(First of two parts)
The ability of a Third World country like the Philippines to jumpstart its industrialization and become a competitive global player lies in its efforts to produce scientists and engineers with advanced degrees preferably from industrial powerhouses like the US and Japan. This fact has been emphasized time and again in various articles under this column. In my view, the Philippines should invest heavily in sending promising scientists to train abroad and bring the technology back. In this two-part article, I will try to outline my experience as a graduate student in Nagasaki University in Nagasaki, Japan (Part 1) and a postgraduate research fellow in the National Heart, Lung and Blood Institute in Bethesda, Maryland, to serve as a template for those students who would like to train abroad.
I first became interested in pursuing graduate studies in Japan when I was a participant in the 1993 Friendship Program for Teachers of the Japan International Cooperation Agency (JICA). Part of the program was a visit and orientation at the main office of the Japanese Ministry of Education (Monbusho). The representative of the Ministry encouraged us to apply for the so-called Monbusho scholarship in the hopes of meeting their goal of 100,000 students in Japan for the year 2000. The scholarship covers tuition and living expenses for the duration of your studies in Japan. It includes the short-term stays like teacher training, Japanese studies, technical and vocational degree programs as well as long-term ones like an undergraduate, masters and a PhD.
When I returned to UP Visayas after one month of cultural and educational training in Japan, a fellow physician gave me a brochure of Nagasaki University’s Institute of Tropical Medicine (Nekken). As a first step to a Monbusho scholarship, you need to have a host professor accept you as his graduate student. I communicated with the dean directly and I got three acceptance letters from the Departments of Social Medicine, Internal Medicine and Parasitology. After a year of sending letters and interviews, the Japanese Embassy in Manila finally notified me that I was accepted as a graduate student in the Department of Internal Medicine (Naika) in Nekken after six months of Japanese language (Nihongo) training in Kyushu University in Fukuoka, Japan. By an interesting twist of fate, in the middle of my Nihongo course, Nekken informed me that I was being transferred to the Department of Bacteriology (Saikingaku) under the mentorship of Dr. Toshiya Hirayama, recipient of the 2007 Asakawa-sho, one of the highest science prizes in Japan.
Graduate school in Japan is a marathon, not a sprint. You deal not only with experimental setbacks, but also cultural and language hurdles. The secret is to master Nihongo with all its nuances and colloquial usage. You must be good in Nihongo to speak and survive in everyday life but not so good as to outshine the native speakers — which is tricky to navigate. You must also speak and deal with it at different levels: with professors, supervisors, Japanese classmates, laboratory technicians, secretaries, other foreign students, etc. You must succeed not only in science but also in navigating the treacherous world of the Japanese language and cultural mores.
Life in Nekken was in a way a unique experience. I would say graduate student life is quite different in other departments or institutes of Japan. Nekken had an international flavor to it. When I was there, foreigners outnumbered the Japanese in the institute. There were graduate students, short-term trainees in tropical medicine, visiting professors, etc. The Japanese staff was comfortable in dealing with all the international students in their midst. My best friend in the institute was Sugako Obama (Obama-san), who was the coordinator of JICA for their tropical medicine program. We used to call her the unofficial “Monbusho scholars’ coordinator” as well. Nekken gave us an opportunity to develop long-lasting international friendships.
Requirements vary in each grad school in Japan. So one must decide which is the best fit for where one wants to train. A PhD in the medical sciences is four years (does not require a Master’s degree if one already has an MD). If you are starting only with an undergraduate degree, a Master’s degree is two years and a PhD is three years. Filipino students are handicapped by our educational system with only a total of 14 years after college (elementary, six; HS, four; college, four). Monbusho requires students to have at least 16 years of education before entering grad school (six, six, four). My advice to Monbusho applicants is to pursue two years of masters to complete the 16-year requirement.
I finished my PhD in Nekken in 2000 and moved to the US for a postdoctoral research fellowship in the National Institutes of Health.
Check out the website of the Japanese Embassy in Manila (www.ph.emb-japan.go.jp/index.htm) for more information on Monbusho scholarships and other training opportunities in Japan (JSPS, JICA). (To be concluded)
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Dr. Philip Ian P. Padilla is a graduate of the UP College of Medicine, Class 1992. He recently returned to the University of the Philippines Visayas (UPV) in Miag-ao, Iloilo as an associate professor. He would like to thank Prof. Rosela Padilla-Zarragoza for editing this article. He can be contacted through his e-mail at pppadilla@upv.edu.ph.