Keio University

What can I say-it's Tokyo and everything is expensive. Food isn't that bad but everything else is a lot more expensive

Keio likes its international students to do their special Japanese Language Programme and are generally not too helpful if you want to take regular classes. My recommendation would be to do the language programme for the first semester to brush up on your language skills and then take some regular classes in second semester. But to do this you will have to be very organised and decide well in advance what subjects you want to do-you may need to get some advise from a local student about what subjects to choose. I unfortunately was not organised enough to take regular classes, if I had have done my overall rating was my academic experice probably would have gone up to a 3. Another thing to note is that while it is a fairly good language course, be prepared for the fact that it is mainly aimed at Chinese or Korean students. I found this to be very frustrating. With Japanese people from different language groups need emphasis on different aspects of Japanese. For example the Chinese have no problem with the writing but do have problems with things which English speakers do not. As someone who was already relatively fluent in spoken Japanese I didn't actually find the course to be that useful in improving my Japanese. This was because I spent most of my time learning Kanji rather than brushing up on my grammar etc. However friends who had not done that much Japanese before did improve quite a lot.

Interaction with local students through the langauge partner programme and Keio's International club was very accessable, but it would be nice if it was encouraged for exchange student to take regular classes. I would also like to see the language programme to have some of the classes split into European langage groups and asian language groups so that the right emphasis could be made.

Nothing really exept that I probably would have tried to be placed in a lower level for the language programme so that my grammar may have been improved. But then again I probably would have found the lower speaking ability of my classmates frustrating-no win situation! I think I may be a unique case though in that my level of Japanese varies in different aspects of the language.

Best feature: the people you meet and fun you have with both international and local students. Worst: At the higher levels, I don't think the language programme is that suited to people with European/English language background, but it you combined the language programme with regular classes it would be more interesting and beneficial.

Great location and excellent standard of accommodation especially for Tokyo.