Know What You Can Change

Back down in London the following day for interview at the Japanese Embassy in London. The Japanese Embassy is just off Green Park, not far from Piccadilly Circus and Buckingham Palace, so there was time to do a little sight-seeing in the lunch break.

For something like this, one obviously needs to wear a suit and look respectable - not so much of an imperative at the US Embassy for a visa app, but for any interview, dressing up had to be the way to go. I had left one of the suits I had worn in Japan back at home for just this purpose, so I fished it out of the wardrobe to make sure it was OK. It wasn't. Lots of small, raggedy holes in the suit trousers.

Moths.

What the fuck? Moths? How, in this day and age...It seemed increasingly at this point as if - pace Blackadder - the course of my life really was strewn with cowpats from the very Devil's own Satanic herd. I fished around and managed to find a suit belonging to my late grandfather, which just about fit - though the arms were too long, and it was very heavy wool. In the event the weight didn't prove a problem - it was almost chilly down in London.

Anyway, the Japanese Ministry of Education (Monbusho) offers a scholarship in the range of 170,000 yen per month for eighteen months or two years, designed to allow graduate students to do research in Japan. This also includes a round-trip air ticket to Japan, so it's fairly handy, but more of that later. This was what I was applying for - I have to go to Japan from the autumn of 2008 to do fieldwork with a view to compiling my final PhD dissertation, and the department does not fund this, which means that we are obliged to apply to various charitable and private foundations and bodies in order to get them to stump up the cash to allow us to study in Japan and, at least in theory, contribute to the betterment of humanity.

A number of the foundations to which I would otherwise apply only accept applications from US Citizen or permanent residents. I am - as yet - neither, and so have to take every opportunity that presents itself. The pain in the arse is that Monbusho requires me as a UK citizen to interview in the UK pool. This sucks not only because of the cost and time the flight requires, but also because I know so many people at the Japanese Consulate in New York as a result of JETAANY activities that I think I'd probably be a dead cert for landing it, were I permitted to apply. A certain irony there, perhaps.

Anyway, the interview itself came first, to be followed by language tests in the afternoon. I think I gave a very good account of myself in the interview, half of which was in Japanese with a guy from the Embassy and half in English with an academic from SOAS (and graduate students at SOAS seemed to make up the vast majority of applicants). What I gave them in the interview was about as good as it could have been, I think - lucid, concrete and well-argued - but I'm still not sure I'll get the scholarship, for reasons largely beyond my control.

From the direction of their questions, I think the interview panel had some concerns that, firstly, as a recipient of an undergrad Monbusho scholarship and later a JET, I'd already had around $100,000 from the Japanese Govt over the last 7 years or so. Fair enough - can't really deny that, though I would also argue that I worked my butt off and damn well earned my JET salary (I'd have been lying through my teeth, of course, but I'd still argue it), and in any case, I can hardly change the past or give the money back. Secondly, they wanted to know where I planned to teach after getting my PhD. As a UK citizen enrolled at a non-UK University, I got the impression that they felt - quite reasonably - that since the pool was dedicated to the UK, it would not be a reasonable use of funds to pay for someone to complete his PhD in the US and then remain there to teach ever after. Again, I can't really argue with the logic of this, so I basically was as non-committally positive as I could be. Told them that I didn't know what would happen 3 years down the line, that I was fed up with crossing the Atlantic (which is completely true - I'll have done it 6 times this year by December) and wanted to spend more time with my friends and family (also true - up to a point...).

So we will see. I would hope that they would consider each application purely on its individual merits - I would think I stand a strong chance - but it would not be a major surprise if they felt that for the reasons outlined above the money would be better used for other applicants. The thing is, though, that I'm not 100% sure I would accept even if offered - it's very marginal, a matter of exchange rates, in fact, as to whether the scholarship is worth any more than what I'm getting at Columbia right now, and - here's the rub - the other scholarships with later deadlines are considerably more lucrative, in some cases paying twice or even three times what Monbusho offers. In a city like Tokyo, that could prove to be a major issue, especially if I have to pay market rate rents - I might end up having to get by on even less than I do here and now.

I dunno. I guess we'll have to see what happens - I'm rather getting ahead of myself in any case. Baby steps, baby steps...