After yesterday’s training at the beautiful Civic Arena Stadium in Milan - a beautiful neoclassical stadium built in the early 19th century - one of the Guards of our Offensive Line I was helping getting up told me : “You look stressed.” Where did this incredible insight came from ? Maybe from the fact that he was 125Kg (275 pds) and I made him do a back-flip before almost destroying our only valid QB - I’m 95Kg (210 pds) - during the last scrimmage. We will never really know. Anyway I responded : “Sorry I didn’t mean to take it out on you.”
The thing is : Like you can learn from reading my previous post, I’m contacting a lot of universities in Japan, but the ones that really interest me (like Osaka U. and Kyoto U.) don’t seem to want to answer my questions. Most of the schools that answered me have nice classic computer science programs with things like “Advanced calculators architectures” or “Networking protocol studies” but nothing too fancy in the Multimedia, interactivity or pure software development field. What I study is equally important to where I study it, but if I can’t study things that are interesting to me I’d rather go study in France (cheaper and near home … but it’s not Japan).
Plus did I mention that Osaka and Kyoto have two really nice American Football teams?
Mars is getting near, I need to finish my thesis, to meet my supervisor, and to print it. I don’t have any idea of when should I go to Japan to apply to those schools, and if I don’t take my tickets soon enough I will have to pay an indecent quantity of money for an uncomfortable, 16 hours-long flight. Oh! I almost forgot : I have to find money to pay my studies too!
Anyone got connections at the MEXT (the japanese ministry of education) or at any universities (ANY!) in japan? Please do read on.

So far, Hokkaido University gave me lots of details, but their Computer Science program is boringly classic, really classic with no space for anything multimedia related or interactivity and  man-machine interface (other than the speach recognitions subjects that seems to obsess the japaneses). Too bad, I really liked the idea of going to Hokkaido. If you know some Hokkudai’s programs that might interest me, please comment here and tell me so.
Kyushu U. had a nice ISEE program for foreign student, but like Hokkudai there CS program is the most classic, computer architecture and theory oriented.
I don’t have much details on Tokyo U. of Agriculture and Technology,I’ll try to contact some professors but I’m guessing it will be like the two schools I just mentioned.
Osaka looks the best so far, really high graded school (number 3 in overall Japanese Univ.chart) their programs looks like what I need. The office is slow to answer my mails but I’ll try to contact some professors.
The situations with Kyoto U. seems to be the same. But with even less informations so far. They did answer me right away, but with a : “Please visit our homepage to those informations.”, I wrote them back saying : “I live in Italy. Where do you think I got your e-mail from? Of course I already looked at your homepage and I’m writing because I couldn’t find what I wanted in it.”
TiTech got me good as I won’t be able to enter until April 2009.
All the other schools : I practically have no news, no details on what I can do and where to go from here. Anyone that got infos about any Grad. School in Japan is welcome.

On the French side of this quest : Lyon and Paris have nice M2 (second year of master) programs , Nice too but I’d like to get a bit away from home for once. For now I need to enter a classic M1 - computer science or Informatics, it’s the same for everyone, then specialize in the second year (or take the French embassy MEXT Scholarship program test as M1 level student) Those kind of M1 are everywhere, all I need is to apply to as many as I can and then go take the screenings.

If I can’t get into any schools in Japan or France I’m thinking about taking the JET Program as an ALT or anything else. I’d really like to torture and terrorize some school kids by teaching them French or English … LOL.

If you feel pity for this pour lad (me), please comment any encouragement is welcome and needed. If you can help me, please do so.