Hi

I'm a 28 year old video game designer living in the UK. Been studying for 2.5 years (RTK, KO2001, JLPT3, Minna I&II). Want to study in Japan for at least 12 months full time looking to enroll around April and am keen on Kyoto as a destination. Can anyone kindly offer any recommendations or advice?

Many thanks

Oww.. You *really* have to hurry up if you want to enroll next April.

I'm coincidentally also into game development, just graduated as Master of Arts majoring in game design and have just this week been accepted to the KICL language school for first term next year (aka April).

Their foreign application period ends november 19th, and with all the needed documents and shipping time it will get hard getting it done in time.
Other schools might have a slightly later deadline, but as you need a visa and that process takes a long time the deadlines will still be pretty soon.

What helped me pick out some language schools was just firstly google-ing up as much language schools as possible and then search this forum on threads about that specific school. For quite a few schools there is at least a post or two about people's opinion about it.

Of course my decision wasn't solely based on this, I also did some more research and consulted with friends, but its a good starting point to get a general idea about what schools are out there and how they fare.

Did you work for Realtime Worlds by any chance?

@Rekkusu - that's very interesting, I'm currently looking at KICL as my first choice based on the recommendation of gogonihon.com. Just realised how close I am to the deadline so fingers crossed I've not left it too late! Can I ask what swayed your decision, information on their website is scant at best.

@harhol - no I didn't work for Realtime Worlds and intend to remain employed until I'm all set for my trip so I'd better not divulge who pays my wages just yet!

A friend of me has studied Japanese and for part of its curriculum he stayed half a year in Japan studying at KICL. Furthermore Japanese students training to become teachers at KICL take internships at the school he went to. Due to this I got the chance to meet and talk to one of their 'to become' teachers, and just the way how she acted (we spoke Japanese to each other the whole night) gave me a confident feeling and an impression of how the teachers are at KICL.

All in all this gave me a very good impression of KICL, so I'm very excited to move to Japan and start my study next April

And yea their site is pretty slim and actually out of date, though actually most language schools I looked at had horrible sites...

If you want and don't have it yet, I can send you the up to date application guide of KICL. It contains a tad bit more information than just the site, plus - more importantly - it has the correct dates .
Also feel free to mail would you decide to apply at KICL and have questions about the application process and the necessarily documents.

Thank you Rekkusu, very comforting to hear that. I've launched headlong into the last minute application process so apologies for the slow reply! With any luck I'll be seeing you in Kyoto!

Good luck! Hope you make it in time

In the end I sent my application with DHL, at first I used our national postal service, but they screwed up and that application is still somewhere underway :X.
Luckily I had made a copy of everything . Cost a fortune though, but it did arrive *fast*. Send in on friday and arrived next monday.

Feel free to drop me a mail if you are stuck with any of the documents.

Here, have a look at this video presenting KICL - Kyoto institute of Culture and Language
It's a truly fantastic school and I hope it shows in this clip that we made.