Ritsumeikan and RSJP

So this was an interesting program. Did I think I learnt lots of things from it? Yes, more or less. Was the immersion worth the cost and time of going over to Kyoto? Yes, for sure. The culture lessons? For sure, many times over. The people I met? Absolutely. But were there problems? Definitely. In this section, I will list my thoughts on the program in excruciating detail, minus the people. The people I met will have their own section after this. This part and the Events part after this were written as a review of the RSJP (and RWJP) for future people who might be thinking of going and are googling up the program beforehand. Please tell Mr Tanaka and Ms Nishioka that Jessica (from RSJP1 2023) says hi!

Textbook

The textbook they used for my Intermediate 2 class, Chuukyuu wo Manabou, is somewhere between the Genki textbooks that I’m familiar with from the University of Alberta‘s Japanese 101/102/201/202 classes, and the Marugoto ones from the Japanese 301/302 classes. In my opinion, it’s structured along the same lines as the Marugoto textbooks, in that each chapter is themed around an overarching topic and then there’s a whole bunch of vocabulary, grammar, and other exercises linked to it. Chuukyou is a bit “easier” to read, but that could also be because the book is simply arranged a lot better — in my opinion Marugoto is a terrible mess of a textbook and a nightmare to navigate, and I don’t know why the U of A insists on using it. Marugoto does win out on at least one major category though, and that’s the listening exercises included in that book, they’re far more comprehensive than what Chuukyou has. I believe both books deal with the JLPT N3 level of study though, so they’re not that far off from each other content-wise.

Our Intermediate 1 class was roughly at UAlberta‘s Japanese 301 level though. The other class that was run this year, Beginner 2, seemed like late 102/early 201.

Actual lessons

I had problems with this one. Firstly, our cohort was abnormally small, we only had 8 students. I am not 100% certain, but I think that previous years were usually 10-15+ if not more, ours was just the first year it reopened after the pandemic AND UAlberta had cancelled the Theme Studies in Japan portion of the program that usually follows our RSJP, which was worth another 3 credits, apparently partly due to pressure by Ritsumeikan not liking that UAlberta did it. And/or it might possibly also have been that they were not able to find an instructor able and willing to do it this year. I’m not sure. However, when asked at the information session earlier this year, the PTJC rep said that Ritsumeikan was against UAlberta holding it anyway.

The lack of students did a few things. Firstly, it made it so Ritsumeikan only ran two classes — Beginner 2 and Intermediate 1. For me, Beginner 2 would have been too easy (we compared notes and textbooks to see what the other side was learning), but Intermediate 1 was a bit of a stretch for me at first. I had two years of learning Japanese under my belt, even though I had basically taken two years off of studying after that, so I think Intermediate 1 was the right level for me in the end, but the study experience that the four people in our class had was something like 2 years (me), 2 years (Cameron), 3-4 years (Aubrey), and 6 years (Aurora). So rather than lumping us all in one class, Aurora and maybe Aubrey should have had a more advanced class of their own.

Instead, as far as I believe I heard, this wasn’t as effective for them because it rehashed stuff they already more or less knew, especially for Aurora, even though there’s arguably always new vocab to learn and grammar points to revise. But that’s not really enough when one pays so much money to come over to study. Also, this adversely affected our class (not their fault, of course) because I felt that very often at various points, all three teachers would lean on the better students in class to solve questions, and I had a couple terrible classes where I felt like I was being skipped so that I could listen to how the more experienced students were speaking, or that I was getting a free pass because the teacher knew I wasn’t as good or whatever. But.. that’s sort of the point of coming here to immerse and learn. I need the practice. Don’t take that away from me. And of course some students are going to be better than others if you stuff people of different levels in the same class. Hey teachers, the other 2-years-of-study guy and I aren’t bad students, the others are just a tad overqualified for this class! And just because they understand you and can follow you along, and we can’t, you don’t have to make us feel dumb and unwelcome.

(I also occasionally felt that vibe from those two students, who paired up and became friends with each other, but it wasn’t very overt. Just an occasional looking-down-at-us sort of interpreted reaction.)

