Well I'm just doing a plain old Commerce degree right now so I shouldn't have too much trouble with the curriculum I think.

Thanks for all the advice guys, looks like Waseda is the way to go. Now to get myself organised and get this application done...

As an exchange student, I expect you'll be offered Japanese classes plus courses in English or a Japanese language program only. (btw Waseda also offers an exchange program in English.) It may be possible to attend regular classes in Japanese if you get special permission, however. If that's your main goal, you might want to choose a school that's willing to make such arrangements.

I think regular classes in Japanese after 18 months would be very difficult, but you've been progressing rapidly so it's hard to say. Your kanji knowledge will be superior to most Western students, but your speaking, writing and general comprehension might not be adequate. The specialized language of some subjects can take a while to master, so it's easy to get completely bogged down in the readings at first.

fyi Using Waseda's Japanese program as an example: they say level 6 students (after 3rd year) could take JLPT1 and regular students would be allowed to attend classes in Japanese. Levels 7 and 8 students would be able to really comprehend them. =)

You might consider auditing some regular courses. It'd be a great way to get out of the foreign student bubble. I'd recommend getting a Prof to Prof letter of introduction if possible. Also, do plenty of reading in that particular subject before you go!

Difficult to rank the schools - depends on the department. The ones in your lists are all top universities. Kyoto is the only public univ on the list. Keio has a reputation as the elite univ in Japan. Waseda is often described as the top private university (not sure why.) Sophia has always been seen an 'international' school - it has had strong programs for foreign students for ages. Ritsukeikan was particularly strong in Econ/business (still?).

I'd think about whether you prefer: Tokyo or Kyoto, dorm or homestay, smaller liberal arts campus or a major institution, connections with faculty in your area or a fun student life, majority exchange students (most Western) or foreign regular students (most Asian). Also, the quality of foreign profs teaching in Japan is...how can I put this?....isn't uniform. =) You might want to get some tips from previous exchange students.

i live in oita and APU is not 25 minutes from the nearest town - its like a 5-10 minute car ride into beppu

The distance from campus to Beppu-eki is approximately 12km, on a mountain road with twists and turns. I really, really don't hope you ever have done that in 5-10 minutes.

Here's my impression of cities the OP mentioned:

Tokyo: If you're learning standard Japanese and/or want to sound like actors in Japanese movies/dramas, this is THE place you should go to. Since you're already learning Japanese, I think you already know what it's like. It'd be the best pick unless you don't like a big city or have a special reason to study in another city. You'll have a lot of fun there.

Osaka: One of the biggest cities in Japan, and it's a very nice place to have fun. While vocabulary, grammar, and pitch accent of the local dialect are different from standard Japanese, most of the Japanese understand it. Actually you'll often hear actors speak or fake the Osaka dialect in TV shows, movies, and so on. This is the only non-standard dialect that you can safely pick up without worrying if native speakers from other regions understand you, though you might have trouble understanding them if you don't learn standard grammar at all. A stereotypical person from Osaka is friendly, extrovert, and always telling funny jokes. If you're a guy, you can take advantage of the stereotype when you visit other regions, if you know what I mean. たいがい and なおす are examples of rare words that guys from Tokyo would be confused by. I was born in Osaka, by the way.

Kyoto: Very old city that used to be a capital of Japan. If you're interested in traditional Japanese culture, this is one of the best places. It's next to Osaka, and its local dialect is very similar to the Osaka dialect.

Nagoya: A major city that has its own dialect. Older people have a stronger accent. It's not unintelligible or anything, but if you speak Japanese with the local accent, you may have difficult time making yourself understood more often than if you speak standard Japanese, especially when you talk to people from a completely different region. Nagoya is a fairly large city, and it's a nice place to stay for a longer period of time. If you don't like urban life, you may not enjoy this city.

Fukuoka: A major city in the Kyushu region. The local dialect has a stronger accent. I have a friend from Fukuoka, and sometimes I have to ask the meaning of a non-standard expression he uses. If you don't want to acquire a strong non-standard accent, you might want to pick another city, though it's nice to learn the dialect. I've heard a lot of good things about Fukuoka, so it should be a nice place to live in.

masaman Wrote:More reserved/traditional people, you can find in 東北 area.

Definitely! Aijin is from Tohoku and she's really reserved and traditional!!

And here's my impression of universities blackmacros is considering:

Kyoto University: #2 national university often compared with Tokyo University. This is one of the few universities where you can learn directly from Nobel laureates and first class scholars. Whatever your major is, you can expect high level courses. Level of education and research in science such as physics and mathematics is as high as that of the most prestigious universities in the world.

