The journey: microbiology by day, Japanese by night
Devendra's first degree was a B.Sc. in microbiology from Pune University. The Japanese started on the side: after Class 12 a summer course hooked him, so while he studied microbiology full-time, he took Japanese in the evenings — certificate, diploma, then advanced diploma. Once the science degree was done, he went all in and did a full-time Bachelor's in Japanese.
During that Japanese degree he won the MEXT scholarship, awarded through the Embassy of Japan, after a written exam and an interview. It sent him to Osaka University for a year (2018–19) to study Japanese language and culture — completely funded, flights included. (It wasn't his first time in Japan: earlier he'd spent a week there on a JENESYS cultural-exchange programme, also funded.) He came home to work as a freelance Japanese interpreter and translator, and recently finished his Master's in Japanese, again at Pune University.
The honest takeaways from his route: the scholarship was genuinely free and needed no agent — you prepare, you sit the exam and interview, and you apply directly through the Embassy. And MEXT isn't one single thing; his was the Japanese-language-and-culture track. For the other MEXT routes (the degree-seeking embassy and university tracks), see our complete MEXT guide and the scholarship finder.
Why Japanese? Photos, not anime
There was no grand plan. A school friend's elder sister had learned Japanese and been to Japan; one day Devendra saw her photos — how clean the cities were, how the place looked — and fell for the country first, the language second. "Love at first sight," he calls it. He notes the more common trigger these days is anime (Doraemon, Shin-chan, Ninja Hattori — all Japanese), and that schools in India are now starting to teach Japanese alongside German, French and Spanish. His was simpler: the right photos at the right time.
A little Japanese, and the three scripts
Two greetings to start: "Ohayō gozaimasu" (good morning, formal — drop the gozaimasu with friends) and "Konnichiwa" (hello — the one you'll use most).
The writing is where beginners flinch, and Devendra's reassurance is the useful part. Japanese uses three scripts: hiragana and katakana (about 46 characters each, built on just five vowels — あ・い・う・え・お), and kanji, the pictorial characters borrowed from China. The first two, he says, take only 20 to 40 hours — a month or two — because they work like an alphabet. Kanji take longer, but you don't learn all 10,000: you go by the JLPT's five levels, adding a set at a time, and reach a few thousand by the top — more than enough. Even native speakers, he points out, forget how to write some.
And speaking is friendlier than it looks: Japanese sentence structure is close to Hindi and Marathi, so word order feels natural to many Indians. His rule for learners: it starts as discipline and becomes talent — language needs patience and a few dedicated minutes every day.
Landing in Japan: autumn, and the "shy mountain"
He landed in November, into Japanese autumn — maple leaves turning red and gold, "like a fairy land." From Tokyo he could see Mount Fuji, the tallest peak and a resting volcano, nicknamed the "shy mountain" because cloud hides it most of the year — visible only about 100 of 365 days, best in winter. He saw it the moment he arrived, and there's a local saying that if you see Fuji on your first visit, Japan will call you back.
What struck him most was how clean and safe everything is — small children commute to school alone by train, and crime is close to zero. The culture shock, he says, is a "good shock": newcomers don't recoil, they fall in love.
Myths, both ways
Indians think Japanese eat only sushi; Japanese think Indians eat only curry and rice — both wrong. Everyday Japanese food does skew non-vegetarian, which can be tricky, but since the Tokyo Olympics there's far more vegan and vegetarian choice, plus Indian restaurants and online Indian-food delivery in big cities like Tokyo and Osaka. The reverse stereotype: that every Indian does yoga and is good at maths — also untrue, though people in Japan did keep asking him to teach them yoga (which, he notes with some pride, did begin in India). And when homesickness hit, there was always an Indian community nearby — Diwali and Holi are celebrated in Osaka and beyond.
The interpreter's life
Six or seven years in, Devendra breaks the job into consecutive interpreting (speaker pauses, you translate) and simultaneous interpreting (you translate as they speak, listening and talking at once — no time to look anything up). His most memorable day: interpreting at a Bangalore exhibition for a Japanese speaker, then being pulled backstage into a room with Muhammad Yunus, the Nobel-laureate pioneer of microfinance — terrifying, and a "good shock" he'll never forget. His hardest: a simultaneous interpretation for a Google call with a Japanese gaming company, early in his career, which taught him exactly how much more there is to master.
The money can be very good — top interpreters work alongside prime ministers and chief ministers — but it comes with real pressure and responsibility, and demands fluency in both languages, not just Japanese. What keeps him in it: variety. One day it's medical, the next IT, the next manufacturing. "Every day is a new day."
Start where Devendra started
You don't need an agent, and you don't need to spend anything to begin. His biggest myth-buster is that Japanese isn't a difficult language — you just need the right start, patience, and a little time each day. Learn your first words free with our study decks, find a class near you with the Japanese classes in India finder, and when funding is on your mind, explore the scholarship finder and our complete MEXT guide.
Watch the full conversation above — and stay to the end, where Devendra closes by singing 海の声 (Umi no Koe), "the voice of the sea."