As a current graduate student in K.U., maybe i can throw in a few cents.

First, a little background. I come from Malaysia, and graduated from a local non-research basis university (aka, it’s all theory, and classes, and exams, and exams, with little practical research skills throughout the three years of my Industrial Chemistry). Thanks (and no thanks) to Malaysian Education, which emphasizes more on memorizing the books and writing long winded pages of answers in the examination (seriously, i often joke that i was a copy-machine), my creative thinking and “out of the box” thinking were both pretty much not “enlightened”. That’s not to say I don’t have these skills, i do, just slower, like real slow, compared to the Japanese students in K.U.

Now back to K.U., a prestigious university, it comes as no surprise that in my first year of my graduate study (the research student phase), i repeatedly found myself getting stuck, feeling lost, and generally had no idea what was i doing. Professor(s) is/are not obliged to “teach” you. You got to do your own self-study. No one is there to do a checkpoint on you. No one is there to keep you up to tab. This I learned the hard way, by almost failing my entrance examination of graduate school.

My 2 cents?

1. Create a timetable (for both studying, and researching) and stick to it. Most graduate students (not just K.U.) suddenly will have “tons of time” on their hands, but it’s up to them to decide how to use the “free time” effectively.
2. Frequently read and study a journal. If you are keen to being a good researcher, make damn sure you are up-to-date with the current technology, current hot topics; generally make sure you are very well on the boat. One journal per day is a good start. While we are at it, learn to read/study a journal quickly. I made a mistake of studying a journal from top to bottom, cover to cover. Wasted tons of my time. Instead, search by keywords, filter out the journals, read their abstract, read their introduction, skip to conclusion. Take note. If you find something you need in it, only then you dive back to the methods and results.
3. Spice up your Japanese language. Depending on your interest, you might choose an English-major lab, or you might still choose a Japanese-major lab. If you have an English-major lab, sometimes the discussion and all will still be carried out in Japanese. (And generally when that happened i dozed off…). If you were to be in a Japanese-major lab, then there’s no way you can survive without a decent functioning Japanese (and academic Japanese please).
4. Regularly participate in seminars and talks. Your graduate school, and generally the P.A. of your professor will regularly update you with new scheduled seminars and talks. Some are by local professors (japanese and non-japanese alike). Some are from overseas universities (United States, Europe, China, Taiwan, Korea, Canada, anywhere everywhere). Only thing is, some are conducted in Japanese (again), so make sure your Japanese is academically functioning.
5. Relate. All these studying and seminars and talks, the most important thing is to relate your study to their studies. It is not uncommon for me, a medical science major, sit in a talk of biophysics and engineering. Quoting my professor, the important thing is to understand how they think, not how they do the experiment. It’s more about how they solve a question. When you start practicing this, your creative thinking and “out of the box” thinking will start gearing up.
6. “Luck”. You might notice that i doubled quoted “free time” in point one. It entirely depends on your luck, on what kind of professor and which kind of lab you choose. A quick example is, my professor is the “3 months report” type, so long you produce something in 3 months gap, he generally doesn’t really bother what are you doing in between, seldom really check in on you too (which created an illusion of “i have too much time” and procrastinate all the time). On the other hand, my friend got into a lab of “2 week report” professor. So he generally doesn’t have much time other than 8am-1am in the lab, grunting it out like a POG (person other than grunt). It’s a luxury for him to sleep a full 8 hour during Sunday.

All right. That’s almost about it. The “tips and guides” to study in Kyoto University are pretty much similar to any kind of tips and guides for studying postgraduate in any other universities.

If any, maybe this is helpful too. Japanese students have two spectra,

1. The “i don’t care much” type, where they will sleep in seminar and talks, but still produce results in their respective fields. Don’t underestimate anyone of them. The very fact that they are in a grad school mean they are really (and i mean really) professional in their own fields.
2. The “call me professional” type, where these will be the one regularly asking questions, not just from their fields, but they seem to already master the “relate between studies” skill, where half the time when these asked questions the first thought came to me is, “Why didn’t I think of that?”

And one last thing, don’t procrastinate. Really. At the last mile of my master’s degree, i can only summarize that if i ever can repeat it again, is to use my time more effectively, and another is, don’t go too harsh on myself. It’s okay to fail an experiment. I might have not found the method to do my experiment yet, but i have found at least 10 ways of NOT to do my experiment.