Hi gaijinhan!
I’m sorry if you are getting tired about having questions about the Yamasa Insititue but I am finally given approval to study Japanese in Japan after so long from my parents and the Insititue sounds very good.
What I’m interested about is the life there. What is the life about as you study and lived in Aichi for a while?
Is it interesting? Can you improved just by talking with people there? How are the part time jobs over there?
Thanks for reading and a much bigger thanks for replying!
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Hi Ashe,
No problem! Your questions make me feel useful. And congratulations!
To be frank, I would say the life about studying at the Yamasa Institute is probably not too different from studying at a college and putting up at the school dormitory. Except you get to meet people from all over the world. I wouldn’t have expected to say this myself, but I felt my time there was more fun than a friend who opted for home stay. Not that home stay is not a good place because it can be even more fun if you get the right family to be with, and your language skills can be expected to improve much faster if you only use Japanese with the people there. But we had a lot of people who did not share the same first language, so even though I spent a lot of time with other foreign students, we mostly conversed in Japanese. With English and Mandarin skills, we can communicate with almost anyone but there still came situations where our option was only Japanese. I once had dinner with a Swiss, Taiwanese, and an American-Taiwanese. The Taiwanese was the only one who didn’t speak much English, and the Swiss was the only person who didn’t speak Mandarin, so both languages weren’t an option, which worked out perfectly for us since our purposes were to learn Japanese anyway.
I don’t know how much you already know but some of the people I know joined the school with no prior knowledge of the Japanese language but a year later, they spoke as well as me having studied three years in Singapore.
I didn’t work part time during my time there but a Taiwanese girl I know worked at Starbucks then and I believe it helped her language a lot, apart from making her Japanese friends from work. A few other people also taught English but competition for teaching role is fierce.
I mainly focused on having a fun time learning so a group of us eventually started playing football once a week and another group invited me to join them for ukulele twice a week.
Please note that my experience was 6 years ago, so it could be very different now, but I still think it really is what you make of it.
Finally, Aichi is a great place. I love that place even though there’s nothing much to do. After 4.5 years in the Kanto region, I’m beginning to miss Aichi. Maybe that’ll be my next holiday destination.