Keio University: One of the oldest and most prestigious private universities. You say you're learning at Keio University, and people assume your family is rich. It has attached grade schools, and it's often said that the most important part of the entrance exam of its elementary school is the interview to parents. Education and research level is very high in every major they have to offer. Among others, its premed/medical shcool and college of economics are famous for their high quality education. It is often said that graduates of Tokyo University are nerdy and dominate government officials, and graduates of Keio University are smart and dominate the Japanese industrial/economic circles. The university stands surety for you when you take out a loan for your tuition from a bank, though I don't know if international students are eligible. By the way, a large portion of students are people who failed the entrance exam of Tokyo University and ended up entering this university like me.

Waseda University: Another prestigious private university often compared with Keio University. Political Science, Economics and Literature are famous, but other majors are also of high level. For some reason, people don't associate this university with rich families. Students who love Waseda hate Keio, and vice versa.

Other universities blackmacros mentioned are also good, but most of the Japanese would ask why you didn't choose one of the above three. Dousisha's and Ritsumeikan's main campuses are near Kyoto University, and if you don't have a particular reason, I'd choose Kyoto University. (and if you like to study in Tokyo, it's Keio or Waseda.)

Oh my. That's the first time I've heard a suggestion NOT to go to Fukuoka... and I was just getting settled on it, too. Back to the drawing board, I guess.

dawhite Wrote:Oh my. That's the first time I've heard a suggestion NOT to go to Fukuoka... and I was just getting settled on it, too. Back to the drawing board, I guess.

I'm not saying you should never study in Fukuoka or anything. It's a wonderful place, and like I said, it's a nice thing to learn a non-standard dialect. But if learning standard Japanese is important to you, it's like going to Los Angels to learn the Scottish accent.

I heard that people picked up accents/dialects used by peers you relate to, so if you go to such a nice place, you'll probably learn the local accent.

Wha... wait a second, you mean I got ripped off by the LA School 'O Brogue? Ah, I should have known...

At any rate, here's another question: how important SHOULD it be to me to learn a standard Japanese accent? If I eventually try to get a job in Japan (probably with an American or European firm), is, say, a Fukuoka or Osaka accent going to hold me back?

I lived in 東北 Touhoku for 3 years, 山形県 Yamagata-ken to be exact. It's a great place and many people do use a local dialect, but I don't get why some people might view that as a bad thing. It's not like you won't learn standard Japanese if you live there. I heard both standard Japanese and Yamagata dialect and learned to use both. In my mind, two ways of speaking Japanese is better than just one.

@dawhite

You won't just learn the dialect. You'll just learn it in addition to standard Japanese.

dawhite Wrote:Wha... wait a second, you mean I got ripped off by the LA School 'O Brogue? Ah, I should have known...

At any rate, here's another question: how important SHOULD it be to me to learn a standard Japanese accent? If I eventually try to get a job in Japan (probably with an American or European firm), is, say, a Fukuoka or Osaka accent going to hold me back?

I wouldn't worry about it. In school, you learn standard Japanese no matter where in Japan you are. The dialect you will pick up will be from your exposure to your surroundings.

You might use an incorrect expression from time to time and your accent will probably be way off... but then again, those problems are shared by all foreigners regardless.

dawhite Wrote:Wha... wait a second, you mean I got ripped off by the LA School 'O Brogue? Ah, I should have known...

At any rate, here's another question: how important SHOULD it be to me to learn a standard Japanese accent? If I eventually try to get a job in Japan (probably with an American or European firm), is, say, a Fukuoka or Osaka accent going to hold me back?

A person's accent is very personal, so I can't say its importance is X on the basis of 10 points. It's up to you. Personally I prefer foreigners who speak non-standard Japanese fluently because that shows their love for the culture and local people.

I think standard Japanese is a safe bet because it wouldn't hurt your career. A non-standard accent may be a plus in some cases. For example, I don't like the fake Osaka dialect in some dramas because it definitely makes them less convincing. If you want to be the top salesperson in your area, probably you'd better learn the local dialect. But in other cases it can hold you back.

As for learning both standard and local accents, native Japanese speakers also fail so hard when it comes to speaking with the standard accent. It'd be more difficult for foreigners.

Anyway, I don't think anyone has said learning a local accent is bad. But I think it's illogical to learn a different accent than what you want to acquire. I do think you end up picking up an accent of people you like, and it's not the most logical thing to go to a place where locals speak a different dialect than what you want to mimic.

