Japanese studies?

Hi all,
I've applied for Japanese/Japanese studies at Oxford Brookes, Edinburgh, SOAS and Durham (I've received offers for all except Ed so far). I've been to open days for OxBro and SOAS since those are the two I'm really into, but although SOAS is apparently far higher than OxBro, I found at the open day that OxBro was the one I really fell in love with. I went to a presentation about the course and thought it sounded really good, and I love the university and the location. In comparison, SOAS seemed unwelcoming and a bit too snobbish for me, if I'm honest (please feel free to correct me if I got the wrong impression). I know that SOAS is the 'place to go' for Asian languages, but would I be stupid to firm OxBro instead? I love London, but I'm really not sure if SOAS is the place for me. Any info anyone can give on either courses would be really great.

I'm a first year studying Japanese now, and one of my classmates used to do another language at SOAS, before taking some time out and coming to the uni I'm currently at. What she what she said was that it isn't bad, but it can be really rigid and inflexible - for example she wanted to switch her main subject to Japanese (having been learning it alongside), and they wouldn't really let her, and they were a real pain in the behind if you needed any rearragement of exams/coursework due to exceptional circumstances. The inflexibility thing matched up with the impression I got at the open day when I enquired about doing Japanese joint honours - it would have become very rigid in terms of what modules I could take and I wouldn't have had much flexibility. This isn't to say that they're bad, just that they're imperfect and you shouldn't necessarily think of them as automatically the best option. I don't know anything about Brookes I'm afraid.

Edinburgh I know a lot better as I'm from there and I've been to their open days and some of their Japanese society events - I'd really encourage you to think about them more closely as everyone I've spoken to says the teaching is pretty good and the modules that can go alongside (like East Asian history for example) are really interesting. They struck me as quite a lot nicer than SOAS actually (I know there are people that have a great time at SOAS too, but there are equally plenty of people who really don't like it much). Also don't worry about not having an offer from them yet - they're just always really late with them as far as I can tell, mine didn't arrive until well into spring last year, so hopefully you'll get one. If I hadn't got an offer from Oxford I'd have gone there.

Hope this helps. Do you speak any Japanese already btw?

I'm a first year studying Japanese now, and one of my classmates used to do another language at SOAS, before taking some time out and coming to the uni I'm currently at. What she what she said was that it isn't bad, but it can be really rigid and inflexible - for example she wanted to switch her main subject to Japanese (having been learning it alongside), and they wouldn't really let her, and they were a real pain in the behind if you needed any rearragement of exams/coursework due to exceptional circumstances. The inflexibility thing matched up with the impression I got at the open day when I enquired about doing Japanese joint honours - it would have become very rigid in terms of what modules I could take and I wouldn't have had much flexibility. This isn't to say that they're bad, just that they're imperfect and you shouldn't necessarily think of them as automatically the best option. I don't know anything about Brookes I'm afraid.

Edinburgh I know a lot better as I'm from there and I've been to their open days and some of their Japanese society events - I'd really encourage you to think about them more closely as everyone I've spoken to says the teaching is pretty good and the modules that can go alongside (like East Asian history for example) are really interesting. They struck me as quite a lot nicer than SOAS actually (I know there are people that have a great time at SOAS too, but there are equally plenty of people who really don't like it much). Also don't worry about not having an offer from them yet - they're just always really late with them as far as I can tell, mine didn't arrive until well into spring last year, so hopefully you'll get one. If I hadn't got an offer from Oxford I'd have gone there.

Hope this helps. Do you speak any Japanese already btw?

I would actually agree with most of this - the module structure of languages is very rigid, mostly because there are varying speeds depending on whether you’re doing it as your main or second subject and what the specific title of your degree is for dual honours (ie. ‘and’ or ‘with’). If you’re doing single honours, it’s not really an issue. That’s what I’m doing and I get 30 free credits (so two 1 term modules or one whole year module) to take from any department. As for reorganising assessment, that’s VERY true and SOAS are notoriously bad at admin, but it’s a small school and so it’s a very small number of people that need to reschedule which makes things a bit more annoying to organise.

To be honest I think SOAS suits a very specific type of student. The students here are incredibly focused on their subjects and our lives all revolve around our studies (this is much more true for languages than other subjects). We all chose SOAS because we knew it would be really rigorous so we all work hard and definitely sacrifice our social lives in the process. It can get a bit frustrating when I see my friends doing sciences or humanities at other unis doing much less work and going out more, but everyone knows this is what they’ve signed up for. So unless you’re absolutely in love with Japanese and are coming to uni to learn it rather than coming to have fun/the experience then maybe SOAS isn’t the best choice. It definitely depends on what you want your experience to be about and how intense you want your studies to be.