Japanese language and career

[horriblyjollyjinx]

been meaning to post in this thread for a while.

as i've said in other thread, i did spend a year a Waseda at SILS so here's a few advice concerning the school. there's a huge difference in between the stand-alone japanese program and the classes you get at SILS. the pace of learning is much much quicker in the stand-alone japanese program and you cover so much more during a year than you would at SILS. i had taken 2 years of japanese prior to going there and the classes i had in montreal were much harder (but we also learned much more) than what i had at SILS. anyway, if you are serious about learning japanese, i would definitely advise you to get into the japanese language only program, even though you would most likely have to do some extra classes at your home uni. if you decide to go with SILS, try to do an intensive course prior to going (if you have time/can afford it) so you wouldn't be put in the lowest level. another thing to keep in mind about SILS is that although pretty much all local students speak japanese fluently, pretty much everyone uses english and do not give a shit about helping you improve your japanese (especially if you are a beginner). also, international students are put with other international students in the dorms, not japanese students.

otherwise, i would like to reinforce what everyone else said that unless you are ready to commit 3-5 years of your life to learning japanese, you'll never get any benefit out of it, except to be able to tell people you studied abroad. i've been around many many people that learned japanese, but only a handful out of literally hundreds of them have ended up really benefiting and using their language skills and they were usually the ones that ended up fluent for real (which is a very tiny minority of all the ppl who start).

i hate to quote this, but there's a lot of truth to it. http://stuffwhitepeoplelike.wordpress.com/2008/02/22/72-study-abroad/

studying abroad is a wonderful experience which i definitely recommend to everyone (i personally did a semester in norway and a year in japan and definitely would do again), but i think many university students have unreasonable expectation of what it'll bring to them in terms of experience, opportunities, etc. as long as your expectations are in line with what is possible and that you realize that learning japanese will require extreme dedication and hard work, then i'm sure you'll have tons of fun.

last advice, like people said earlier, joining a circle is probably the best think you can do.

Hey, thanks, and sorry for the late reply.

I have no ambition of becoming fluent, I'd only like to get the most out of the year and also hope to be able to at least speak a little bit of Japanese with my j-friends.

I have chosen to study economics & business at SILS because I hope to be able to use at least some of the credits in Sweden.

I've also been doing some research and it seems that banks actually are very open to hiring people with little or no Japanese since people with good English skills are scarce there. I also think that there is going to be a lot of work for management consultants in Japan in a few years.

Neither is my dream, nor do I dream of living in Japan for the rest of my life, but it's good to have the option.

What did you think of SILS? What are the students like, are they really just there to study or are they fun to be with?

What can you tell me about the dorms? Are they located in Shinjuku or outside Tokyo where the main Waseda campus is? Is it a good experience and worth the rent, which is pretty steep?

I'd rather live in an apartement really.

[FunkyFrenchy]

Ive learn japanese for 2 years...

Not really hard...

The tough part is to find the motivation....

[herpsky]

Now it's time to learn sum ENGRISH!