Huh... that's interesting. It's not that I'm dead set on having a standard Japanese accent, but I would like to be able to communicate with people all over the country. However, it seems from what everyone has said that it's not something I should worry too much about.

One question I have, though, is about the perceptions native Japanese people have of the different regional dialects. I've heard, for example, that Osaka's is supposed to be both hip and slightly folksy (?), and about Fukuoka all I've found out is that they apparently use "-to" a lot. Any further guidance?

Thora Wrote:As an exchange student, I expect you'll be offered Japanese classes plus courses in English or a Japanese language program only. (btw Waseda also offers an exchange program in English.) It may be possible to attend regular classes in Japanese if you get special permission, however. If that's your main goal, you might want to choose a school that's willing to make such arrangements.

I'm not sure what the deal is yet with Waseda, I'll need to investigate a bit more, but it was marked in the exchange booklet as "not offering classes in English".

Quote:I think regular classes in Japanese after 18 months would be very difficult, but you've been progressing rapidly so it's hard to say. Your kanji knowledge will be superior to most Western students, but your speaking, writing and general comprehension might not be adequate. The specialized language of some subjects can take a while to master, so it's easy to get completely bogged down in the readings at first.

Yeah this is what I was concerned about for the most part. Although you mentioned Level 6 students at Waseda can take JLPT1. If I don't pass JLPT1 this December I will definitely be able to by the time I go on exchange next year, and I will also be spending a lot of time practicing output (particularly conversation) as of next year. So hopefully I will be able to at least cope with comprehending my classes (if they are in Japanese) and communicating with classmates. Still a bit worried about how I'd fare if expected to produce a good quality essay though...

Thanks for the advice

@magamo Thanks for the rundown on the Universities. Seems like you favor Keio. Although I suspect there may be a bit of bias there

magamo Wrote:As for learning both standard and local accents, native Japanese speakers also fail so hard when it comes to speaking with the standard accent. It'd be more difficult for foreigners.

As a foreigner learning Japanese, I don't know if this is necessarily true. Unlike Japanese people who grow up listening to their local dialect, the only Japanese we have ever know is the standard dialect. This is what we are first exposed to during primary school, and then through high school and university, along with what's on TV shows and radio.

For me personally, when I look at a guide to a particular dialect I start to freak out because it can be so different to standard Japanese, and I wonder how the hell I am going to understand what is going on. By this I am directly referring to Miyagi-ben http://miyagiajet.tripod.com/miyagi-ben02.html What a headache!

OsakaDan Wrote:

magamo Wrote:As for learning both standard and local accents, native Japanese speakers also fail so hard when it comes to speaking with the standard accent. It'd be more difficult for foreigners.

As a foreigner learning Japanese, I don't know if this is necessarily true. Unlike Japanese people who grow up listening to their local dialect, the only Japanese we have ever know is the standard dialect. This is what we are first exposed to during primary school, and then through high school and university, along with what's on TV shows and radio.

For me personally, when I look at a guide to a particular dialect I start to freak out because it can be so different to standard Japanese, and I wonder how the hell I am going to understand what is going on. By this I am directly referring to Miyagi-ben http://miyagiajet.tripod.com/miyagi-ben02.html What a headache!

If local dialects are confusing because they're very different from what you have learned and if you're already immersing yourself into the language, it doesn't seem to me that your learning speed of standard Japanese would get much faster.

Thanks to the internet, we can learn a major foreign language very quickly and efficiently through native media and stuff. But still living in the country where the target language is spoken is considered to be more efficient because you can easily immerse yourself into the language and learn directly a lot of things through real conversations.

Now obviously the bonus you get from living in the country is mostly coming from interaction with the local dialect, i.e., what makes your learning faster than the immersion method in your home country is exposure to the local language. So, if living there makes your learning faster, what accent would you learn "faster" from precious experience during the stay in the local country?

If you're the kind of person whose Japanese doesn't get better any faster than it was back when you were in your home country, it doesn't matter. Maybe you're ignoring interactions with local people. Maybe you can't have enough time with local people because of your job. But if your Japanese is improving noticeably faster, probably you're absorbing grammar and stuff from exposure to the local language.

This is what I was thinking, and maybe it doesn't make sense to you. But I think if you're already immersed to Japanese, a large portion of Japanese that you absorb quicker in Japan and you can't learn easily in your home country is the local accent/dialect.

This seems like an argument for going somewhere with a strong dialect. Am I interpreting it correctly? Also, any thoughts on Fukuoka dialect vs. Kansai?

