Hi everyone,

I've been using this site to review for a while now, but finally wanted to ask something. Thanks for the great forum!

I lived in Japan for a couple years and then moved back to the U.S. I'm getting interested in translation as a career. I know I have a long way to go, both in terms of Japanese ability and translation skills, but it's something I'm more and more sure I want to work towards.

While I'm doing some volunteer and practice translation to start to get a feel for it, I can tell the main thing I have to improve immediately is my Japanese ability. I passed the JLPT N2 pretty easily last summer and have continued to study, but I'm still not at N1 level. I know even getting to N1 is not enough for a lot of translation, so now I'm just thinking about the best way to improve fast.

My idea is to spend a few months in Japan on a tourist visa and just try to really focus on studying during that time. I was thinking about enrolling in a Japanese language school and getting a student visa, but the ones I've seen have been pretty expensive, and I haven't heard great things about the teaching methods for a lot of them.

Has anyone here gone to Japan on a tourist visa or something similar and focused on studying the language (rather than travel, work, etc.)? If so, what did you do? Did you take some classes? Private lessons? Language exchanges? Any other ideas?

I have enough saved to live a few months over there without working, so I'm just trying to figure out how I could use my time efficiently and improve a lot in those months.

Thanks for any ideas!