CLAIR Internship Reflection (Dashiel Baker)

 My name is Dashiel Baker. I’m a second-year Arts student at UNSW studying Politics & International Relations and Japanese. I’ve been self-studying Japanese for about six years now, on and off, and that study led me to CLAIR. I recently completed an internship at CLAIR Sydney through my university’s Work Integrated Learning (WIL) program, and so I thought it would be useful to briefly document my experience.

Over the last two months, two days a week, I primarily did bilingual policy research in English and Japanese on topics ranging from busking laws to the minimum wage to homelessness. But my main project was comparing the NSW Government’s Transport Oriented Development (TOD) Program with Japan’s compact-city planning framework (ricchi tekiseika keikaku). Far more interesting than it sounds; Japan is planning its cities inward because there will soon be too few people to keep the outskirts running, whereas NSW is rezoning around its stations because there are too many people and nowhere to put them. Opposite problems, and yet, both arrived at more or less the same answer.

Aside from that, a particular highlight was getting the opportunity to deliver an orientation briefing in Japanese to a group of visiting Japanese middle school students. Two months earlier, I’m almost certain, I would have been far too nervous to even attempt something of the sort. What I’ll carry with me most, though, is the office environment itself. I won’t name anyone in particular because that would mean having to name everyone. But our weekly one-on-one discussions meant I got the chance to know everyone properly, and not just those I worked with directly.

   
On my last day I was thrown a farewell party, and at the end of it everyone stood up and made a tunnel with their arms for me to walk out through. I thought about it the entire way home.

So thank you all for your patience with my Japanese, your feedback on my mountain of drafts, and your kindness throughout.