I've been living in Kichijoji for 2 weeks now and will be staying a whole year. Any tips on restaurants, sights, places to visit etc that aren't too expensive?

And what kind of classes did you take? How different are the classes in Japan from your home country?

What school are you studying at?

In kichijoji there's a street that is really small across from the baskin Robbins. Down that street has a lot of small bars and food you check out. There's two hubs which are nice one is more casual than the other. Yakiniku at gyuukaku is good. There's an amazing burger place down the way called village vanguard diner. Diner not the book store. And another place that comes to mind is koki's house which is a fun izakaya interesting food and on the way out you and friends can make cotton candy for free.

I use suica and pasmo interchangeably it just happened I had a suica. There's a gyoza place somewhere in there I can recommend. I always wanted to try the yakitori bars too.

I think it's the same. I was watching Japanese drama and took two years of classes. The drama helped my listening and also my accent so people thought I was better than I was. Or more likely they were being nice. I can hold conversations and was dating a girl for a while that could only speak Japanese. She didn't care to have deep conversations so not too difficult. I improved but still need to bulletproof what I know and iron out details so I can eventually pass n1 for work purposes.