Our Stories Project
Aya
"We never know what happens in the future.
You just focus on doing the best what you have to do right now."
Life in Egypt
I was born and grew up in Cairo, the capital of Egypt. My parents and sister are doctors and my brother is an engineer.
I would say my family is upper middle class.
In Egypt, family is very important so every week the whole extended family gather at our grandma’s place.
When I was a child, I thought I would be a doctor because my parents are,
but thing is I don’t like hospitals and can’t stand the smell of the blood so I didn’t go that path.
School days
I studied at a language school until high school. At high school I changed to the British school because I found an Egypt educational system was not good and very stressful.
For example, in Egyptian system, if you miss one mark in an exam, it means you fail.
But in British system, if you get 90% to 100%, you can still get a grade A.
It means even If you make mistakes in an exam, if you get still 90%, it is OK. It’s less stressful.
As you can guess, you can’t miss even one mark in an exam in the Egyptian education system and because of that stress, people sometimes kill themselves. I say high schools are stressful everywhere, not only in Japan.
After high school, I went to the university in Cairo and studied architecture engineer.
I chose this path because giving up on medical school, I was thinking to choose either more artistic major like graphic design or something connected to engineering.
And I found the architecture is in the middle of between art and engineer. I thought it was perfect for me!
First job
I applied to a lot of companies, really a lot.
I really don’t remember how many jobs I applied to but it’s like if I’ve heard of a job opening somewhere,
I’ve just thrown my CV there.
The thing is in Egypt, it’s not as organized as in Japan in terms of job hunting, like you just send your CV and get an interview. In Egypt, in most cases, you have to know someone in the company if you want to work there.
If you don’t have a connection with that company, it’s really difficult to get a job.
That means if you have many friends or born in a big extended family, you are already lucky.
Family wise, I have a lot of engineers’ cousins so they helped me. I would say I was lucky.
My first job, it was like an interior design.
It was not for building from outside but from inside. It was ok but I didn’t like that as my major.
So I just worked for a couple of months and quit.
After that I went to a private university to teach architecture. It was fun. I’ve been teaching for almost 2 years.
Then I found out one of my colleagues started architecture design office so I started to work with them.
This was really fun. This was architecture design like … one of the projects I worked on was to design the administration building in factory complex so I designed the whole buildings.
I think that was the best job I’ve got so far. I liked it better than any other jobs.
life in Japan
2 years after my graduation my brother was like “I want to study Japanese” so I said “take me along!”.
I’ve always liked Japan, the culture itself, like Kyoto… really traditional. I wanted to study Japanese as well.
Actually, I visited Japan with my brother as tourists in 2018 for a couple of weeks.
And I went to a Japanese cultural center and got to know a lot of Japanese teachers there.
I found out there were a lot of Japanese scholarships so I applied to one of them.
The first impression of Japan is “really peaceful”.
It’s like no one is standing out. Everyone wears light colors.
If you know what I mean, it’s really soothing and your eyes are not stimulated to see something wired.
Because in Egypt, everyone is wearing different things, different colors.
Instead in Japan, in summer for example, everyone wears white. I felt like “how do they match with each other so perfectly!? Japanese are matching each other!”. I really liked that.
The difficult part was the language. But many people were nice to foreigners no matter what you are struggling.
Someone always helps.
And one more thing, Japanese are indirect compared to Egyptian people.
Understanding Japanese emotions were really difficult and puzzling at first.
I thought they said “it’s OK” so I took it as OK but later found out they weren’t actually OK.
But now I can see it in your eyes somehow if you don’t like the situation.
I don’t care what they say but I care that if I can see that they are not comfortable, I would go what I feel what they are saying. So I’ve never offended or annoyed of that kind of communication style
but I didn’t have a self control to say OK when it’s not OK. lol
For the future
-How do you want to be in 10 years?
I don’t know… I don’t know how I want to be even in a week!
This is really a difficult question. I really don’t know. I just take whatever it happens.
Just like I do what I have to do right now and goes.
I mean I’ve never seen myself in Japan for 3 years ever! It wasn’t even my dream so far.
Messages
I would say… there are a lot of things that almost everything we can’t control.
So you'd better just to focus on doing the best what you have to do right now.
Passing the challenges you’re facing right now.
And do not worry about the things you can’t control.
Also encourage people.
This is what we should do to each other.
We should keep encourage each other because everyone has their own problems.
So if we hurt each other it will put more stress and sadness.
We have to be always cheerful and encourage others!!