This also happened in the other class — apparently one of the four students there was brand new, having only learnt hiragana and katakana as requested by the application form, but he was thrown into Beginner 2, skipping the Beginner 1 basics altogether, to the point that he had to take a few lunchtime extra classes so the teachers could attempts to catch him up. I can’t even imagine having to struggle through that. Apparently he failed the final exam quite spectacularly too, but they still passed him in the end — and rightfully so. There should have been a Beginner 1, Beginner 2, Intermediate 1, and Intermediate 2 class, at the very least, but Ritsumeikan skimped on the classes and forced us into 2 groups of 4 that didn’t really fit.

Another negative here was the rotating door of teachers, both classes had three different teachers that would teach them on different days of the week, and that was just so weird. I feel like there were supposed to be 6 classes (Beginner/Intermediate/Advanced 1-2) but after they pared it down to 2, they still had to give each teacher some teaching to maintain their teacher status or something, maybe. But this did not work well at all. Although it was interesting to hear different teachers’ viewpoints, there was no consistency and continuity between lessons.

So if you had a question for our Tuesday teacher, for example, you’d have to wait until next Tuesday to ask it, and so on. And they still often had to ask where the last teacher had taught until, even though they obviously tried to synchronize as much as possible. There were also contradictions between the teachers when it came to hatsuon (pronunciation), with one teacher making us pronounce something one way and the next day’s teacher correcting that and asking us to pronounce it another way. This was annoying.

However, there were positives to the small class size too. We got a lot of practice time overall, generally speaking, to ask or answer questions and stuff in class, whenever the teachers weren’t snubbing me for not having 6 years of experience in the language yet anyway. It was a lot more personal than the usual Japanese class in University (although my Japanese 102 class in UAlberta in Summer 2019 also had only 7 people!). Having a revolving door of teachers also gave a different sort of advantageous experience, which is to say, a look at different teaching styles and strengths, different accents, and second opinions on things.

A large class definitely would have meant the lessons felt a lot less personal, as there would be less time or content for the teacher to cycle through everyone for. Also, there are four Ritsumeikan sessions in a year, RSJP 1 and 2, and RWJP 1 and 2, where S = Summer and W = Winter. There’s also an RSJP Express or something that takes place concurrently with RSJP 2, and an RWJP Express as well. Kyoto is an extremely crowded city though, and I can’t imagine taking the public bus from Ritsumeikan to the various event venues when the group is 50-70 strong (including Ritsumeikan Buddies and coordinators) when it already felt so tight getting on the bus with 8 of us plus Buddies and coordinators. Yet, those are the numbers the other sessions are looking at — 49 or so students for RSJP 2 this year and another 20-something for RSJP Express. (It sounds like they do get better events than we got though, in terms of the festivals that are taking place in Kyoto during that time period).

Each class day was structured with a 2h 50min morning of Japanese classes, consisting of three blocks of 50-minute periods, with a 10 minute break after the first two (and lunchtime after the third). One of the very cool things about the classes, too, is that about half the classes had a “special” 3rd period block, where we would put aside our textbooks and do something else. Some of these “special” things were a little stressful, like composition writing or writing out a quick script and then reading it out to the class, and some of them involved Buddies coming in and talking to us, whch were sometimes great experiences and sometimes horrible experiences depending on how active or passive the Buddies were. Some of them were just not good fits for this talking segment (Buddy-san to Hanasu) 3rd period blocks at all.

But then there were some really neat classes on top of that, involving learning about body parts and how to ask for help at a doctor’s office, analyzing song lyrics, a teacher’s demonstration of Kansai-ben, watching cultural videos about Japan, and so on. They really should have had more of those — those were great. I said as much during the survey:

Please tell us what you liked the most about the Japanese language classes. How do you think they can be improved?

