クラス名前は？　日本事情
いつ？　前期（2013年の場合、水・５）
先生の名前は？　高松　里　先生

Alright guys, I did say that I’d be recommending/reviewing classes, so here’s the first class that I want to share with you: 日本事情.

Now, throw away your experience of what your 日本事情 class in TUFS/Handai was like, and believe me when I say – this class is really really fun! It’s a class for us 留学生 and you should definitely take it.

Why?

For one thing, this is one class that you can definitely get in. It’s a hugely popular class, but not all Japanese students get in. In fact, the number of Japanese students is limited to the number of foreign students in the class.

So what’s it like? 

I call it “お菓子と話時間”. We’re split into groups (equal numbers of foreign students and Japanese students, and if possible, equal numbers of guys and girls) to do group activities. These groups/teams are changed three times in the course. And guess what? You’re totally encouraged to bring snacks to share while doing these activities. The activities are quite interesting too, even the normal 自己紹介 was interesting to me.

And of course, you can even propose activities for your team to do. My friends and I proposed (and was allowed) to make Hiroshima okonomiyaki.

Working on the okonomiyaki, together.

How is it graded? 

Your marks come from attendance (there are report cards you have to fill in every week) and from a final report. The topic for my final report was to go somewhere with my team (team 3) and use that to talk about how to build better ties between foreigners and Japanese. As you may know, we went to 白糸の滝 and had an awesome time. Pictures are encouraged in this report.

This is a picture I took on our trip. This quote came to mind.

So how strongly do you recommend this class? 

Take it. No excuses. And I recommend it strongly enough that I even bolded the words for emphasis (ok, that didn’t take much effort but just imagine me putting lots of energy into it).

For more in this class, look at this link.
For the syllabus of Kyushu University, take a look at this page. 

That’s it for this post. Let me know if there are any classes you want me to review. If I took it, I’ll definitely review it for you. And if you’re a MEXT scholar thinking of where to go, I hope this helps! (Sorry for all scholars entering university this year – this is way too late for you guys).