Leela Manohar Chinni

The journey of my internship began 3 months earlier when I received the acceptance mail from the NIG. I was excited and started to dream about the NIGINTERN program. Education Team of NIG kept updating me regarding the internship, process to visit Japan and they are very helpful.

Finally, the day has come to make my dreams true. we (I and 2 co-interns) landed at Narita and we were excited to travel on Shinkansen (Japanese bullet train). After reaching NIG, the Education Team welcomed us and introduced to our respective laboratory PI. I was greeted cheerfully by my lab. Nonomura sensei introduced me to the lab members and his lab is working on 'Molecular cytogenetics of plant germ-cell development. Working with plants was completely new to me and I was tensed about my project but Tsuda-sensei and the other lab members helped me throughout the end of the project. 4 – week was a short duration of time and I was worried that I may not complete it in the given duration but surprisingly I made it. During my internship, I learnt many new techniques and came across different instruments in the lab. Besides the laboratory work, we had Japanese language class which was fun and learnt some Japanese words. The most interesting thing during the program was lab visiting. We visited many labs and most of them are interesting and good.

Apart from the wonderful time in the lab, we visited many places across Mishima and the trip to Tokyo was awesome. We enjoyed a lot during the Tokyo trip and the Japanese people are kind, humble and helpful. On the last day of our internship, we had a small dinner party where everyone cooked some delicious food and later had some cool fireworks. Throughout the internship program, each and every second was enjoyable and memorable.

Being a vegetarian, it’s tough to live in Japan but the guest house has a well-equipped kitchen which helped me to cook food. I also met many graduate students of NIG, who are friendly and they gave good suggestions about my future researcher life.

‘Arigatou gozaimashita’ to all the co-interns, members of NIG for making my internship, become a memorable part of my life.