黄欣儀さん（汕頭大学医学院第4学年次）

First, I need to show my schedule during the 2 weeks in Gastroenterology department. Most of the time, I spent my time with my teacher in the Endoscopy room. Before my exchange study in Japan, I have never studied digestive endoscopy in China. The endoscopy room in Hyogo College of Medicine is very neat, everything seems new. There is a monitoring room which shows every episode in each endoscopy room. I can watch what happens to a patients’ gastrointestinal tracts. I still remember that once I stayed in the monitoring room,waiting for my teacher who guided me on that day, the teacher, I have never met before, he started to explain what happened to every episode, like esophagogastric varices and ESD(Endoscopic submucosal dissection) and so on. He was very nice after hew knew that I was a student and wanted me to learn more. In short, teachers were trying their best to impact knowledge to me. Though we had some communication problems because both of us used the second language when we talked, teachers used English-dictionary and search engine to make everything understandable. I remember that one time when teachers operated EUS (Endoscopic ultrasonography), a teacher told me “high, low, high, low, high” , pointing at the dynamic image on the screen. When he saw puzzled look on my face, he explained a lot and showed me the picture. I totally understood what he said, that was the ultrasound image of esophageal layers, which could tell how deep the tumor invasion was.

Watching HRM（high resolution manometry）examination was my very first time.

Because there was not HRM examination machine in the hospital where I study in China. This examination is related to achalasia. During examination, a patient needs to drink water along with doctor's instructions, showing a dynamic image to doctors. I searched a similar picture on the Internet. Barium enema is also a part for me to learn. When I stayed outside watching Barium radiograph, a nurse teacher, she started to describe the process of Barium enema patiently. When I asked for a picture of image on the screen, she covered patient’s private information and let me take a picture. That time, I admired her for her respect to patients and I felt ashamed, because I didn’t notice the point (protect patients’ privacy). Attending classes with Japanese students was the most difficult thing for me. Though Chinese characters can be recognized, most contents were mysterious. When teachers found that I had difficulties to understand, they tried to translate what they said into English. Sometimes, Japanese students even tried to talk to me using Chinese characters. When we understood each other, we were happy as children. How sweet the feeling we had.
Before, I thought that it was just an observation for me, what surprised me was there were practical trainings! I didn’t realize how skillful the people who used the endoscopy operation were until I actually did. I felt grateful when Dr. Tomita said that pictures should be taken, because they could keep memorable experiences for me. I learned a lot and got some new ideas from the training. In short, interesting matters were innumerable for me in Gastroenterology department.

In basic science laboratory, the number of teachers are not so many compared to those of clinical departments. Most the time, I explored experiments with my supervisor- Dr. Nakamura. An experiment was “Breathing and fear memory retrieval in prefrontal cortex”. We contacted one special sound with foot shock given to a mouse, recorded its respiratory cycle, tried to figure out whether the mouse remember the related sound or not. He used a hand-made box as important part of installation. We suffered a lot of problems because of the installation. With electrode, airflow controller and the hand-made box, we tried to know what happened when respiratory cycle was not detected. 2 weeks passed by, but we have just finished subsection of our task. At last, when the cycle was detected, we smiled each other with felicity. I think that experiments to exploration are throughout whole research, and you never know what will happen and you need to cope with problems at all times and places.

Life was enjoyable in Japan. We exchange students lived in the guest house, a place like our home. Everything was arranged in good order here. Streets were clean and neighbors were very polite. Though eating was not very palatable to me because of different taste, other parts of life really enriched my daily life. I travelled other cities during weekends. Nara is my favorite. Deer live in harmony with human beings. We fed them and touched, played with them. Life in Nara was an ideal state. Kyoto is a traditional city. Citizens and buildings have great flavor.
In sum, I got knowledge and felicity in Japan. I need to say thank you for Hyogo College of Medicine and my dear colleges, Shantou University of Medical College. I know, owing to your efforts and friendship, I had an opportunity to be an exchange student. I will study harder to be an excellent doctor, making this experiences worthy.