I liked two things the most — the first is the way all the teachers had no hesitation in going off-topic during classes and telling us interesting facts and trivia about Japan, interesting differences in the usage between similar vocabulary, or just giving us extra pieces of related vocabulary to a topic that someone brought up or used in class. The second were a couple of the “special” 3rd period lessons, like the song lyrics analysis one and the Kansai-ben one. Those were probably two of the best classes there were. There was also the one about injuries and terms to use in a doctor’s office that was really good too.

I would have liked to see more focus on that sort of fun stuff, perhaps on more/different songs or other dialects too, or even something like a list of common Japanese family names, or words that are used relating to death or Buddhism or tea ceremonies or something like that, or Japanese onomatopoeia words (peko peko, pira pira, yura yura, etcetc), or Japanese counters (a flock of birds, a stack of papers, a gaggle of geese), and so on. There’s lots of options.

I think there was too much emphasis put on the textbook, although I did enjoy the worksheets and then going through them afterwards. We could have easily did one chapter less and focused on more interesting topics like the above for the 3rd period every day though.

Buddies

The Ritsumeikan Buddies program is interesting — there are lots of them, usually around 100 or so it seems, though the exact population changes as it’s a volunteer program and they cycle in and out (both between semesters and on a daily/weekly basis). There are slots that they sign up for for events and so they get to do interesting things too, the Buddies we talked to who came along to the tea ceremony and the geiko/maiko and taiko events had never done anything like that before either.

The Buddies were not just for the RSJP though, they also helped interact with the other short-term exchange programs going on concurrently, and also went on field trips with them as well. But their most important role was to join us at lunch and to chat with us — we got to know some of them this way and I think all of us became friends with at least a couple. A couple even joined (or invited) various students out on after-school visits to restaurants or museums or other places afterwards — kind of like I did with Ran over here in Edmonton a few years ago, I guess, though that was more of a formal program to go around to places and not a lunch/meetup to practice the language program.

I asked quite a few of them what their reason for joining the Ritsumeikan Buddy program was, and they said it was to meet people from different countries, learn about their experiences and culture, make friends from abroad, possibly even go abroad themselves and learn other languages, etc. While the conversation was all supposed to be held in Japanese, it definitely occasionally reverted to a bit of English or even Chinese or other languages if we had to explain something, and definitely “outside of class” some of them were happy to use English with us on occasion. Still mostly Japanese though.

I think the Buddies program was a bit understated on promotional material and stuff — this part of the program was great and the good Buddies really made things work. Not all of them were great though, some were very passive and hard to speak to, but I think they would also click well with a certain type of personality, so there were basically all types and it was a matter of finding the right Buddy to connect to. And there were lots of opportunities for that.

I did notice a couple of the incoming students in other programs were either very shy or very withdrawn though and sat by themselves with clear signs to not disturb them, so no one did — for me, I seldom went out of my way to start initiation with a Buddy, but I also more or less sat with the main group and didn’t turn people away, and attended every lunch session that I could as well. I met eyes with and said hi to people that sat near me, so conversations often started that way for me. Some students also didn’t turn up very often to the lunch sessions at all. I think all the approaches are okay, though, depending on what you want to get out of the program.

I’m not sure where to put this so I’m going to add this here as well — the entire program was very LGBTQ-friendly, at least two or three out of us eight were under the LGBTQ umbrella and as far as I knew and heard/saw, no one faced any discrimination from the Buddies or the teachers. Each floor of the building we used for classes (Yoyokan) even had an all-gender washroom. And one of us even did our final presentation on LGBTQ issues and it went over well with the teachers and students.

Housing and transportation

Housing is pretty difficult to write about, as it ties into other things and everyone has different preferences and needs. For me, I wanted a kitchenette so I didn’t like the designated hotel option, plus the guide said that it was about 30 minutes from Tassel Inn, the designated hotel, to Ritsumeikan. That’s very optimistic. It’s closer to 45 minutes, since you have to wait for the extremely crowded 205 bus and hope you can get onto it, walk from the bus stop to the class itself, and the buses are slow due to poor design and many people using them. The buses in Kyoto are almost always on time schedule-wise, though, so Google Maps is a great resource for them.

