NII Internships

NII Internships [This page is kept for legacy purposes, please see the updated page]

NII Internship Program

We are always accepting internships for Masters and Ph.D students that are interested in our work. The best way to get involved is through the NII International Internship Program, which allows for internships between 2-6 months. If you are successful in the program you receive an stipend which covers living costs and accommodation while in Tokyo. The deadlines are twice a year, in April and November.

Other means

Even if your university does not have a MOU agreement with NII, don’ t worry! Its possible to still get here, just send an email in the Contact section and hopefully we can work something out.

Day in the life of an intern

Although NII is a computer science research centre, in our group we predominantly do straight physics, so the nature of the work is a little different from what you might do elsewhere. One of the principal interests is quantum computing and quantum information, which you can read a little more about here. Even if you have not really studied very much physics before, be assured there is a project for you! One of the best ways to really understand quantum mechanics is to write some code simulating the problem. For this reason interns usually start out working on a particular quantum mechanics simulation problem. In quantum mechanics the size of the simulation typically increases exponentially so there is never enough computing power to perform the calculation. So writing some nice code to simulate a particular problem can sometimes give real insight to the problem at hand.

Accommodation

When it is decided that you will come and work with us, one of the things that needs to be done is to sort out accommodation. Since usually interns stay for a few months, it is best to get medium term accommodation, which is cheaper than a hotel but no long term contracts need to be signed. There are many guest houses available in Tokyo which offer accommodation on a monthly basis. Just type “guest house tokyo” or “share house tokyo” into your favourite search engine and you should come up with a long list of options. A reasonable price guide is something around 70,000 yen per month, although you can get cheaper or more expensive of course.

To give a rough idea of type of area that you might be living in, here is a map giving a guide to central Tokyo. Naturally if you are outside of central Tokyo (marked by the Yamanote line), prices get cheaper with distance. When choosing a location it is probably advisable to think in terms of train lines: try to choose somewhere that requires not too many train changes (ideally none) in order to get to Jimbocho or Takebashi station (see contact section for details of the location of NII and a train route finder).