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Encounters with people of different cultural backgrounds will not only broaden your horizons and change the way you see the world but also make you reflect on who you are. There are various opportunities offered by UTokyo GlobE, both abroad and on campus, to enable such encounters. Enjoy immersing yourselves in eye-opening experiences!

During these uncertain times, it is important to have a global perspective. We hope that as international students, you will serve as bridges between cultures and countries, and help to create a more just and sustainable world.

Living away from home and dealing with a new academic system gives you both excitement and challenges.
We ,ISSR provide various support in Japanese, English and Chinese. I myself mainly provide consultation on career support.
We sincerely hope that all of UTokyo international students will enjoy a fulfilling life at our university.

We are faced with an agonising dilemma. On the one hand, everyone has the right to sightseeing. You can visit the historic architecture, taste local food, and take selfies in scenic places. On the other hand, tourism is notoriously harmful to natural and cultural environments. Long-distance journeys could emit enormous amounts of carbon dioxide. Local cultures may become less “authentic” to attract and entertain tourists. A dire consequence of mass tourism is overtourism, one of the hot issues in sustainable tourism research. I am glad if you are curious about leaving your familiar place and experiencing foreign cultures. But how do you sustainably satisfy your curiosity? Please give it a thought.

In today’s interconnected world, becoming a global citizen involves engaging with diverse cultures and understanding global issues, including those outlined in the United Nations’ SDGs. At UTokyo GlobE, we provide opportunities to explore these topics both locally and internationally. Through these global engagements, you’ll gain insights and skills to contribute meaningfully to our shared future. I look forward to seeing the impact you will make as global citizens!

Encountering norms, values, and practices other than one's own can be a greatly liberating or a deeply unsettling experience--and they are often both. And it is an essential step in understanding one's place in the world and exploring how to live in it. The university is a prime environment for such an exploration, and I hope you are excited about the challenge!

Globalization and information technology have made the international community increasingly interdependent. As cross-border activities expand, opportunities to engage with people from various backgrounds will increase even further.
The Center for Global Education provides opportunities to think about various global issues from an international and interdisciplinary perspective, as well as to act in cooperation with people with various backgrounds and values.
We hope that you will make new discoveries and insights through your various engagements, and use them as catalysts for your own growth.

Embark on a journey of cultural exploration and understanding with the Center for Global Education. Open your mind to diverse perspectives, courses, and opportunities that transcend borders. Gain fresh insights into global issues and cultivate empathy, preparing yourself to be a leader in our interconnected world. Join us in shaping a more inclusive and compassionate society for all. 

Despite profound changes in society and the international situation and rapid advances in technology, the need for—and the joy of—direct person-to-person engagement across national, cultural, and linguistic barriers will never weaken.

The precious few years students spend at the University of Tokyo give them the most freedom they perhaps will ever have to explore and learn, so they progress to the next stage of their lives with a deeper and more complex sense of self with respect to the vast diversity of this world.

Many of us grow with a strong sense of connection to their family, their clan, their hometown, their region or their country. These connections can help us find a reassuring reference point in an uncertain world, but they can also make it difficult for us to get in touch with ourselves and with others. Learning a different language, and learning how to communicate with different people, are powerful tools to open ourselves to the world.

A global outlook makes you more open-minded and you’ll be able to better contextualize your home city and culture. I highly encourage you to seize any opportunity to broaden your horizons and embrace globalism!

For me, a 'global outlook' means developing the skills of open-mindedness, compassion, empathy, and kindness to others. The goal is to create a broader community that helps each other in building a kinder, more just world.

Part of what may be called a ‘global outlook’ is to maintain a mindset of openness and willingness to engage with things we don’t understand at first—or things we don’t understand but of which we wrongly believe that we already fully understand them. The Center for Global Education may offer you opportunities that add value to your studies in this spirit.

