Kansai Gaidai University

You are halfway between Osaka and Kyoto, two of the best cities in Japan. The only good thing about Gaidai? LOCATION, LOCATION, LOCATION. Take advantage of it!

You can very easily meet Japanese at school as KG is basically a school where Japanese students come because they want to learn foreign languages and/or they want to go abroad.. so they basically want to meet foreigners. It is almost ridiculous how many people you will meet, you will have groups of people following you, asking directly: can I be your friend? Whats your phone number? etc Kind of ridiculous, as for the most part you will never meet those people again. But still, you have the opportunity to meet a lot of people on the campus, very easy and fun to practice your Japanese because that is how you will really improve your language skills, by having lots of stupid conversations, etc.

Seminar House 1 is just crazy. The Oto-san that runs the building never does anything to enforce the rules, so there are always parties and people drinking and sneaking in guests. SH1 is the recipient of a lot of complaints from the surrounding neighbors (the Seminar Houses are located in a residential neighborhood). 3 can be pretty bad, too, but it's a little harder to sneak people into. 2 is really nice, and there's not nearly as much of the juvenile party stuff that goes on all the time at 1. That means no one drinking beer on the roof and blasting their stereo at 2am. But SH2 was really nice, and the Oto-san there is a really cool guy.

I'm not into the traditional bar/club scene, but if you like Japanese rock, be sure to check out Holiday Osaka in Yodoyabashi! The Japanese students and the foreign students are kept pretty segregated, so it takes a very outgoing individual to break into a group of Japanese friends. There is little to no assistance with this from the CIE. There are two programs they do offer, though- Speaking Partner and Home Visit. Speaking Partners are Japanese students the office matches you up with... unfortunately, most are first years, giving an upperclassman not much in common with them. I cannot comment on home visit because my home visit family simply never contacted me.

If you're planning on studying in Japan and you don't know how to ride a bike, you'd better learn it before you get there!