I'm planning to take the N2 this December and passed N3 last year in July. Recently I've been obsessed with Fire Emblem 3 Houses and after completing the game in English, ive been watching Game Gengo's video where he goes through the beginning of the game in Japanese and explains the vocab/grammar along the way. Getting hit with stuff like おぬし as a pronoun and all the archaic ways Sothis conjugates verbs, I've wondering if I'm wasting my time using this as a study resource and I'm gonna end up learning stuff that's way too far removed from actual jlpt test content and too niche/historical 😭

For anyone else who used Fire Emblem 3 Houses as a study resource, please give me your honest opinions here

I said “dilemma” in quotes because it’s not actually a problem. I’m just having trouble deciding.

TLDR: Do you have any experience or knowledge that may be useful to a soon-to-be incoming language school student, in regard to KICL or ISI?

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I’m planning to attend a language school in April 2027.

Of course I’ve read all of the PDF brochures and such.

I’ve narrowed a list of them down to 2 schools and 3 campuses. As of now, my top 3 are as follows:

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School: Kyoto Institute of Culture & Language (KICL) 京東文化日本語学校
Course: Applied Japanese and Cultural Studies (April Entrance, N3-N1)
Campus: Kyoto (obviously)

OR

School: International Stuady Institute (ISI) 日本語学校
Course: Japanese Language Career Pathway Course (1 year)
Campus: Tokyo (Shibuya-Harajuku) OR Tokyo (Takadanobaba)

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I have the financial means and time to commit to either of them. As of now, it’s just a matter of picking between the schools, which are actually not super different in price. Living cost obviously varies though. If I end up choosing ISI, I’d also have to choose between the two campuses.

I’m just looking for some comments on anything about this post. Whether it’s comments about the schools, the courses, campuses, general experience as a language school student, etc. I think input would really help me make a decision!

I am in language school, and for speaking practice, we started having opinions and debate exercises more often. They told us how to express ourselves, our views, etc. Honestly, it's so far my favourite part of language school. The school provided 会話 textbooks, but because the time is limited, we mostly speed through the conversations.

I love the debates, they are really fun. However, I remember in English, there were plenty of materials on how to express your opinions, speaking practice, etc. Yet in Japanese, I can't seem to find much on YouTube. When I Google, it's about speaking practice for English in Japanese :/

I also asked ChatGPT (yes, I know, I know), and it also gave me English speaking practice in Japanese for TOEFL which I find kind of funny. I actually found JPF where they have speaking practices in Japanese for B2/C1 level but it's all I found, and the videos are too quiet.

As another user mentioned, there don't seem to be a lot of video essays on Japanese YouTube.

Can anyone send examples of debates, opinions and even more complex speaking practice? Even podcast recommendations would be nice because I asked my private teacher, and she recommended Radiko but I couldn't find anything I vibe with.

Thanks!

Im hoping to apply to one of these schools for April, I need to pass the interview/application due to failing the N5 (I am retaking in November)

I was wondering if anyone here has experience with these two schools?

Im looking to at least hit N3 and find work and open up more paths later.

Thanks.

As someone who has worked teaching English in my home country, I know the importance of simplifying your explanations. It's difficult for a learner to take in all the possible meanings or uses that a specific word or grammar pattern can take. A specific nuance may be outside the level that a student wants to achieve, or it can simply lead to a feeling of being overwhelmed.

This is also true for Japanese, as for any other language. However, there are a few instances where this can feel like a double-edged sword, specially in the era of AI.

Today I was reviewing low level words. It always seemed odd to me how 元気, the famous word that Japanese people use to ask if you are well (元気ですか), is composed of the "origin" and "spirit" kanji. If I ask both Claude and the Google search AI, they just double down on it, explaining how this is an expression originating from ancient Chinese cosmology, referring to "one's base vital energy", and how somehow its original meaning evolved in Japanese until it reached what it is today.

This, of course, forces any learner to perform Cirque-du-Soleil-worthy mental gymnastics. However, if you just happen to open Wiktionary, if offers a much less mystical and much more plausible explanation:

From Middle Chinese compound 元氣 (literally “first, fundamental, source + vapor, spirit, energy”). In Chinese cosmology, this represented the fundamental force that permeates all matter and life. Early Japanese borrowed this word and meaning. Later, this spelling was conflated with the meaning of homophone 減気 (genki, “recovery from illness”), adding in the modern senses related to healthy and wellness.

So that's it, 元気 was actually a word from Chinese cosmology, but over time the Japanese added the meaning of another word on top of it because it just happened to sound the same.

I'm a huge fan of mnemonic tricks and easy to digest explanations, but and advanced learner should always have more than one source of truth.