Recently I’ve been asked a lot of questions about my course at Sophia. Originally I just replied to the emails but as a lot of them had similar questions I realized writing this FAQ would be useful both for me (as a time saver!) and for people interested. If you have any questions that aren’t on this FAQ, please don’t hesitate to send me an email, and I’ll either add it to here or reply to you privately.

1. What Is Sophia Like? (Accurate: 2010)
Easily the most common question, and also the hardest to answer. I’m going to answer question in relation to my experience and that of other exchange students. I’ll start with the good points. It’s right in the centre of Tokyo, making it nice and easy to get to (although not so much if you end up in one of their distant dormitories, like I did…) and also handy for going out. The building and it’s facilities are, for the most part, really nice and modern. The library is big and useful, apart from the annoying ‘Please be quiet in the library’ announcements which are by far the loudest thing in there.

OK, the bad points. Whilst I think Sophia is a good university, I think it has a long way to go in terms of exchange students. That is 100% true when it comes to management. I hate to say it, but the people in the international department office are beyond unhelpful, they are downright uninterested. I’ve been to them more than once asking for help or assistance, and every single time they have let me down. On top of that, the system Sophia uses is very strict. Despite explaining multiple times that I cannot, as a UK student, receive credit for English language classes I am being forced to take six hours a week of them. I know this is standard procedure by friends at other universities (for example, Chuo) are taking all their classes in Japanese. Sophia has good support for exchange students, but if you want to experience real university life as opposed to the foreign experience, forget about Sophia.

I know that gives Sophia a hugely bad image, but that’s just me. I think if you can get credit, or if you want to study something alongside Japanese, it’s a great system. But it is very strict. Interacting with non-English speaking students is also a challenge, as everyone in your department will speak English. I advise joining a non-recommended circle or club to get around this.

2. What are the Japanese classes like? (Accurate: 2010)
Quite good, I think. Yes, there’s a lot of memorization and plenty of words you will never use, but that’s just a fact of language learning. Especially under the Japanese approach. The teachers in general know what they’re doing, and when you go into higher classes there’s good chance to practice speaking. In comparison to my course at Sheffield the amount of work is far lower, although I don’t know how much I do in comparison to other universities.

My only complaint is that the textbooks are really old. I wish they’d change them. I am sick of reading about what people think of the employment system of 1994.

3. What is your curriculum like? (Accurate: 2010)
You have to take at least 10 hours a week of classes. Mandatory Japanese will take up between 6-8 of these (or more if you take the intensive course, although I didn’t so I know nothing about it). As a result I have to take these daft courses in history and so on. The university will not let you take courses taught in Japanese unless you have passed JLPT 1. Yes, it’s an incredibly stupid restriction, especially on students who don’t need to pass classes. If you want to try to fight this limit I wish you all the best, but you will be going up against the ever lackluster FLA Department staff.

4. Should I go to Sophia? (Accurate: Forever? I guess?)
I think it depends on your ability. If you’ve never studied Japanese or you are beginner / low intermediate (JLPT 4 or JLPT 3 level) I would say yes, definitely. The beginner classes, from what I can tell, are pretty good, and there’s English support on hand. The Intermediate and advanced (JLPT 2+/1) classes are good too, so from an academic standpoint I would say yes. But for those who want to immerse themselves in Japanese I would seriously reconsider. You will be speaking English at least six hours a week in your English taught classes. There is no getting around this, the university is ridiculously dedicated to these rules. I would say a university outside Tokyo (for example Kanazawa or Okayama) would be more suited to the ‘All Japanese All The Time’ approach.

5. Do you like Sophia? (Accurate: Until I die)
I am 50/50 about the place. Some days, when I manage to avoid the bizarre administration, speak a decent amount of Japanese and generally get the feeling I’m in Japan, it’s a great place. Very international, lots of people mixing a lot and it’s a great time. Half the time however I just feel like I’m in a state university in America. If I could choose again, I would not choose Sophia but that’s because it has too many exchange students in my opinion. But I think as far as academia goes it’s a great university.

I tried to be as honest as possible in this FAQ. As you can imagine it’s probably not what Sophia want to see on the internet but I value honesty so I’m going to post it. Who knows – maybe one day they will allow us to enter other departments, and that simple rule change would I think make a huge difference. I don’t see it happening any time soon, but it would be lovely.

I hope this has been useful in letting you make a decision. Obviously, everything here is subjective. It’s my opinion that I based on my experiences. I’m sure there are plenty of people at Sophia who love every minute of it. I’m just not one of them.

Well, it’s late on Tuesday night. I’m back in my dormitory just having had my first day at university in 2010. Because we’re technically still in the first semester (of which we have around three weeks remaining), we’re covering exactly the same material as we were before. Not fun!

I realised I didn’t post anything about Nagano after New Years’, which is odd considering that’s the main reason I went, but the decision to leave my laptop charger at home was a deciding factor in my blog output. So apologies for that. I was very kindly given a CD as I left which contained more photos, so I will now recap on some of the things I got up to before coming back here, breaking up the cold, hard text with even colder pictures (because they’re full of snow).

On the big day itself, we waited until about 11:30, then headed out by foot through the snow to the shrine near Mako’s house. When we got there we joined a huge queue and waited to pray and buy good luck charms for 2010. I chose the one designed to help people pass exams. I assume it works 100% of the time and am therefore taking thirty seven masters degree exams this year.

After that it was sleep time, but then on New Year’s Day, we headed into the city of Nagano and checked out the big shrine. More praying. Lots more people. Awesome food. Oh, and even more snow!

Yes, I don’t know if there was snow where you guys were but we had plenty on New Year’s Day. What makes this extra fun is that they had none in Tokyo! Hah!

In the evening it was time for the event I’d been simultaneously anticipating and dreading. New Year’s dinner with the extended family. I have to say, just meeting Mako’s family on the first night was pretty nerve wracking, but it looked like my generous use of polite Japanese was sufficient. (At least I think it was, I have no idea if they now plan to besmirch my good reputation due to my rudeness. I hope not.) I remember walking into a room and watching nine or so faces drop about three foot. You see, in a hilarious twist the visitors had not been told about me. Needless to say they assumed the British were invading. Which we were. We had come to eat their delicious New Year’s food! (By ‘we’, I mean ‘I’. I get all the food.)

Can you spot me in that photo? I’ll give you a clue – I’m the girl on the right. The meal was delicious and everyone was really kind. I couldn’t shake a feeling that I was sort of gatecrashing the meal in the day or two leading up to it, but they all seemed genuinely pleased to have me join them. It was a really heartwarming feeling.

After the meal, Mako’s mother and her nieces (I think, everyone introduced themselves really quickly and I got confused. I think I remember someone being a robot or something) played us some songs on the piano and violin, which was a great way to end a memorable evening.

On my last full day in Nagano, we finally went off to do something I’d been dying to – go to an onsen! I’m pretty sure the last time I went to a hot spring was the one in the hotel in Nikko, in September 2008. That’s fifteen months! The view looked over the little town and the surrounding mountains, everything covered in snow. It was lovely. Sadly, you can’t take a camera into an onsen (for obvious nudity related reasons) so instead here is the view from my bedroom window taken on the last full day I had. It’s so beautiful, it makes me sad when I look around my dingy dungeon room.

So that’s it for my coverage of my lovely week in Nagano. Thanks obviously to Mako and his family for putting up with my confusing British traditions and poor grasp of how showers work. I was going to write my 2010 resolutions at the end of this post but it ended up being so long I won’t! I guess I will just have no resolutions this year! ANARCHY!

I put the photos I was given in a special folder in the gallery.