Regarding Ritsumeikan, there are a number of buses which go there, but one of the main buses is the 205, which a lot of tourists also use. There are several variations of the 205 route, one that goes from the Kyoto Kawaramachi area where our designated hotel was, on the southeast side of the main Kyoto city, and one from the Nishioji Shijo area near where Zian and I stayed, on the south-central side of the main Kyoto city, to the main street outside Ritsumeikan, which is on the northwest side of the main Kyoto city, but it’s a 10 minute walk from there in to the school.

There are also special 205 buses from Nishioji Shijo that go to right outside Ritsumeikan itself, and reverse 205 buses that go from Ritsumeikan to Nishioji Shijo, at certain times of the day, and we used those extensively. Besides that, there are other important bus routes that can be used too, I believe the main group staying at the designated hotel often used bus 15 to get to school in the mornings.

I don’t know where exactly the future designated hotels will be, it looks like RSJP2 has 3 different hotels (Tassel Inn Kyoto Kawaramachi Nijo, Kyoto Horikawa Inn, and Smile Hotel Kyoto Shijo) and RWJP1 tentatively has one hotel that’s completely different (Urbank Hotel Kyoto Nijo Premium), and I’m too lazy to look them up for no real reason, but for those looking for their own residence, I’d definitely recommend something around Nishioji Shijo for a straight bus to Ritsumeikan in the mornings, though there are likely other locations too. Somewhere straight south, or straight east, of Ritsumeikan would probably be the best bet though. You’ll still want to be somewhat near the southeast side of the main city as a lot of the after-school events (and main tourist/shopping attractions) take place around there, it’s just hard to get to and from school efficiently from there.

It’s a little pricier, but I definitely recommend the place I stayed in. Floral Green Maple House. I got a 33 night stay there for 221,130 yen, since I booked early (it’s usually something closer to 270-290k otherwise I think), and other than a lack of good television channels, it was huge, comfortable, quiet, in a great location, and the staff was great. Zian picked a small apartment complex to the west of me, but also in the Nishioji Shijo region, for about half my cost though, I think she paid something around 110k-130k for the 33 nights. It was a lot tinier, and a bit less convenient, but was an unbeatable price. Both buildings were also close to the Aeon Mall just south of us, and those Aeon Malls are great places to go to to get stuff that one needs or dinner in general, whether from a food court or supermarket.

Presentation

The presentation took place on the second last Friday of the program, in a computer lab, and really no one ended up memorizing their script since who has time for that on a short-term program like this? It’s far better to spend that time exploring the city and doing things in a foreign country. The presentation is also marked on things like fluency and pronunciation, and I believe that trying to memorize the script will actually cost the student points in the end, due to stuttering and trying to recall lines, unless they get very fluent at their script, in which case they’ve spent more time than they should on it. And at the end, although there are “marks” on a transcript that the school gets, the entire program hinges on a pass/fail result (with pass being 60%), so I do not believe that it is necessary or optimal to memorize the lines even though they try to encourage you to. That’s a very conservative way of thinking that ignores the reality of students being in a foreign country for 5 weeks.

What is important is actually writing the script and having a good topic/content planned out, then having one of the teachers go over it and suggest corrections. Ms Kaneko did that for us and that was a godsend. All those corrections to my script did wonders for me and at that point it was a matter of making some slides and then reading out the script during presentation day.

While it does not help to memorize the script, it definitely does help to be fluent in it, so practicing it and maybe memorizing small, easy portions of it to look good is still well-advised though.

