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Celeste is dumb by the way

Sorry, there are many earthquakes in Japan :( Seriously though, I was not allowed into the dorm as I am not a resident of it, so I had to have a friend who lives in the dorm film it for me.

I was studying for a little under a year and a half, probably about 5-7 hours a day as I was taking ICU's intensive program.

@tckaleb

Lol no that was a joke

SekaiJin XD I totally knew that! I was just checking @_@ but anyways I was also going to ask if you're going to update your channel because the last time you uploaded a video was in august 2016 however I do understand if you're busy with studies

+kasumikat yeah I've been meaning to get around to that, but things have changed in my life a lot and I've been super busy

+sparkletwist15 Are you planning on going for one year as an exchange student or as a full 4-year student?

+Anna Bruins I do know that currently, only about 30% of students live on campus. I do not, however, know what the percentage of oyrs/septens is that live off campus. They do exist though, but the university promises to work with you to find ok situations. I never heard anyone that lived in sharehouses/homestays complain about them being too expensive, so to my knowledge that isn't really a problem. And, in 2017, they're finishing up 2 huge new dorms so it should be much easier to find housing on campus after that. If you're only going for one semester though, you'll almost undoubtedly be in Dialogue house, which is much nicer, albeit much stricter, than the other dorms.

+DancesWithCranes Are those foldable ones faster than the mamacharis? I actually forgot to mention some stuff about the bikes, such as the child seats and mamacharis most often being used by mothers etc etc might make a small additional video with some more cultural information

SekaiJin It is a street bike like yours but folds in half. So, yeah it does go faster than a mama chari... I was planning on making a video in the future where I introduce my bikes, since I have seem to made a small collection of them.

dw it makes the video better and natural plus I love the sound

kasumikat Essentially none. I could say hi and goodbye and really simple stuff like water please and where is the bathroom, but it had been two years since I studied any Japanese so I really didn't know much. Now, however, I'm happy to say that while not even close to being fluent, I can express myself well enough in conversations and get around fine in public. Still got a lot more to learn though!

Quite a bit of Chinese and Japanese means the same, at least on the written level, given the Japanese writing system, kanji, is pretty much copy and pasted from China. Goroka mangi...yu save tok pisin?

yeah read abit about that. yes, wow, yu save tok pisin too ah?! fit man stret yah. wantok!

haha yeah wantok stret! tasol mi save liklik tasol :( tok pisin blo mi em bagarap tru, longpela taim mi no bin stap lo PNG...

tok pisin blong yu kam gut stret :) International Business in Japen! thanks really interesting! look forward to your uploads :) kets later bata

ketskets

What level of Japanese would you say you are at? I would highly recommend putting in some extra time to study up before you come, as while it is possible to function on campus using just English, it is much easier if you can function, even just basically, in Japanese. Is there anything specific you are curious about? Unless you have a really good work ethic, you will probably not enjoy intensive Japanese. At all. That being said, depending on your level, I would recommend intensive A, and maybe B, simply out of necessity, but from what I have seen intensive C is just crazy. Maybe figure out how to cook some basic good Japanese foods? The cafeteria's food is pretty mediocre, and sometimes expensive, but I usually eat there or at a convenience store simply because I haven't taken the time to learn how to cook Japanese food. Curious, are you from Leeds?

SekaiJin My Japanese is very good, I will be taking a few courses taught in Japanese. My boyfriend however has only the basic Japanese, and will be studying the intensive Japanese course. We are thinking about buying some Japanese cook books to cook some Japanese food, although at the moment we dont cook much. How much roughly are your monthly expenses? No, I'm not from Leeds, I'm living in Brighton. How long are going to be at ICU for? We are going in June. :)

Putting tuition and dorm fees and stuff aside, I usually spend 円10,000 per week, which includes weekend trips to downtown Tokyo, although I know it's possible to live with a lower cost (the cooking brings it down, naturally). I only asked about Leeds b/c there are a lot of Leeds students here--I think that college has some sort of partnership with ICU. I'm going actually for all 4 years here :) Started last September.

SekaiJin Wow this is good news, I was expecting it to be much more expensive. I am from University of Sussex and they also have a partnership with ICU. There are 5 of us starting in September. Have you found it easy to make friends at ICU? If you are still there when we go to Japan, we should hang out :)

Yuriko Y Yeah, it's pretty easy to make friends here, especially since everyone has such different backgrounds. A couple things I should say about the moneys is that most of my fun is free fun. I generally avoid paid venues like amusement parks, fancy restaurants, tour guides, etc for the sake of le wallet--I enjoy exploring and adventuring just fine. Also, as I am not yet 20 I do not drink, so you might want to add in the cost of a couple beers. All depends on how you live your life. And sure, I'd be more than happy to hang out once you get here :)

Haha finally someone called it out

Actually, when I'm outside of my university I try to use it as little as possible. On campus, I generally have no problems using English, except sometimes in the case of the Student Affairs office (really, one of the only places I would think it necessary to have fluent English speakers XD). At this point I can more or less function with Japanese in store/transportation settings, but when I first got here I knew next to nothing, and I still managed to get around fine. You're going to have some misunderstandings at times and might not be able to go into some stores (some are marked Japanese language only), but as long as you're not afraid of talking to strangers (usually one after another as it's no guarantee that the first person you talk to understands English), you should be good. My aunt has lived here for years now (as in she raised a family here), and she still does not speak Japanese, but she told me that she does fine. The hardest thing originally for me was using the trains/buses as I did not know what stations I should buy tickets for, but that got easy fast as I memorized where places were, not to mention that on transportation, English is usually present in conjunction with Japanese regarding stops. Also, I found that the Google Translate app now is able to take a picture of kanji and translate it, so that's incredibly helpful when I cannot read something. Granted, it's rarely a perfect translation, but I usually get the meaning just fine. Did I answer your question well enough? Feel free to ask for clarification.

Thanks, it's nice to know people like what I put out!

Thank you!

I'll have to start thinking of what I want to say for that...I'll see if I can't make it within a couple weeks! Hopefully my schedule will free up after my final is done.

Yeah man Good luck with that final

***** Been thinking about how to go about this, and I've got a rough idea in my head of how I want to make the video, so I should be able to put that out kind of soon. Taking a bit of a vacation for the next week, and after that I'll see if I can't get to it.

I'll put that higher on the priorities list then!

I do need to make a quick update video to let people know where I've been :( I was sick all last week, which caused me to miss a week's worth of Japanese (right now that's all I take), and my midterm is this week, so I'm pretty weighed down until after this Friday. Hope to make more videos after this week, I've been coming up with ideas all this time, I just haven't had the time to make them.

Thank you!

I'm tempted to actually try to stay in a konbini for 24 hours straight and do a video on specifically what kinds of things you can find in a konbini. Wonder if I'll get in trouble XD

I'm not quite sure yet; I think I'm going to study international business, so I may take that overseas working with multinational companies that deal with Japan. But, I still have about 3.5 years left, so my opinion may change by then!

I think there are 36 students in my dorm, and unfortunately I can't give an exact rent b/c I just threw away my dorm book XD but after consulting a dormmate we came to around Y30,000/month, and it's open for 10 months, so in total Y300,000 for a year, which I don't know the equivalent of in krona, but in dollars it's around $2,500.

woah that's really cheap!! :O

Where did you study?

At Tokyo Gakugei University in Kodaira/koganei - the station was Kokubuji x)

Sure, I'll check it out. Totally jealous that you're in Okinawa, it's so cold up here in Tokyo!

Come down and visit! Lol