Japanese language school Tokyo

Hello, I’m studying Japanese for about two years and I want to study the language in Tokyo for a 3 months
course to fully immerse myself.
I would like to get some recommendations/criticisms about schools in Tokyo. My preferences are ones in the center of Tokyo (Shinjuku or Shibuya) and that contains mainly westerns students. And I don’t care paying. Thank you’ll!

Edit:
I’m now thinking about 6 months course with a student visa.
I thought about nichibei kaiwa gakuin, I would like to hear some opinions.
Thanks again!

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I went to Genkijacs (GenkiJACS - Tokyo School Intro) for some time (I think 2 months), the shool is directly in shinjuku and the classes are small and only consist of people from western countries. Americans, Mexicans, Austriens, Australians, French were people I had in my class.

I don’t know how they managed with Corona and what the shool looks now though.

You have homework and go basically through genki in the lower classes and later on it’s more of a copy fest where they copy materials together from many books. It’s only half a day so you have enough free time to do other stuff. They also offer a speaking only class (would only recommend when studying for N3 and above) and offer lots of after class culture experience. I don’t recommend the culture experiences though, I actually prefered doing other stuff with other students or exploring the city on my own.

The age group is pretty young, typically ranging from high shoolers around 15~16 up to the middle 20s for the bulk of the students. You will be accepted even when older but might have a harder time chiving with the other students for after class activities.

Teachers were competent and motivated, with slight variations per teacher as expected. The classes are 100% in Japanese nearly from the beginning so you are forced to speak and write everything you want to communicate in Japanese during class. English is frowned upon. There is english support for the reception, and they can support you when looking for accomodations as well.

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My opinion is that if you do Tokyo it is really easy to not use Japanese the entire time you’re there. I would recommend something in Fukuoka or not Tokyo/Osaka. While I am sure the schools are fine, the ease in which you can get away with never using Japanese is ever present and very tempting.

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3 months might not be doable from a visa standpoint at the moment. Normally people enrolling in a short term course like that would enter the country with a tourist visa, since a student visa is, IIRC, starting from 6 months up.

However, since Japan still isn’t issuing regular tourist visas and the ones they do issue have a ton of strings attached (including limited duration of like 15 days), that’s not doable at the moment. Things could change soon, but who knows with these things.

Nothing stopping you from applying for a longer-term program though to get a student visa, since 3 months is a bit short anyway.

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Agreed (though I’m biased because I hate Tokyo). I did a semester in Kyoto and I loved it, but there were definitely a lot of places that catered to foreigners since it was such a big city, so any big-ish restaurant I went to I got handed an English menu more often than not.

My friend did a semester in Kobe (KCUFS) and had a great time. Another friend did his in Shiga - and his Japanese is fantastic now. If I had to do it again, I think I’d pick a smaller city; maybe somewhere in Nagano or Yamanashi.

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Thank you for the answer!
My main motive is to live in Tokyo for couple of months. The Japanese although important is on a second consideration….

I was afraid that this is the situation… thanks!

I went to Kudan Language School throughout 2018 and It was a fantastic experience although a bit pricey. It’s in Suidobashi which is a 15min train ride from Shinjuku and ~5min to Akihabara. Classes are ~20 hours a week taught all in japanese (even on low levels), which trust me, helped a lot. You can ask stuff in English if you didn’t get anything tho. Teachers were great and you have several throughout the Week. They offered several (cultural) activities like caligraphy, language exchanges, making soba from scratch, tea ceremonies, planting rice at a rice field,… and a one day excursion every three months. Don’t know how Covid affected that though.
They also offer a variety of different classes. I took the conversation class which is taught in the morning. Everything else was taught in the evening which I found to be a bit of a bummer.

Lots of westerners in low level classes ( class size was 15-20 people early on, during my last term leading to my passing the N2 we were 6 including me). The better you get the higher the percentage of Asians (especially Taiwanese) tho, as westerners rarely stay for a year plus from my experience, but you’ll still encounter them.

I would wholeheartedly recommend the school. Brought me from not speaking the language whatsoever to N2 in 1 year, I met lots of amazing people and classes + activities were a blast.

As already mentioned above everyone staying shorter term (less than 6 months) went on a tourist visa.
You can apply for a Working Holiday Visa though (if your country offers one and if you are 30 or younger). A bit of a waste If you only plan on staying short term, but hey atleast that allows you to go at all.

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Thank you for the insightful answer. I see that the students in this school changes every week or so, wouldn’t it make it hard to purchase friends?
If I’m intending to stay for 3 months

Most people I’ve talked to stayed a minimum of 3 months. The school had a lot of people on student visas so anything 6 months and up and especially in higher level classes we had several people already living in japan preparing for job hunting, university etc.
Your mileage may vary, but I found it very easy to make long term friends at and outside of school.

Although you can start every Monday the vast majority of people joined on term start (4 times a year) and left japan/school at the end of a 3 month term.

Especially right now with the border restrictions in place I imagine them to have a fairly low amount of short term students.

I only ever went to this school, so I don’t have anything to compare it to, but I reckon the same goes for most language schools r(ight now) .

I recommend you to have a look at several school reviews, their way of teaching etc. A lot of schools also publish statistics like what countries people hail from etc on their websites. And I wouldn’t put too much importance on the schools location. I found it was pretty easy to move around tokyo if you don’t live study in the outskirts.

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Maybe check out Toyo University?

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