We signed an employment contract with Ms. Pasha after the completion of her internship in fiscal year 2019, and received her residence permit in early July last year, but due to the effects of Covid-19, she was unable to enter Japan and finally came to Japan last October using the Residence Track scheme.I guess it was very difficult for her because she had to self-isolation for 14 days from the day of arrival in Japan due to corona disaster. Currently, she was assigned to the Environmental Department and is learning water quality analysis techniques.It might have been hard for her to get along with climate and lifestyle in Japan where is different from her home country, but she didn't seem to get homesickness by now. I guess her internship experience has been helpful to be adapted smoothly .During her stay as an intern, our staff took care of her daily life and she also got information from a neighborhood Indonesian where to buy halal food , so she got know-how to live in Japan.

The greatest change after accepting intern is employees' raising global awareness.Immediately after accepting the intern, we were unable to share some necessary information within the company such as the intern's national origin, considered matters, and internship activities, so it was a continuous process of trial and error.As an attempt to deepen our understanding of her home country, Ms. Pasha taught us Indonesian culture and cooked us Indonesian food.We had chances to experience Japanese culture (making soba noodles) and showed her sightseeing spots in the prefecture, which also gave us a chance to understand more about our country's culture.The intern's Japanese skill improved significantly compared to the beginning of internship, and we are able to communicate in Japanese without any difficulty.She didn't have so many chances to write Japanese during her internship regarding reading and writing.Since having worked as an employee here, she has been writing in Japanese as much as possible when negotiating with people outside the company. Her willingness to absorb new things inspires the Japanese employees.

We would like to continue accepting interns from various countries with a view to expanding our business overseas in the future. In this respect, I guess the internship experience helped us to build up the know-how of accepting highly-skilled foreign talent in our company. Although it was for a short period of time, we accepted a domestic student from Madagascar as an intern last year.We would like to continue accumulating knowledge and experience in accepting foreign people, while laying the foundation for internationalization internally and of the local community.Ms. Pasha is also fluent in English. We have never had an employee who is confident in English, so we expect Pasha to play an active role as a bridge to communicate with overseas business using English in the future.I believe that this program will become a valuable experience for any companies participating in overseas internships for the first time. I assure that you will surely find new encounters, discoveries, and learnings so I strongly encourage you to take on this challenge.