Japanese college courses are incredibly slow and low level.
I studied on my own for 6 months, then tested into the 4th year classes.
It’s like the racing progress I had been making suddenly hit a brick wall and slowed to a crawl.
All of my classmates, even though they were 4th years, sucked at Japanese so they didn’t give me much speaking practice, my Japanese friends were much better.
But the pace is brutally slow, there’s tons of homework, and you can’t pick what you study.
For study abroad lol, you don’t need college either. Just become friends with an exchange student, or get a girlfriend like I did, then when they go back to their school in Japan, go stay with them or live in a super cheap sharehouse like I did, and go attend classes with them in their university like I did.
From what I heard from my classmates doing the university study abroad program whom I met while I was over there, the study abroad programs are hell, and they treat you like children while you’re over there with extremely restrictive rules and policies. I was completely free to enjoy Japan.