Understanding the world from the global perspective should involve more than just your intellectual engagement. To see our amazing planet in its full richness and complexity, we need to respect the role that each part -- small and large -- plays in making the whole work. Beyond systems and networks, there are individual beings whose unique experience and goals should matter. Let's learn to care!

The new social and technological forces enabled by globalisation’s novel forms have changed communities to be multilingual with the transnational mobility of people, ideas, and things. In the Global Liberal Arts courses, we offer an environment where students can easily express their opinions using their unique linguistic and cultural resources.

The world is now more connected than ever. National and regional issues can have profound global ramifications. I believe that if students develop skills that will allow them to take a more globally-oriented approach to issues both domestic and international, it will expand their competencies, enrich their academic experiences, and equip them to better handle complex tasks. The world is yours!

As an anthropologist, I view global education as the understanding, respect for, and critical evaluation of different societies and cultural practices. This sort of education benefits the individual student: they gain experience in sensitivity toward transnational issues and the peoples affected by them, and a mindset that facilitates participation in international communities. Most importantly, students find that a global outlook not only enhances their future prospects, but makes them agents of positive social change through building bridges between the local and global.

The poet Robert Browning suggested that the purpose of art is to help us really see and love things for the first time, even if we've encountered them many times before ("Fra Lippo Lippi," 1855). In the same way, learning languages, literatures, and cultures will show you not just a whole new world, but your own familiar world too.

The world is full of wonderful languages and cultures. I am looking forward to helping you discover them and broaden your horizons for the future.

I grew up in southern Italy but have lived and worked abroad for almost twenty years. While living in Italy, Hawai‘i, and Virginia, I have learned not only ABOUT many diverse people and cultures, but also FROM all the people I met along the way.

I learned the importance of listening to, and appreciating other people’s (life) stories, because these stories say a lot about where people came from and what they value the most in life.

I learned the importance of moving beyond cultural stereotypes, and of actively challenging stereotypes wherever I am, both in my work and everyday life.

Ultimately, this experience has taught me a lot about myself. It pushed me to reflect on who I was and who I wanted to become–both as a citizen and a human being. And in the end, it has taught me to be more bold, outspoken, and self-confident.

I wish for all students to experience such a MENTAL JOURNEY, wherever they decide to live in the world.
I wish for them to cherish their LOCAL CULTURES while also thinking as GLOBAL CITIZEN.
And I especially wish for students to actively practice HUMAN and CULTURAL EMPATHY in their everyday lives.

I am a Japanese national who left Japan at the end of Showa and came back at the start of Reiwa. During Heisei period (~30 years), I studied and worked in the USA and the UK.

Climate change is a global issue with no regard for human-imposed political boundaries. Our response and solutions must likewise transcend borders in a way that prioritizes and supports the most vulnerable.

The borderless world we live in today needs leaders that are capable of assuring that its rapid growth is both sustainable and inclusive. The challenge for you is to be this future leader. Make the most out of your time at the university to hone your skills and character - both are vital in making sound judgments and taking action. Develop your competence by grabbing every opportunity the university offers to study, experience, and interact with people of all colors and values. You can be anyone and anywhere you want to be.

A global outlook is important to effectively engage with people from various backgrounds, to help solve global challenges by considering different viewpoints and to develop personally and intellectually.

When someone tells you to question everything, we are tempted to focus our questions entirely on academic studies. However, I implore you to apply it elsewhere. Ask questions about yourself. Investigate your experiences, your feelings, your thoughts. Wonder about the world, yes, but also wonder about how you experience the world.

In order to fully communicate with others, especially across social and cultural boundaries, we must strive to understand ourselves as much as those around us. By doing so, we can take ideas that appear immiscible, and synthesize them into something more inclusive, and more diverse.

Let's learn together in a spirit of friendship and community at UTokyo GlobE, bringing down language barriers in search for global sustainability and human wellbeing

Vocabulary is a broad topic that covers multiword phrases and constructions alongside individual words. In this sense, vocabulary constitutes the fundamental building block of language learning. Messages cannot be conveyed without efficient productive and receptive vocabulary skills. Students taking my classes will be encouraged not to think about vocabulary as lists of words that should be memorized, but to think about the relationships between words in order to develop a more sophisticated understanding of vocabulary.