Dashimono

The 出し物 dashimono, or “performance”, or “theatre program”, or whatever they want to call it, was by far my most hated part of the program, a short group skit that they wanted each class to make and perform on the graduation ceremony day, to “give back to the Buddies and program”. This was extremely idiotic and a complete waste of time. I put this in my closing survey for the program, as an answer to the question: “Do you have any suggestions on how to improve the program?“

2. The dashimono. Sorry for the words that I am going to use, as I am still very angry at this one, but this RSJP has no business forcing us to do a dashimono at the end of the program. There’s no such thing as “giving back to the program” or whatever nonsense was used, when we are already paying a lot of money to fly here to Japan plus the RSJP fees, and when our University of Alberta already made us pay higher fees this year to sign up for it (on top of the RSJP fees, they take some additional fee too), AND they cut the program length because we usually have a two-week “Theme Studies in Japan” program after RSJP but they suggested this year that it was cancelled partly because “Ritsumeikan didn’t like it”, so we are the first RSJP1 group from UAlberta in quite a long time to not have time to enjoy and look around Japan afterwards despite flying all the way here. And Ritsumeikan didn’t offer us dormitory space (or enough cheap hotel space) this year so we had to pay more money to go elsewhere to stay. It is very insulting to tell us that we must feel like we “owe” Ritsumeikan something and must “give back” something before we graduate and leave.

After finishing the presentation and final exam, we should have some guilt-free relaxation time without the stress of homework or exams to go out and either finish up doing all the things we wanted to do that we couldn’t do because we had to work on homework or studying, or to do some shopping to get gifts for the Buddies that we actually like, or just to continue “making the most of our time in Japan” like Tanaka-sensei said. But no, instead, we have to spend time writing and then memorizing(!!) the pointless and frivolous dashimono, worry about props and worry about writing the script and arguing with people who we never made connections in the program about the script instead of spending time with the new friends or Buddies we made who we might never see again, because Ritsumeikan thinks it’s somehow necessary to fill up every last minute of our time so we can’t ever be free to do anything else.

I plan to skip Thursday’s morning classes in revenge to go actually enjoy some time in Japan instead of worry about the dashimono. Sorry for doing that. But the dashimono is really ill-advised and stupid and no one in my class seems to be planning to put in effort in doing a good job anyway. I did try in good faith to suggest some things that would have taken a bit more time to do but would at least have been funny, and no one even cared because they all said they just wanted to get this nonsense over and done with too, and I actually don’t disagree with them. Why are you forcing this dashimono on us literally A FEW HOURS before some of us fly out of Japan? Some people may never be back in the country, but instead they have to spend their last day here memorizing a skit instead of using our time well and doing things in the country? Give us time to do what we want and not force some pointless last minute homework on us.

Anyway, my apologies for venting, but if you want to improve the program, I think the easiest and quickest way to do so is to get rid of the dashimono.

Regretful grammar mistakes aside, I don’t regret writing any of that (half a week before the program ended) and still stand by my words, and I knew they read it before the end of the program too since Ms Nishioka thanked me for filling in the entire survey with long responses on the final day.

Important RSJP tips and tricks

This is some advice I’d give people coming to RSJP and/or I would give myself if I were coming here again from the start.

