How is Joshibi university of art and design?

3 comments

1. This is a copy of your post for archive/search purposes.

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   **How is Joshibi university of art and design?**

   Hello, not sure if it’s the right subreddit to post it under but –

   It is one of the options for my study exchange. So far, I really like the courses they offer and the emphasis on traditional techniques.

   I want to know how the college is, and the student ratio. Is there a frequent influx of foreign students? How easy would it be to make friends?

   I have not started learning Japanese yet – reason being that I am applying to universities in other countries as well and wanted to wait for confirmation. But i will be mostly taking just studio classes, and will try to learn in the few months if I attend.

   Any information will be appreciated, Thank you 🙂

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2. What do you plan to do with an art degree? Also, most people take 3 to 4 years to reach conversational level Japanese and 10 years to reach what can be considered “business level” Japanese.

3. I did an semester abroad there last year and didn’t have the best experience but the friends i went with had a great time.

   The campus and the departments equipment are truly amazing (I come from a small art university in germany and we have barely anything of that level).

   I was part of the textile department to take advantage of the impressive weaving classes and general work spaces provided but had a hard time communicating with my teachers. I was aware the classes would be held completely in japanese and this was communicated clearly. Our group of exchange students were the first since covid and I was the only one that possessed basic japanese skills, the others only spoke english. They had teachers that would try really hard to communicate with them and even printed out every important information for them in english and even their native language almost daily.

   My teachers spoke only japanese and I tried my best to understand and answer but there was still a lot of miscommunication in terms of expectations, e.h. I was required to hold presentations fully in japanese in front of all my classmates (my friends were allowed to hold theirs in english even though no one could really understand). I would get angry and passive aggressive e-mails from my senseis and the student assistant in japanese that required immediate answer and needed my japanese boyfriends help in answering (if i didn’t reply within a day I would get an even angrier follow up email), I was then scolded by the international office for not consulting them beforehand.

   I was enrolled in mostly third year courses and the japanese girls wanted nothing to do with me. I had a 3 day course with first years that were very sweet and welcoming, it was a completely different experience.

   I also had a hard time with the strict attendance as being sick wasn’t really acknowledged as a sufficient reason for staying at home and missing more than 3 classes (= 3 days) of a course basically means you are not allowed to attend it anymore. I got sick a few times and had to drop some classes because of it.

   So my advice would be to avoid the textile department if your not perfect at japanese and to take first year courses to make friends. My german friends were in the japanese painting department and had a great experience. Don’t expect to see much of japan outside of the campus tho, the classes are all day, very exhausting and require a lot of additional work at home (or in the studio even) so there won’t be much time to explore the country.