Tokyo is THE big city you want to visit. There is everything you could possibly want to try and visit. A lot of people in one place for sure so it can feel crowded, but it's very clean. The buldings tend to be tall and narrow, which is a very big contrast to our way of living in Czechia.

What quickly baffled me were the high buildings and narrow streets. There is a lot of people in Tokyo, so everything that's narrow has to be quite tall (and you'd think otherwise since they experinence earthquakes quite often). I was also stunned by the LED monitors and neon signs with ads everywhere, since I am not used to it from Europe. Options for spending your free time are limitless.

One of many privileges of Tokyo is the fact that you can get very far from Tokyo by train/metro system. We went to see Nikko - city 2 hours from Tokyo with a lot of waterfalls and historical buildings. Fuji is also accessible by trains (it's about 3 hours long drive). We also visited a lot of places in Tokyo - Disneyland, Teamlab planets, firecentre in Ikekuburo (where we experienced the earthquake simulator, how to navigate in smoke in case of fire etc.). For cities such as Osaka and Kyoto, one of the cheapest options is to take a night bus. The other option, much faster but also more expensive, is to take a shinkansen, japanese famous bullet train.

I worked in a laboratory of professor Shin Aoki at the Tokyo University of Science. His laboratory consists of two laboratories in different buildings in Noda campus (NOTE: they will move to different campus at the beginning of year 2025, so some of the information may no longer apply).
The group itself consists of the professor, assistant proffesor, 1 PhD student and about 15 students. You have your designated desk and work space for carrying out your experiments.
As for the work, I would gladly work for professor Aoki again - he wasn't strict or demanding, the work he gave me was managable in the time of my internship.

Before my arrival I received three of four papers with different topics the Aoki lab focuses on. I was supposed to read them and when it was my first day, the professor explained the topics to me as well. Firstly, they asked me to carry out basic reactions (extraction of unknown compound, identification of the compounds and recrystalization - to make sure I have basic level of organic chemistry skills - nothing hard!). Then he asked whether something had caught my eye and if I wanted to work on something specific. I expressed my interest in beta-lactamase inhibitors and so he gave me a proposition for my work next day.
I carried out a 5-step synthesis + some more reactions to obtain starting materials. Most of the reactions had been carried out before by someone else in the laboratory, so I received copies of the procedures and it was nothing hard. There was no pressure on me to do more work than I could manage in 8 weeks of 8 hours a day work. If you ever stay later, it's due to your poor experiment planning skills (it happened to me like only twice).

I got ¥240 000 (about 37 000 CZK) for the 8 weeks. I got it all in cash the first day I went to the university (if you arrive beforehand, make sure you have cash on you to pay for your lodging) and for me it was enough to cover apartment + public transport to school and most of the lunches at school canteen. Essentially, everything extra such as trips and eating out (plus the plane tickets of course) you have to fund yourself. It depends on how much you want to do during your stay.

English is necessary, having google translate and charged phone is even more necessary. They can speak English at this laboratory, with heavy japanese accent. Sometimes it takes them a while to find the words to say, just be patient and pay attention. In public it's very hard to find shops or people that can speak English (or they can but they are shy), however they are willing to help you! If you don't pull your google translate, they will, trust me!

The price for accomodation was ¥180 000, I paid for it with the money I got from university. I wanted IAESTE to provide the accomodation for me, so they organized it via Freshroom company. I lived in Freshroom Asakusa, so the commute to the university was about 45-55 minutes.

I wasn’t picked up from the airport, but I got some instructions of how to get to the center, where the IAESTE member picked me up and we went to get me a SIM card (if you have a phone that supports e-SIM they will help you with that too), then they took me to my accommodation. As for the events, they organized 2 for the 8 weeks I was there, however if we wanted to do something thet required Japanese person to translate (Ikebukuro firecentre) or Japanese person to book it, they were always happy to help!

I met other foreign students at one IAESTE event, but I mostly spent time in the same group of 7 people. One of the interns lived in the same acommodation, the rest lived on the other side of Tokyo (due to them attending a different campus) - those I didn't see much. We also had a different time frame of staying in Japan, but we met. I made great new friends from around the world (Australia, Mexico, Romania, Spain, Italy, Germany)!

I would recommend you to study some of the basic rules in Japan before coming here. For example: talking on the train is not common and you can get weird looks for it. They even have a sign that tells you to turn your mobile phone to silent mode so that others can sleep on the train to work. They are waiting in lines for anything (sometimes fake lines appear - if 2 people stand behing each other others think they are queuing up for something and voilá), not tipping at restaurants, and much more. The Japanese are extremely polite and don’t share their opinions. Learning some basic japanese phases is going to help a lot. Smile and be polite!

I cooked myself spaghetti for dinner (usually once a week for 3 portions), otherwise I had dinner with my foreign friends. I tried fresh sushi, running sushi, okonomiyaki, takiyaki. Otherwise, conbinis (such as 7-11, Familymart and Lawson) are lifesavers with all the food ready to go! (like onigiri) Be careful, apart from bananas and mandarin oranges, all the fruits and vegetables are very expensive in Japan!

I used mostly whatsapp (because of the lower data consumption), instagram and messenger. The same as I use in Czechia.

I went to Japan during fall and it's the best season to go! You are not sweating as much as you would in summer, there are autumn leaves everywhere and the weather is nice. If you can, pack an umbrella with you - if it rains, it's quite a heavy rain! I would recommend you to get a Revolut card (I only had an account and that meant I could not draw out cash - THEY MOSTLY USE CASH!!!!) Using credit cards is very uncommon and usually they insert the card (so make sure you remember your PIN :D) Learn some basic phrases before your arrival. Respect the culture here. And don’t be afraid to travel alone, Japan is extremely safe.

Umbrella, paper notebook for collecting stamps (they have them almost everywhere and it makes for such great memories!), powerbank. Outlets for Japanese sockets (reductions from european type to japanese type of sockets), wallet that can fit a lot of coins!

I rediscovered by love for chemistry again, I had a lot of time to journal and reflect (since most of the time you spend in silence). It made me grow as a person (I had never travelled by myself so I was quite scared, but this was the best thing to cure my fear, since it was a jump into the unknown but it was assisted since I had IAESTE by my side the whole time). Chemistry-wise I learned some new tricks in the lab and managed to look into some new research topics, but nothing groundbreaking. I hope this experience will help me get a good job (it certainly looks good on my CV!)

I didn’t have to deal with any problems and from my point of view IAESTE Japan did a nice work with the events.