Overseas Dispatch Program: Three Returning Participants Publish Their Reports

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About the program

With support from レンバス株式会社, a Sasaki Group company based in Oita, Japan, DreamDive runs an overseas dispatch program that sends young people abroad. It grew out of our sponsor's belief that seeing the world while you are young is what helps people grow.

  • Participants were selected through two-minute pitch videos: six out of about 30 applicants
  • Each participant chooses their own destination and activities. There is no restriction on the field, and no connection to DreamDive's own work is required
  • The program covers travel and living expenses up to ¥500,000 per person, enough to pay for nearly all of a one-week trip
  • After returning, participants report on what they did and learned

Three participants who have completed their trips have now published their reports (all written in Japanese).

Doing science on consciousness: attending CCN 2026 (Yutaro Tsukamoto)

Yutaro Tsukamoto, a fourth-year undergraduate at the University of Tokyo's Faculty of Engineering, attended Cognitive Computational Neuroscience (CCN 2026) at New York University from August 3 to 6, 2026. Starting from the question of why, among countless people, this one alone is me, he looked for ways to carve out parts of the problem of consciousness as questions that can be tested.

From Hiroya Mitachi, representative

His message on returning came with a photo of him and David Chalmers, the best-known philosopher of consciousness, and a note that he had "spread the word about Hitoshi Nagai." I told him not to simplify his report, and he took me at my word: it pulls no punches. My first reaction was that it was on another level. Alongside the discussions at the conference, he kept a day-by-day record of the trip, and you can tell he made the most of being there. All I asked for was a few explanations of terms. Honestly, I have to study to keep up, and I keep rereading it.

Read on note (Japanese)

A 17-year-old alone in Colombia, then the Alps and Thailand (Riko Kasai)

After finishing a study-abroad term in Washington, D.C., Riko Kasai spent four weeks from early June to early July traveling through Colombia, Switzerland, France and Thailand, exploring food cultures in comparison with Japanese cuisine. In Medellín, she ran a tofu workshop that drew more than 20 people.

From Hiroya Mitachi, representative

I only asked her to write candidly, as a travel diary with photos and what she learned. The Medellín installment alone came to 5,600 characters, and a few lines in I knew it was excellent. She wrote one piece per city and saw it through to the end during a busy stretch. She also asked me to let her know when the next round is decided, because she has plenty of people she wants to recommend. For those of us running the program, nothing could be better to hear.

Her report spans five articles:

From wanting to go abroad to planning a life abroad

This report comes from a participant who visited two research labs in the United States. At the author's request, it is published without their name. It traces how someone who only ever said "someday, abroad" began drawing up a concrete plan to move to the US as a postdoc.

From Hiroya Mitachi, representative

The first message after the trip was simply, "My life may have changed." When I read the opening line of the first draft, "Once I have my PhD, I will go to the US as a postdoc," I said something out loud. The report is about how the author changed rather than what they saw, and I got excited all over again with every new draft. We worked on the title together, but in the end the author's own idea was the best. Thank you for having the courage to jump in.

Read on note (Japanese)

Acknowledgments

This program was made possible by the support of Kohei Sasaki of the Sasaki Group and レンバス株式会社. We are also grateful to the following people for their help in reviewing the applications:

Other participants are still traveling, and we will share their reports as they come in.

Next round and supporting companies

We plan to run the overseas dispatch program again, and will share the details of the next call for applications once they are set.

We are also looking for companies to support the program with us. If your company is interested in giving young people the chance to see the world, please get in touch with DreamDive on X (@DreamDive2025) or with our representative, Hiroya Mitachi (@HiroyaforInfo).