4 years after this exchange program I found myself having persistent images of our everyday life in my head. Moments and scences I didn't have the oportunity or the idea to take a picture of, like our house, in a onsen (hot spring public bath), the subway on the way to school or just some shops we used to go to.
I picked 9 of these moments and painted them as I remembered them. During 9 weeks, each illustartion under a week, I poured those flowing back memories of this japanese experience onto the paper with watercolor.
Context : A 3 months exchange program at TCA (Tokyo Commuication Arts), in Japan, with two schoolmates : Jérôme and Alexandre.
Goal : Report our experience : a day to day website, a video and a rapport.
Website :
Rapport (in French) :
Strate@TCA
Being part of an exchange program means going in another school, in another country, in another culture, in another everyday life, in another life. Go with your baggage, and drop it temporary elsewhere far from your habits. See how far you can go with this baggage on your side, see if it fits, if you fit somewhere else.
Being part of an exchange program means changing, but above all to change.
Being part of an exchange program, I’ve made it, in Japan, in Tokyo, at TCA (Tokyo Communication Arts), during 88 days.
As I’m a future designer, I expected Japan to be full of robotics, technology and sci-fi environments. But as I’m also a Japanese culture fan, I expected this journey to include manga, the Ghibli universe, temples, samurais or the Mount Fuji. My exchange is somewhere between these two definitions.
During this amount of time, I experienced going to school, and follow manga and animation courses for example. It was not only new for the teaching but also for the cultural background. In fact, the Japanese way of studing and living every day is very far from what we know. The way you act, the way you think, the way you move, everything needs to be learned to fit in.
Teaching wise, it was more artistic that I was used to at Strate, but I was looking for that, so I’m glad we had a lot of drawing classes. Moreover, it was mostly manga style like drawings, so a new kind of drawing for me. Everything was good to learn. For the few design classes, it was interesting discovering how the Japanese design was working, and how our design is different and doesn’t match necessarilly within their cultural codes. It’s not directly usable in our future job, but it could help, and maybe, for the less related things, someday be involved in our job. At least I would love to see 2D animation be a way of the designers to express themselves.
Social wise, it was amazing sinking into a completely different society. It’s interesting to understand how the others make it work, but it’s difficult to get all the details in 3 months. As Japanese and French culture are so little related in their codes, and with the language barrier, everywhere we focused on, there was something new. From the habits of the daily routine and respect to each other, to the clues of the way relationships and love work, it was always a discovery.
Looking at another society make me also look differently at the one I’m from, wondering if mine was as strange as another one. Who can tell that France is less weird that Japan ? This is a chance for a designer to have a clearer vision of what we belong to, for we have to find out and solve the problems it has.
Back home, when I think about Japan, I don’t think only aboutf the designer dreams of technology, or the expectation of a fan, I also can think about a country, a culture, a society, habits, rules, courses, techniques, people I met, landscapes, memories... My vision of what Japan truly is has clearly got closer.
Being part of an exchange program, I’ve made it, and as it was promised to be, I’ve changed.