• Do not bring your textbook and dictionary. The RSJP preparation guide advised us to bring our current textbook “so we can compare what the differences are between our textbook and yours”. This is extremely dumb. This was never brought up in the program by the coordinator or any of the instructors, and this sort of superficial comparison can be done without having the textbook there, or done at home afterwards. What this does is take up lots of extra space in your luggage — textbooks are heavy. DO NOT BRING YOUR TEXTBOOK. Similarly, for the dictionary, one can just use Jisho on the phone or something similar. There was never a case where we had to have a physical dictionary for anything. And these are heavy too. DO NOT BRING YOUR DICTIONARY. You’ll need all that luggage space.
• You’ll need white socks for the tea ceremony event, so bring that. Though you can just buy some for a touch over 100 yen anyway.
• Think very carefully about where to live — both the designated hotels and external places have advantages and disadvantages. I think you can never know for sure which one is “better” though until you arrive and see how the dice dropped. This is also true if they ever offer dormitory space again. There’d be plusses and minuses for staying there too.
• In terms of food, there is a Ritsumeikan cafeteria that sells breakfast for 100 yen a day, if you’re a breakfast person and arrive there early enough, that’s a pretty good choice. There are convenience stores and stuff nearby too though. For lunch, it’s really hard to beat the Ritsumeikan cafeteria too, with its menu that (partially) rotates every Monday. Plus you can then take the cafeteria food tray and go to the lunch session with Buddies if you want. For dinner, check out local supermarkets near you and look to see if there is a deli section with bento boxes there. Those boxes will go on sale for up to 50% off in the evenings past 8 pm or so. Convenience stores or konbinis do not have these sorts of sales, by the way. 引 or “bi” is the “discount” kanji and thus a very important kanji to recognize — 50円引 means 50 yen off, 20% 引 or 2割引 means 20% off, and so on. 割 is “wari” and is a 10x multiplier for the number that comes before it. There’s also 半引 which means 50% off, since 半 or han is the kanji for half. The yellow and red discount tags are eye-catching and exciting to find for cheap food options! 値引き or nebiki (discount) bento boxes are the best.
• Study from the worksheets that accompany each chapter, and the mock exam one from the revision day before the final. And study the exact topics that you are told about on the mock oral exam if you get one. The tests and exam were nearly all basically adapted from the worksheets, at least 80% worth of it, and this includes the sentence-forming portion of the worksheets — 造句 in Chinese, 文を作りなさい in Japanese. The tests consist of being able to write furigana for kanji, some grammar conjugation bits, and then sentence-forming bits. The placement test had an essay-writing portion that was not replicated on any future test or exam.
• Do not bother memorizing your presentation or dashimono script, unless you have lots of extra time or the script is short. (The higher level your class is, the longer your script is expected to be.)
• You can, if you want, ship a box or even an entire luggage bag back to your home country from a Japan Post branch. It can get pricey though, or really slow (1-3 months) if you use the slowest land/sea option, and you’ll have to declare everything inside of it on a form, which is annoying, but that service can help get stuff home if you bought too much.
• It’s virtually impossible to fail the program from an attendance standpoint unless you get really sick and miss most of it, as the passing point is attending at least 2/3 of the classes, so 16/24 of the sessions. A late counts as 1/3 of a miss, so 3 lates count as one missed day, and thus you could be late every day and still get a 16/24 attendance record, so that also means nothing. There is a very short one-question form to fill if you miss a day, and the form can be filled out in English or Japanese. It is also possible to miss out on morning classes but still attend the afternoon event — this was done on at least one occasion by someone and it worked out just fine. The coordinators (Mr Tanaka and Ms Nishioka) aren’t the Japanese teachers and are happy to work with someone to try to get them to the afternoon event nonetheless.
• Bring some sort of gifts or omiyage. I brought 12 postcards or so, and had everyone sign them at the end of most of the individual events, and informally presented them to the event host afterwards. This seemed to be a big hit with everyone, especially the RSJP coordinators. Apparently no one had really done something like this before? Anyway I’ve gone ahead and accidentally set that precedent now, so please do this! If nothing else, what I used were postcards from the Hudson News store in the Edmonton International Airport, that I picked up on the morning before the flight to Japan. In general, this is a great tactic when going on vacations as well. Either to make friends or just to get additional small free things or gratitude with, especially on solo vacations. Always bring postcards or some other sort of easy to carry souvenir to give out to people you meet!
• Travel! Kyoto is near to several other major cities and many historical sites, there’s lots of things to visit in and around Kyoto or the greater Kansai region, and Kyoto to Osaka in particular is super cheap because it’s nearby, and plenty of Ritsumeikan students transit in from Osaka daily. Even for more modern stuff like anime/manga or general music stuff for example, sure there are a couple stores within Kyoto, especially the second-hand stores like Book-off, but you’d largely want to visit Osaka for that.  Or even Nagoya if you want to plonk down $60 each way.
• Finally, friends are the most important currency in life, and it’s pretty difficult to actually outright fail the program if you attend daily, are on time, and look like you’re trying your best. In that vein, I think it is more important to prioritize your friends and doing things together with them, whether it is a Buddy or another student. This is the reason Zian and I skipped a class day after the final exam to go hang out in Osaka, and I wish we could have spent more time together.