacy, and lived to tell about it.
"Japanese food is the best food in the world," James says. "I tried anything placed in front of me, and it was all good," added Joe Driscoll, '96, MS'98, another former intern. "I did pass on the uncooked stomach of some animal."
Driscoll, who recently earned his master's in electrical engineering at Vanderbilt's Intelligent Robotics Lab, worked at the Electro Technical Laboratory in Tsukuba, Japan. While there, he implemented a color-tracking system for a stereo active vision platform for a robotic "head."
There is no fear of crime in Japan, according to the students. Driscoll says "you could be lying in the street with your body covered with money and nobody would touch you."
"I encourage everybody to take advantage of the fact that Japan has a strong sense of history," he adds. "When a temple burns down, they rebuild it. Here we make a parking lot out of it."
James attended a firefly festival. D. Mitchell Wilkes, associate professor of electrical and computer engineering, and graduate student Joe Christopher joined about two million people who were enjoying a major fireworks display in Tokyo.
Christopher worked on building a robotic hand while at Tokyo Denki University in Hatoyama, Japan. Professors at the university include some of the foremost robotics experts in the world. Christopher perfected the hand last year while earning his master's degree in electrical engineering in Vanderbilt's Intelligent Robotics Lab.
He established strong friendships with many of the students, some of whom later came to Vanderbilt as part of an intern exchange program.
"The Japanese students were more 'American' than I was," Christopher says. "They knew what was hip over here, and they listened to more American music than I did."
Wilkes worked with fellow professors in Japan and found something very much to his liking.
"If you are a professor over there, you're treated like an emperor," he says, adding with a smile: "That's something I've tried to encourage over here, without success."

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