Reviews

I enjoyed the experience of living in a small one room apartment, but the best part of my building were my landlords. They are a lovely elderly couple who warmly greeted my friends and I when we returned home, and gave us cold melons to eat amidst the summer heat. The day we departed from the building, they were kind enough to offer to drive us to the station since it was raining.

Going to the peach farms, grammar class and the speech contest were all a wonderful experience.

The most productive and interesting aspects of the program is the speech contest.

The best parts really are class; sitting there and hearing explanations and having the chance to get nuances explained to you verbally and through written feedback is great, and being purely in Japanese does wonders for helping your brain think in Japanese. The rotation of teachers is also great, since it forces you to learn multiple styles and speeds of spoken Japanese; some of my teachers were a bit more difficult to understand at first, but the process of learning to understand rapid-fire talking styles was invaluable.

I very much liked the location of my dorm in Nishi-Tokyo. Although commuting everyday was a bit troublesome the towns quiet environment was a nice escape after going to school in a area like Shinjuku. The staff of the dorm where very friendly and food offered varied from traditional Japanese breakfast to western style dinners.

The pair work in class was beneficial, but mostly the teachers made class very engaging and made me want to learn.

Being surrounded by classmates from different countries was a very productive aspect of the program. It helped me to engage in whatever Japanese I knew.

The approach to the study of N2 grammar points and new kanji/vocabulary was very engaging to me. The exercise of providing definitions for new vocabulary in Japanese could be challenging, but also useful in a conversational setting when dealing with a limited vocabulary.

Grammar class allowed me to understand more Japanese when going around Tokyo.

The field trip to Yamanashi prefecture was amazing. We got to go to three different places, it was very fun and we got to see lots of traditional Japamese things.