Has anyone done an exchange to a Japanese university?

[noodle]

As the title says, have any of you done an exchanage to a japanese university?

If so, what did you do(course)?, where did you go? How was it? ie, lang problems etc.


I'm gonna go on an exchange to tokyo next year, but before i decide for sure. i need to find out lots of info (experiences of others)

[Hatredcopter]

I did an exchange last year, for the academic year. It was at Nanzan University in Nagoya. It lasted approximately 9 months, plus another 2 month internship that I did after that. All my courses were related to Japan and the Japanese language. I had intensive Japanese courses (several hours of Japanese learning every day), courses on Japanese history, Japanese economics, Japanese politics, Japanese communication, linguistics, and translation.. the works, I suppose you could say.

Nanzan is particularly geared to international students (although only a fraction of their students are from another country). The Japan-related courses are all taught in English and the university runs on the September to May school year that people are used to in most Western countries, as opposed to the April to March schedule that exists at most Japanese schools. The campus was beautiful and the staff there were very friendly and open, as well as helpful toward students who didn't know a lot of Japanese to begin with.

There were some language problems in my daily life outside of school, but your Japanese skills improve very quickly when you study and live in Japan, so that problem went away rather quickly (after a couple months). For my first semester there, I stayed with a wonderful host family that I still write to on a daily basis. The second semester I stayed in international dormitories right by the school.

The exchange was expensive, but it was completely worth it - I'd do it again in a heartbeat if I could, but I'm set to start working in Japan after I graduate next spring :D

Anyway, that's the condensed version of my study abroad/exchange experience. If you have any specific questions, ask away.

[vulgarshudder]

3 years ago I done a year exchange at a certain elite tokyo womens university.

I had much fun. Although I did saboru many classes, fucking off doing better things with my time cos nearlly the entire student body was comprised of koreans and chinese who were much better than me at Japanese since I had only been studying for a year at that point. And at my particular university that was OK since they didn't seem to care that much. The attitude and course will vary alot depending on the university.

But that's ok, cos I think I learnt more outside the school anyway.

if you really want to get good at japanese, I'd advise going somewhere with not a big foriegn student population, or at least one not comprised of americans and europeans. Because I noticed the people that went to unviersities like that tended to hang around with other english speaking students and did not improve so much.

So yeah it was great, and I'm back now in Japan with a lazy buggers job and wasting my life -- awesome!!

[noodle]

sounds good. yeah i understand what you mean with people hanging around with english speakers. same thing happens in the uni i'm at now...

Anyway, i got a choice between Kyoto university and Tokyo university (both top ranked uni's in japan and asia), i'm told that there are less foreigners in kyoto, so it'd be better to learn the language and culture, BUT, i'm very likely to fail the year if i go there. So now i'm going mroe towards tokyo... what do you think about that? Is the experience worth failing a year of uni? personally i'm in no hurry to finish studies as i've almost guranteed a job after i finish whenever i want to.