Japan Exchange Program

prepare your tentacle holes








sorry

I can help you a bit because I'm currently on exchange at Hokkaido University in Sapporo.

First off, the actual exchange program is only alright. The Japanese language classes have very good profs and are fairly challenging, but the course selection outside of them is very lacking. Some courses are either taught in English by Japanese professors (who tend to not be very good at the language), or are taught with the purpose of teaching English to the university's Japanese students. Both of these kinds of courses tend to have very low workloads and somewhat useless subjects like Sex and Gender Studies or Tourism Studies, and probably won't teach you much. There are more specialized courses for Science and Engineering students (from what I've heard), but a lot of the general arts courses suck ass outside of the language courses. As an upside, the workload is pretty low and it's possible to make 2 or 3 days a week devoted to skiing as long as you keep up with school.

On the other hand the campus is excellent and accommodation is inexpensive. The campus is located very close to the center of Sapporo, and has wide open areas of green space between most buildings, along with many beautiful trees and a river. It's great when it isn't covered in snow. Dorms are standard but affordable.

Sapporo has easy access to a lot of great skiing. I spend most of my time skiing Rusutsu, which is about a 2 hour (free) bus ride from Sapporo. It's Hokkaido's biggest lift system, and has excellent tree skiing, some big cliffs and a "sidecountry park", which is some jumps and drops built into the woods with natural landings. There are a ton of other areas accessible from the city as well, like Teine or Kokusai which are closer but much smaller. Niseko is pretty far and expensive to access, not worth it for a day trip.

Sapporo is an awesome city. Most of the buildings are boring cubes and it's kind of ugly overall, but there are lots of nice parks and mountains throughout the city that break up the monotony. Sapporo Station and Odori have high end shopping and restaurants, Susukino is the biggest red light district outside of Tokyo with thousands of bars, great ramen and curry restaurants, and is totally safe to walk around at night. Great place. The weather is ok. Summer is consistently warm but not hot, and sunny, Fall has cool temps but stays sunny and has gorgeous colours, and then it snows almost every day from late November to March. It's switched to rain now.

Hope that helps.

Also, if you decide to go, I recommend starting to study Japanese as soon as you can. Few people speak English here, and although you can get by without Japanese, it will be hard to make local friends if you only speak English. I had a pretty good grasp on Japanese before coming and I've been able to learn much faster than my international friends who are just starting out, and make friends with some Japanese people.

ShinjiAlso, if you decide to go, I recommend starting to study Japanese as soon as you can. Few people speak English here, and although you can get by without Japanese, it will be hard to make local friends if you only speak English. I had a pretty good grasp on Japanese before coming and I've been able to learn much faster than my international friends who are just starting out, and make friends with some Japanese people.

Thanks for all the info. I was looking into Hokkaido at Sapporo, so I’m glad you actually went there. I’ll have to ask you more questions when I plan on going.

I am not too worried about the class load and class types. The main reasons for going would be learning/mastering the Japanese language. Knowing Japanese would be great for jobs. I also want to experience the culture and for sure the skiing. Being able to ski 2-3 days a week in japan for a year would be awesome. I’ll look into the resort where you ride as well. In your opinion, is that the best place to ski?

Also, how did you go about setting up this exchange program? This isn’t a study abroad program through my university, so I’d somehow have to do an exchange program but I’m just not sure how those work compared to study abroad

.lenconThanks for all the info. I was looking into Hokkaido at Sapporo, so I’m glad you actually went there. I’ll have to ask you more questions when I plan on going.

I am not too worried about the class load and class types. The main reasons for going would be learning/mastering the Japanese language. Knowing Japanese would be great for jobs. I also want to experience the culture and for sure the skiing. Being able to ski 2-3 days a week in japan for a year would be awesome. I’ll look into the resort where you ride as well. In your opinion, is that the best place to ski?