@magamo

Yeah it makes perfect sense. But I was just saying that I think for people who don't speak Japanese natively it is probably easier for us to understand the standard dialect when compared to a more local one because this is what we study.

You actually said it would be more difficult for foreigners to speak with the standard dialect when compared to a local dialect, and this might be true after living in that particular area for a while and not hearing standard dialect so often, but initially, I would think it would be the opposite.

@dawhite

Well no matter where you go, hopefully everyone will understand the standard dialect anyway, so between that and what local dialect you get to pick up/understand I don't think there would be any communication problems. So it probably doesn't matter. I would base the decision more on the lifestyle, living expenses, language school/university rather than the dialect, because that's going to matter a lot more in the long run.

I have a personal affinity towards Kyoto university. Perhaps it's because most of the early strong left wing scholars grew up in that school as opposed to your heavily government influenced Tokyo university.

Lot of generalizations here but that was the case back in Late Meiji to Showa

dawhite Wrote:This seems like an argument for going somewhere with a strong dialect. Am I interpreting it correctly? Also, any thoughts on Fukuoka dialect vs. Kansai?

This thread was the first time I've ever heard someone refer to the Fukuoka dialect as "strong." I purposely avoided the kansai area because I was afraid of the accent, though it seems I was being overly paranoid. I live in Fukuoka now and to me, people in the city don't have strong accents- but once you go to the country (where I am right now- typing this post from my desk in my little school) it gets ridiculous sometimes. When I moved to the city 6 months ago from the country I was like, "woah, people are so much easier to understand here."

captal Wrote:This thread was the first time I've ever heard someone refer to the Fukuoka dialect as "strong."

If I understand you correctly, you're talking about the dialect used by locals in 福岡市? Here is the Japanese Wikipedia article about 博多弁, which is the dialect used in the metropolitan area of the city: http://ja.wikipedia.org/wiki/%E5%8D%9A%E...A%E5%BC%81

I know this guy who speaks this dialect, and when he talks with his local friends in the area and parents, it sounds strong to me, though not completely unintelligible. Intonation and pitch accent are different from the standard accent, and vocabulary is even more different, e.g., お前が遅れるけん、連絡されんやったったい, 帰りよーと?, 教えちゃー, ばってん, あげな, えずい, etc. Aren't locals talking to you in fake standard Japanese by any chance? If you feel you understand them more easily when they talk to you than when they're talking with their local friends at native speed, they might be using a more standard accent when talking to you.

Anyway, this girl in this video is speaking 博多弁 from 0:19 through 1:30. She jokes, "We need subtitles to sell this DVD," and a guy responds, "Well, I can follow you without subs unless you use unintelligible local words." And this guy's response is exactly what I think the dialect is. Most of the Japanese can handle the non-standard pitch/intonation and pronunciation, but most of the time regional expressions are quite difficult to understand. She doesn't use many "difficult" local words here, so you can focus on conjugations, intonation and so on:

This girl is from 福岡 and speaking with a good standard accent. She also often uses the rising intonation someone said in pronunciation assessment thread. I had a hard time getting rid of this intonation... This is supposed to be Fukuoka Dialect 101, but I don't know if she keeps posting videos of this series:

Here's the Fukuoka version of the Hatsune Miku song. You can find other dialect versions on youtube too:

I see your point. I guess I should have phrased what I said a bit better. I'm not good at Japanese yet- I'm some sort of intermediate level. I still have a lot of problems understanding everything people say in general, but when I moved from the country, where they speak ちくほう弁 to Hakata, it was a huge difference. It may be that people just speak to me in standard Japanese more often because they are more used to foreigners than in the country. In fact, that's probably the best explanation. I know some of the basic 博多弁 expressions, but I couldn't follow that video very well.

@blackmacros I haven't taken the JLPT, so it's difficult for me to gauge the relative difficulty. I listened to a couple of the exercises posted here recently. If those are a fair representation of JLPT1 listening, then I think university lectures would be a challenge post JLPT. You might try listening to some of the open university online lectures in Japanese if you want to get a sense of what it'll be like. (Someone posted a link in the forum - I can dig it up for you if you can't find it.)

If your school has an exchange with Waseda's Japanese Language Center (I forget the actual name), that might be why they wrote no English classes.

@Magamo - a Keio old boy. I already thought we were privileged to have you here. But now...

@Thora I did a few searches but I can't find anything about online lectures in Japanese. I recall someone posting something similar a while ago, but it was only to say "I used to have FTP access to a bunch of Japanese lectures in maths/science but I lost the address a long time ago"