"Aller Anfang ist schwer," say the Germans. Tokyo Tech's Yuta Itoh cites that phrase, which means something like "The first step is the toughest," as encouragement for exchange students in Germany. Yuta is a master's student in the Department of Computer Science in Tokyo Tech's Graduate School of Information Science and Engineering. Since summer 2008, he has been studying informatics as an exchange student at Technische Universitaet Muenchen (TUM).

"What motivated me to study abroad," recalls Yuta, "was a multinational robot competition organized by Tokyo Tech in 2005. Each team in the competition comprised members from universities in different nations. That was a real culture shock. For example, one of our team members didn't show up one day, and I was startled to hear from another member of the team that he had gone to Kyoto. I was just as startled at the way the other team members took the missing member's absence in stride. To be sure, the missing team member had completed his main work on the project. But I couldn't imagine just taking off like that without a word of warning. That reminded me that different people in different nations have different values. It made me want to see for myself how people approach their lives and work in other nations."

Augmented reality
Yuta's interest in studying abroad remained strong, and he jumped at the chance when he learned of an opening for an exchange student at TUM. Professor Gudrun Klinker was doing research there in augmented reality, a branch of computer science that had captured Yuta's attention at Tokyo Tech. Augmented reality combines virtual reality with real-world perceptual elements. Yuta was exploring potential applications for it in signal processing, optimization theory, and machine learning.

"My first weeks in Munich were hectic," sighs Yuta, "but I finally settled into a routine in the fall-winter semester. About 20% of the students here are from outside Germany, and I've made a lot of friends of all nationalities. My biggest surprise has been how much people know about Japan and how little I know about my homeland. Studying abroad has been like standing in front of a mirror. It has made me rethink who I am from a global cultural perspective."