Monbugakusho Interview

June 20, Tuesday – I went to KL with the 10.30am bus yesterday. At around 7.30pm, I headed to Japan Embassy for my Monbugakusho scholarship. I departed from Aunty Good Cam’s house to Taman Bahagia station. It was raining and the traffic was heavy. From there, I took the LRT to Ampang Park. Almost every train was packed like sardines in the tin. I was unable to squeeze in for the first train and need to wait for more than 5 minutes for the next train. It sure was scary. Most of the passengers went down at the Masjid Jamek station. I took around 20 minutes to reach the Japan Embassy from Ampang Park by foot. My luggage was getting more and more heavy. As I reached, I need to fill in a form before entering the embassy. Japan Information Center is located on the upper floor of the building. I arrived slightly before the appointment time. Another candidate was already there as I arrived. Another lady from the embassy was arranging her documents and performing checking on them. 9am stated in the letter is actually the registration time and not the interview time.

My interview started at 9.30am and it took around 20 minutes. There were 5 panels – 3 Japanese and 2 Malaysians. One of the Japanese can speak fluent English despite his age. The questions were relatively general, regarding to the scholarship application, such as “why choose Japan?”, “explain about your thesis”, “any university that you want to go to?” and so on. I was very anxious before that. Then, I headed to Ampang Park with the help of another candidate and stayed at McDonald’s for about an hour before going to Puduraya. I arrived at Penang at around 5.45pm.