Prepared Me Professionally

I studied abroad in the fall of 2016 with this program and chose to live in a dorm. I had been to Japan before several times and had previously done an internship, but this was my first time combining both of those experiences being a student living on her own while studying Japanese. My favorite part of this experience was participating in the field placement where you get to experience working in a Japanese company for once a week throughout the semester. Although it is not quite like an internship, you get exposed to Japanese business cultures so it was a very invaluable experience for me. My goal coming to this program was to obviously improve my Japanese skill and become fully proficient, but unfortunately I did not meet my goal. This university you will be integrating yourself with is a foreign language school, so most of the students speak English fairly well if not fluent. In addition, all of your classes except the language one will be taught in English, so you really have to take the initiative to practice Japanese. Many people did improve and I myself was able to challenge my Japanese skill, particularly by taking the challenge of presenting more advanced topics in Japanese for the first time. I'm glad I got to study abroad on this program and I can't wait until the day I get to return.