I studied Japanese for one year in Kai nihongo school in Tokyo so I think I can share my experience with you in case you are thinking in study Japanese in Tokyo.
First I’m going to be honest I disliked Kai school enough to decide to change school for the next year so I don’t recommend the school but I want to tell my general experience, the things I like and dislike so it can be useful for people think in study japanese in Japan.
Ok first at all Kai school is a Japanese language school in Tokyo and it’s one of the school you can find in the gogonihon web. It’s a school with mostly western students and it’s curriculum it’s intensive. You can study 2 years and you have classes 5 times per week 4 hours per day so 20 hours per week.
A good thing about the school it’s that most of the students are from Western countries so the first 3 leves they assumed that you have never studied kanji before and they teach it pretty well and give you enough time to get use to learn kanji.
Also they have their own grammar electronic books 📚 for the first 3 levels and they are pretty good. Another good thing it’s they use a lot of technology in this school every student has an iPad and the use smart board in the classroom.
Now the bad things about this school:
1. It’s expensive and it isn’t worth the extra money. One year in Kai school it’s around 1,100,000 yen my new school it’s 700,000 so Kai school it’s 400,000 yer more expensive per year but in my opinion it doesn’t worth it. My new school it’s also 20 hours per week, give you student visa and you get to the same level of Japanese after two years of study.
2. They encourage you to rent an IPad but it’s super expensive I bought my own iPad and it was cheaper than rent one of their iPads for one year.
3. As I said they have great digital grammar books but only for the first 3 levels after that they use normal books 📚 and some times they even changed them. When a friend studied level 4 they use a different grammar book that I used 3 months later.
4. One of the greatest thing about the first 3 levels it’s they teach you every kanji in class, it’s meaning and the way to write it.
But once you finish level 3 all of that it’s over they give you a JLPT 2 kanji book (even if the class level its beginner JLPT 3) and they only teach the meeting and you have to learn how to write by your own. So they still use the time of the class for teaching kanji but instead of teaching the stroke order of ever kanji they put you with a classmate and you have to ask him/her the reading of the kanji and then being asked yourself, a waste of class time in my opinion.
Also the vocabulary in the book and the vocabulary they teach in class is similar but not the same so when you have to study for the kanji test the book it’s useless.
5. In the first 3 levels they teach classes that worth it. They teach you grammar and kanji but after the level 4 they said the teacher is more a facilitator and don’t really teach grammar as well as the first 3 levels.
6. They treat you like it you were in high school. if someone gets late to class the teacher stops the class to ask why, so I you have classmates who get late it’s going to keep happen pretty often, If you don’t go to class even for one day they will send you a message asking why, you can’t eat even a candy in class. And the teacher treat you like if you were a kid not like if you were a university student or an adult studying abroad.
And some of their teachers and even rude like Aida sensei.
7. I think learning a language it’s about be exposed to the language so I don’t really think passing exams and making a lot of homework it’s the most important thing when studying a foreign language.
But in Kai school you will have so many exams, homework and pointless stuff you won’t have to much time to explore Tokyo.
8. They make their exams super difficult for the level you are studying. I have exams that the best student got 80% and everyone else less than that. Maybe it’s just me but if everyone is falling then is a school problem not a individual student problem.
9. They taught me keigo and useless vocabulary for example they taught me how to write Walkman and caset in katakana. And even if most of the vocabulary wasn’t that extreme my Japanese girlfriend said when she saw my vocabulary sheet that the vocabulary was ojisan words and she is constantly correcting me when I use some of the words they taught me because she doesn’t want me to sound like an old Japanese man.
So I do recommend coming to Japan to study Japanese but please don’t go to Kai school. In one year I will review my new school and if you have questions about studying in Japan feel free to ask