I am an international student from Thailand, and I have participated as a staff member at the GC open campus every year since I entered the university. In our annual open campus event, students from Japan and overseas visit campus, and we introduce our departments individually and give some advice to prospective students. This year, however, due to the ongoing coronavirus pandemic, we were no longer able to hold the event face-to-face, as we’d always done, and participants from overseas were not able to participate in-person in Japan. Because of this, we decided to hold our open campus event online this year.

First of all, I would like to introduce you the GC departments of study. GC departments of study are divided into three courses: an English course, a Chinese course, and a Japanese course for international students—I am studying in this course. In the Japanese course we aren’t studying only language, but also about Japanese culture and Japan from a global perspective.

Students in the English and Chinese courses, which require students to study abroad for one year, are mainly Japanese students, so there’s also a lot of multicultural communication between international students and Japanese students in the department.

During each year’s open campus, we introduce our academic departments and give advice to prospective students, but this year, participants from abroad were unable to come to Japan due to the ongoing coronavirus pandemic. Because of this, I decided to hold the event online this year.