Moving to Kyoto next April
 

first thing first, i want to say thank you everyone for making that many threads and sharing your knowledge and experience
about Japan. It really helped me to rethinking many times "why i want to move to Japan" and to find an answer.

I'm 22 years old, i'm from Europe, 2 years ago i studied abroad in Denmark but i dropped out(didn't like Engineering) and took
1 year off so that i could find out what i want to be in next 10 years.

Now i know what i want to be and i already found a University in Kagawa, so the only problem is language.

I found a school in Kyoto School in Kyoto, HOME - Japanese Language School in Kyoto | NIHONGO CENTER : 日本語センター, and the feedback was good. So i was thinking maybe someone who is/were studying there and can share
some information about school?

Next is activities, soccer and tennis are sports that i play everyday, but in Japan the price for using tennis court for 1 hour is very expensive, so i have few questions:

1)Soccer: i want to find a amateur team, so that i can train at least 5 times a week for 2 hours, but i heard that they don't like to take Gaijins in there teams
is it true?

2)I read in internet that there are free tennis courts in Kyoto, does someone know where i can find them?

i wanted to ask about apartments, but nah maybe some other time.

Thank you

Does Kagawa U. teach in English (the English part of their site has many dead links and little information)?

If not, are you prepared to spend the next 4+ years in intensive study to possibly pass the entrance exam?

I think these are the important questions before looking for cheap soccer and tennis facilities.

To MMM:
I'm choosing Kagawa U. to study in Japanese.

i contacted with nihongo-centre few months ago and i asked them how many years does it take for students to be able to pass the university exams and they said 1.5-2 years.
If i really will need 4+ years to be able to pass the exams, than i will take extra classes, and will try my best to pass the exams if not in 2 years than in 3.

and finding "cheap" place where i can sport is an important than other things i want to accomplish in Japan including university :)

Thank you

I have been a student of Japanese for over 20 years, and I doubt I could pass any university exam worth its beans.

It takes approximately three times as long for an English speaker to learn Japanese as it does another romance language. Could you realistically learn enough French in 6 months, starting from scratch, to enter a university?

If someone told me they could teach me enough Japanese in 1.5 years to be not only fluent, but intelligent enough to pass a university exam, I would be very suspicious. Why does it take Japanese natives 12 years of education to get to that level, if Nippon Center can do it in 18 months?

English is Germanic ;)

Thank you, I understand English is not a romance language, but it is much closer to French and Spanish than it is to Japanese.

It was just that your sentence was comparative.

I get it. I used a word incorrectly.

I am more interested in knowing if you think someone can know no Japanese, study for 18 months, and get into a Japanese university.

MMM i will never question you because you're few of those forum members that knows what is what, and i already read your posts in other threads i know you're right and i respect you.
I'm not saying that nihongo centre will teach me "perfect" japanese in 2 years or 3, it's just what they said and if thats not right than it's no problem, than if i'll could not get in the University in the 3th year, i will study another year and another year. I will try as long as it needs because i want to get into university very very much, but it's not my main goal, so i can wait as long as it takes :)

Well I'm not really sure about your opinion on going the other direction, from Japanese to English, but my school offers a program that's basically a college level ESL program that teaches students anywhere from no English to Academic level, and I think it can be done (assuming the student starts in the most beginner course) in something like 2 years, maybe even a bit less. Even my Japanese program says on paper that I should be entering advanced Japanese courses by the end of two years, and while there's a lot of difference between school language and real life language, that's really on you to learn the language more practically.

Learning any language from very little to academic in 18 months sounds like the most stressful 18 months anyone can experience....

Let alone a language with Chinese characters, Kanji.

I doubt I could learn an academic level of Kanji alone, excluding spoken etc, in 18 months! And I'm a pretty smart dude... lol

Well, it depends on the school, I was between the old 2 and 1 kyuu after 1.5 year of private school in Tokyo, but you need to work your butt off every day. After 2 years we were ready for 1 kyuu. Also depends on personal language learning ability (I have friends married to Japanese girls for 7 years or more and they can barely say good morning), I was soaking it like a sponge. On the other hand, send me to a math class where my absent-mindedness kicks in, and suddenly 2+2 is 5 because it looks more artisctic lol.

Anyways, we learned in Japanese from day 0, from the text books only in Japanese, and the teachers were really good. So yeah, it all depends on how you study and who teaches you.

Ok thanks for the comments, but now back to the topic:

Is it hard to get into amateur soccer team?

And is it true that you can find free tennis courts ?

Thank you