Photo/Illutration Melana Azima, a senior at Tokyo Metropolitan Kokusai High School, talks about her future goals on Jan. 23. (Yuka Honda)

Ukrainian student Melana Azima will enter a Japanese university this spring to study science in the hopes of helping reconstruct her war-torn country. 

“I believe that the best thing I can do is to become a leading scientist and help bring technology to other countries,” said Azima, 18, who fled to Tokyo two years ago when Russia invaded her homeland. “I think this will lead to development in Ukraine.” 

Azima evacuated from the Ukrainian capital of Kyiv in April 2022. She currently resides in Tokyo’s Koto Ward and is a senior at Tokyo Metropolitan Kokusai High School in Meguro Ward.

She said that she has dreamed of studying at a Japanese university since she was in junior high school.

“Japan has so much technology,” Azima said. “Many Ukrainians choose to study in European countries, but I’ve always felt closer to the culture and temperament of Japanese people.”

However, she had never studied the Japanese language before. She managed to understand her high school classes with the help of English-speaking classmates.

Azima grew accustomed to Japanese school life and joined the string orchestra club, playing the violin.

She is now able to have short conversations in Japanese, although she said, “Complex conversations are difficult. Kanji characters are also hard for me, so it takes time to read them.”

She has been accepted at the Tokyo Metropolitan University in Hachioji in western Tokyo to study in the Department of Biological Sciences in the Faculty of Science, starting in April.

She said that when she told her father in Kyiv about her acceptance, he was proud of her--but also seemed sad. Attending a university here means she will stay in Japan for the next four years.

At her university, she wants to study the effects of radiation on living organisms. Her decision was inspired partly by Fukushima No. 1 nuclear power plant accident, which was triggered by the 2011 Great East Japan Earthquake and tsunami.

“People know how to harness nuclear power, but I feel like they don’t understand how to deal with the consequences,” she said, expressing her desire to do the research herself.

She chose the university because of its well-equipped facilities.

Azima wants to further improve her Japanese language skills at the university and go on to graduate school to continue her research.

While she wishes to return to Ukraine someday, Russia’s invasion is ongoing and the situation continues to worsen. Even now, air raid sirens are heard frequently in her homeland and sheltering underground has become routine for its citizens.

For her peers in Ukraine, even taking university entrance exams is difficult.

“The economy and cities have suffered significant damage,” she said. “I think it will take more than a decade for Ukraine to recover to how it was when I lived there.”

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