My courses aim to educate students about the philosophical questions that lie at the foundations of many social and technological issues gaining importance in our global and technologically interconnected world, and to foster the development of transferable analytical and critical academic skills.

Sociolinguistics analyses the many and diverse ways in which language and society entwine, which is essential to helping students develop a global outlook during their time with the Center for Global Education. It is vital for us to have a good understanding of the role of language in society and how an understanding of it can aid us in achieving our global development objectives.
Students studying sociolinguistics with me will share their experiences about how language affects, and is affected by, issues such as identity, gender, ethnicity, education, class, sexuality, power, and culture. Sharing our experiences and opinions on such topics enables us to develop means by which we can enhance global equality through the use of language.

I am an architect with 12 years of experience teaching at universities in Europe, South America and Japan. Throughout my career, I have learned that architecture is one of mankind's greatest cultural creations, but also one of the largest consumers of energy and natural resources. The United Nations estimates that buildings and construction account for 34% of the world's energy demand and 37% of its CO2 emissions, so collaboration on a global scale is essential to reduce the ecological footprint while respecting cultural differences between societies. To this end, I encourage students to gain a more global perspective to make Japan a key player on the global stage and to share knowledge with other countries to create resilient and sustainable buildings.

Make use of the opportunities available to you in Global Education at The University of Tokyo to meet people from different cultures and backgrounds. It will broaden your mind!

Read more books. Fiction or nonfiction, it doesn't matter. Especially seek out books written by people different from yourself. By exposing yourself to diverse perspectives and experiences, you can broaden your own worldview and become more compassionate and empathetic towards others.

A "global outlook" is much more than an attitude or a framework of thought, it is a kind of (internal) power that transforms us into global citizens. It shifts our actions away from a provincial context to a more cosmopolitan one, fostering a sort of partnership between our critical inquiries and the world around us. There is no betterment of a global society without cultivating a global outlook. My work in philosophical history seeks to make this global horizon visible.

Working and studying with diverse people of different nationalities, races, genders, sexualities, religions, class, etc... and considering the ways in which these intersecting identities have shaped the way the world works has been one of the most powerful, valuable, fulfilling and eye opening experiences in both my acaemic and personal life. As a young scientist, I foolishly believed these were trivial matters in the pursuit of empirical data, but I was quickly proven wrong once I stepped outside of my small comfort zone.
Sharing different viewpoints has expanded my understanding of my own research field and has given me countless memories with friends and colleagues that I will treasure forever. I wish all students can experience the same, and would encourage everyone to pursue studying in an international and diverse environment, whether abroad or at home.

By learning about cultures and groups different from your own (in and outside Japan), I hope students can put themselves in the shoes of others, learn to think from different cultural perspectives, and recognize the importance of helping Japan become a more diverse and inclusive society.

Gaining a global outlook is closely related to the idea of civic engagement. In a globalised and interconnected world, there is a need for individuals to identify and perceive themselves as not just mere citizens of a country or community, but as citizens of the world. There is a responsibility attached to this realisation given that any actions or changes in a person’s life have an impact on the family, nation and at an international level and vice versa. Language knowledge and skills form part of the core competencies necessary to involve people collectively to analyse global problems and find feasible solutions.

"Cultural differences should not separate us from each other, but rather cultural diversity brings a collective strength that can benefit all of humanity. Intercultural dialogue is the best guarantee of a more peaceful, just and sustainable world."  —Robert Alan Aurthur

Learning the local language is a great way to understand the local people, culture, and society. In Japan, whether on campus, in the city, or during travel and other extraordinary experiences, even knowing a little bit of Japanese can greatly enrich your time here. Come join our Japanese language classroom to gain insights into the preferred ways to express yourself and the actual messages conveyed by certain Japanese phrases, all while learning through practical use.