Also, how did you go about setting up this exchange program? This isn’t a study abroad program through my university, so I’d somehow have to do an exchange program but I’m just not sure how those work compared to study abroad

I go to University of British Columbia, which has a large exchange program with Japanese schools, and was able to set up my exchange through that. I'm not sure how you could set up a study abroad, maybe ask the advisors at your school? And as a piece of advice, one year isn't enough to master Japanese, but you will probably be able to have some conversations by the end of it. It takes about 4-5 years of consistent study to really become fluent in Japanese, but one year abroad is a good start and would get you learning faster than studying at home would.

Living in norway for a year and even though pretty much everyone speaks really good english, if you don't want to feel super excluded in conversation, learn the native language as much as you possibly can before going.

Try to get close to Asahikawa if you can. Much less Gaijin skiing at Asahidake and Kurodake than the Niseko area (it get's a bit less snow, but still so much in general haha)

ShinjiSapporo has easy access to a lot of great skiing. I spend most of my time skiing Rusutsu, which is about a 2 hour (free) bus ride from Sapporo. Niseko is pretty far and expensive to access, not worth it for a day trip.

Niseko is 20 minutes further than Rusutsu??


What are you studying/what career do you want? you keep saying japanese will be really good for jobs but that probably won't be the case unless you want to eventually live in Japan. Chinese is infinitely more useful.

ShinjiAlso, if you decide to go, I recommend starting to study Japanese as soon as you can. Few people speak English here, and although you can get by without Japanese, it will be hard to make local friends if you only speak English. I had a pretty good grasp on Japanese before coming and I've been able to learn much faster than my international friends who are just starting out, and make friends with some Japanese people.

I am also looking at moving to japan for season but i am already done my studies. I was wondering, buy what you have seen how hard do you think it would be to get job as a ski instructor (Currently lvl 2 csia), rental shop, ski tunning, pretty much anywhere haha. If I just show up on a year holiday visa?

pow_pow~Niseko is 20 minutes further than Rusutsu??


What are you studying/what career do you want? you keep saying japanese will be really good for jobs but that probably won't be the case unless you want to eventually live in Japan. Chinese is infinitely more useful.

Thinking about doing a medical route or biology/ecology. While Japanese may not be the most useful language, being bilingual and knowing Japanese can only help me.

pow_pow~Niseko is 20 minutes further than Rusutsu??

True, but there isn't a daily free bus running there from Sapporo and the train there is expensive.

if i show up on just a holiday working visa what are the chances of finding a job?

Can anyone toss up an overall cost estimate? For say 1 full year?

bakedif i show up on just a holiday working visa what are the chances of finding a job?

pretty good, if you are an instructor. i would still apply before i got there but thats just me.

GhettoYetiCan anyone toss up an overall cost estimate? For say 1 full year?

Depends what your doing

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Depends what your doing[/QUOTE]
Living working and skiing

GhettoYetiDepends what your doing
Living working and skiing

Depends how long you want to stay for. You only really need the money for flights and a bit to get you on your feet.

If you go over in November and get a job over winter which is reasonably easy, working would cover your accomodation lift ticket and living expenses until march/april, but it would be nice to bring a couple of grand to buy some new shit and not live on a budget.


Then if you want to travel after that i would suggest 3/400 a week if you're not working. im sure you can research the prices of transport and accomodation of where you would want to go.

Its easy to blend in with the locals, just run like how they do in naruto n say "omae wa mo sindeiru"

pow_pow~Depends how long you want to stay for. You only really need the money for flights and a bit to get you on your feet.

If you go over in November and get a job over winter which is reasonably easy, working would cover your accomodation lift ticket and living expenses until march/april, but it would be nice to bring a couple of grand to buy some new shit and not live on a budget.


Then if you want to travel after that i would suggest 3/400 a week if you're not working. im sure you can research the prices of transport and accomodation of where you would want to go.

Thanks! Always been a dream og mine to get some sweet japan powder