I met Beatrice for coffee in one of Tokyo’s most recently opened shiny department stores. On that cold December day in 2014, Christmas jingles wafted over the crowds of salarīmen and salarīwomen hurrying past the coffee shop and towards Tokyo Station, one of the capital’s biggest transportation hubs. The tempting aromas of Christmas cakes, glazed nuts and exotic spices blended with those of our two hot cinnamon lattes. In the Tokyo of the 2010s, Christmas, Halloween, Valentine’s Day and Mother’s Day were festivities of consumption instead of tradition, introduced by the West and turned into opportunities for economic gain by flower shops, chocolate factories and gourmet restaurants. Not surprisingly then, the music and aromas reminded Beatrice of Europe and put her into a melancholic mood.

Talking about Europe, Italian food and the beautiful architecture of her university, Beatrice considered the beginnings of her mobility out of Italy: “When I started university in Italy, I was in a kind of student house. It had lots of activities and promoted Erasmus to students. So, I always saw the older students who went abroad. Somehow, I thought it was something nice to do, not something impossible or strange.” Her older brother went abroad through Erasmus as well, and that was probably another factor that influenced her. Beatrice, who studied mathematics in a medium-sized North Italian city, eventually went to Berlin as an Erasmus undergraduate student. She recalled how she enjoyed living abroad and studying the German language but also acknowledged the more practical benefit that “staying abroad could be useful for my future career” (Hof, 2020c).

Beatrice continued about how, once she was in a foreign country, she found out about plenty of opportunities for studying abroad in the EU, including a wide range of scholarship programmes. Fond of France and its melodic language, she eventually entered graduate school in Paris and studied financial mathematics. With growing confidence in the French language, Beatrice completed a six-month internship in a French bank as part of the master’s programme. Not only did this opportunity offer Beatrice her first hands-on work experience in her field of specialisation, but it also introduced her to her future employer with whom she would later move to Tokyo.