A great school and great experience

In just 6 short weeks of studying at Hokkaido JaLS, I learned a whole college semester's worth of material -- and without all that much effort. Every day you have class in a relaxed environment from about 9 - 12:30 with a few breaks in between. There are often activities after this if you wish to attend them, or otherwise can spend the rest of the day travelling around on your own. The classes are kept down to a size of around 6 students, which means that interaction between the students and the teacher is very good. The classes are taught entirely in Japanese, but the teachers are very good about explaining things through drawings or other methods if the students aren't able to understand.

All of the students at this school come from all over the world, and it gives you the opportunity to meet all kinds of different people. The school also provides tons of activities for travelling around Sapporo and Hokkaido, and experiencing various aspects of Japanese culture.

Naturally, since the school is located in Sapporo, the lessons in addition to daily life experiences in Japan come together to enforce what you are able to learn in classes. Before coming to Japan, I had little confidence and was afraid to speak Japanese, but after leaving the program I found myself very far ahead of my classmates at home.

The dormitories are all very clean and nice, and filled with friendly people. Some of them are more socially oriented and others are more of just a place to stay. When you make friends with students at the school, you'll be able to visit various other housing locations.

On top of all this, the program is very inexpensive. I chose to return to this school a second time this year because aside from the program being great, I'm able to stay in Japan for nearly 3 months and still have a lower cost than my university's study abroad program for just 5 weeks. I highly recommend this school!