Undergrads on Japanese TV

A Japanese television station aired a 90-minute documentary last weekend on six Harvard undergraduates who spent last summer in Japan.

The students spent three months as interns for various Japanese companies and institutions in a program arranged jointly by Harvard's East Asian Studies department and the Rotary Club of Okayama, the city where the students stayed.

The broadcast on Telebe Setouchi, a Japanese network, showed the students working, visiting the Hiroshima memorial and relaxing at Japanese karaoke nightclubs.

Filming did not conclude until two or three weeks ago in Cambridge, when producers videotaped the students lounging in their dorm rooms and walking in the Yard.

Cameras followed mathematics concentrator Eric C. Towne '93 to his internship in the engineering department at the Kaaz Corporation. There, Towne helped write English language advertisements, translated documents and worked with Computer-Aided Drafting using computers to design products.

Feeling Self-Conscious

Towne said the cameras made him feel somewhat self-conscious, but that he enjoyed the filming and his summer anyway.

"I'd read a lot about Japanese culture and the Japanese way of life," he said. "I wanted to see for myself all the stuff I'd read about."

A TV crew also followed Sarena S. Lin '93 to her job at the Okayama University of Science operations research laboratory. A computer science concentrator, Lin programmed computers to solve systems of linear equations.

Like Towne, Lin--who studied Japanese for only one year at Harvard--called the experience a positive one.

"I picked up a lot of Japanese," she said.

A Learning Experience

Lin said she also learned a lot about Japanese life, which may prove useful if she decides to pursue as international trade career.

Producers also filmed at Halstead, Kan., home town of Catherine L. Montgomery '93.

Montgomery, an East Asian Studies concentrator who interned at a Japanese pharmaceuticals company, said she enjoyed mugging for the camera. Producers asked her to eat sushi and capture her response for the television audience.

Michael S. Choe '94, Zemin W. Li '94 and Shigeo Hirano '94 also participated in the program.