masters degree in japan
 

Hello, I am currently a senior in university now, and I'm getting my degree in arts multimedia. today i was talking to one of my former Japanese instructors about my plans for the future, i think i want to study abroad, but that would require a lot of money, since i cant get scholarships or financial aid for a non degree language program. but my teacher said maybe i should go to grad school, so i thought i should look into that as i could possibly study abroad and get a masters degree and still practice Japanese. so i was just wondering if anyone knew some Japanese universities that have grad degrees in arts, multimedia ie graphic, web design etc. also any info on scholarships would be great. I'm sure this was posted before, but I'm not good at searching and i don't much free time to be on the computer, unless related to school. thanks

Are you fluent in Japanese?

Yeah actually I'm wanting to do the same thing. I'm giving myself around 3 years to become fairly fluent in Japanese and I'll be taking classes soon. However for some reason I've always seen me moving to Japan as unrealistic and never looked much deeper into it.

If you're not fluent in Japanese first, it's gonna be pretty rough. I would really make sure you have the language down before trying something like grad school. Another thing about grad school in Japan is that it's typical for people to become a "research student" before being admitted to a graduate program. Usually this lasts one year and as far as I know, it's difficult (impossible?) to enter grad school without doing this.

im not fluent, im intermediate, i was thinking of the possibility because some universities there have some classes taught in english, but i do understand thats its better to be fluent trying something like this.
thank you for your responses

I don't think it's possible to become fluent in three years, unless you study that and only that and only associate with others in Japanese. I could be wrong, though...

there are graduate programs conducted completely in English. My friend and I researched this because he really wanted to do a master but also really wanted to return to Japan asap. He can't read kanji and japanese is limited so i helped him with navigating the Japanese websites.

contrary to what hatredcopter said, you don't need to have done research either. I'm sure there are some that do, but i can tell you many of my Japanese friends that i studied with in Japan are now starting their masters straight after completing their bachelor. but they will require a good GPA, letter of recommendation etc in most cases. Have a search around the universities english websites.

you can become what most would consider fluent in 3 years easily. you may not have all the intricacies of the language down but as the dictionary defines fluent:
able to speak or write a particular foreign language easily and accurately
My ex girlfriend speaks english at a fluent level after living in Australia for two years despite having many friends who she could speak chinese with. she may not have mastered many business terms but then how many average native speakers have a technical grasp of their own language.

You can become the dictionary definition of fluent in three years in a full-immersion program, but "Masters degree college class fluent" would require more than three years, even with full immersion. Of course if those classes were in English...

unless Japanese universities in masters degrees are severely harder than Australian ones, i think in 3 years you'll easily be able to cope with a Masters degree. I, as a volunteer, do conversation groups for students learning english to go into university. these students can't understand a lot of terms i use when talking but they can pass the international standardised testing required to enter university.

from my own experience studying with Japanese, their classes are hardly the type of classes where students participate highly. having talked to professors at that Japanese university they also said just as much. in fact i would say student participation is generally as low as it can get. Like the international students i know doing a master here they aren't finding it easy but they are capable and i never did say it would be a walk in the park, studying a master in your native tongue shouldn't be either.

so yes, with a dictionary definition of fluency you can take part in a masters degree in english, so i can't see it being too different in Japanese.

This has been said a few times, but I'd like to clarify a litte. Most masters programs in Japan that are taught in english are usualy either Science (ie, math, physics etc), or International law, Business Law and/or international, and of course, the obvious, anything english (english lang, lit etc etc).
For arts, I must say, I haven't seen a lot, if any courses in english, and my japanese friends here seem to agree. The only thing I can think of, is doing an exchange whilst you are on your masters degree. This way you can get to live in Japan and if it pleases you, you can get a job straite after your Masters.

Maybe I am mistakenly thinking Master Degree level study is actually difficult. I am a full-time translator and would consider myself fluent for the last 10+ years, but the idea of taking a Masters level class in Japanese (like you said listening to a lecture in Japanese for several hours a week) and then being tested on it sounds more than a little intimidating. I don't think I could patiently listen to several lectures a day and be expected to be responsible for all the information given to me at test time (several weeks or months later).

MMM, I think you're right for certain subjects. In fact, probably most subjects because they will contain lots of technical terms and will include lots of thinking both with the language and the actual course. But I think what anrakushi is trying to say is that even most native speakers will come accross a lot of problems with some of the language. It happens a lot. So a dictionary definition of fluency would be more than sufficiant because you can still get the gist of what you're studying, and the rest, you can research yourself (which is meant to be the main purpose of most masters anyway, to get you to a level in which you can research and formulate your work in a certain way)

i have full confidence you could do it MMM, from what i've seen with international students studying masters in english here in Australia and their level of English, as well as some Koreans and Chinese and a Thai i know studying masters in Japanese in Japan, it is definitely manageable.

i do notice that most students record the lectures to go through them more slowly at home later and they often work in groups of people to help then understand difficult concepts that they had trouble understanding. of course this also depends on what you are studying, there are obviously going to be some masters that are more difficult than others.

EDIT: one more point, from attending some science lectures in Japanese with a friend while at uni, admittedly this was bachelor level, but the lecturer simply wrote 80% of what was said on the board, to compliment the hand out sheet he gave the students. Pretty much as long as you took down all the notes that was the benefit of attending the lecture.

but yeah it will change from place to place obviously.