SOAS BA Japanese AMA

What’s your favourite part of the course and why did you decide to study Japanese?

How was it first going into school last September? I got an offer to study Japanese there this year (I'm in year 13 currently) but I never see anyone online talking about also going so I'm kind of nervous I'll end up alone in that class 😅

idk if your referring especially to making friends but that’s what I’ll talk about I guess!! tbh it was ROUGH. I could talk about this for ages lol because no one EVER talks about how hard it actually is to make friends at uni. it seems to be different for everyone and this is just my personal experience, so keep that in mind!! but anyway people say you just have to join societies and talk to people but I think it’s sm harder than that. ngl I went to a couple of societies but they seem super cliquey and not very welcoming to new people (maybe other people don’t think that but I’ve talked to a bunch of other people and they’ve also said the same thing) and freshers SUCKS. i tried going to like 3 events but i quickly realised I’d rather stay at home than suffer thru 1000s of awkward interactions, trying desperately to become friends with someone. I had no friends for ages and then one random day I saw this girl from my class in the bathroom and for some reason we started taking and instantly became friends?? so I think it’s pretty random and tbh I think it’s better to be alone for a couple weeks until it happens naturally rather than trying to force it as people do during freshers and stuff. (Not to say I don’t try because believe me I did but all the people I tried to talk to during the beginning I’ve never talked to again). So yeah i didn’t really know how to answer because loads of people at uni seem to have like 300 friends and some people like me only have 1. Tbh making friends wasn’t my TOP priority because I’m super comfortable being alone so as soon as I saw how awkward the first week was I stopped suffering through those awkward interactions and just decided to wait until it happened naturally. (also probably good to say I am autistic with bad social anxiety so it was always going to be way harder for me and maybe if you’re not it might be easier??) AGAIN THIS IS JUST MY VERY SPECIFIC SITUATION AND HOPEFULLY THIS DIDN’T MAKE U REALLY WORRIED IM SURE U WILL MAKE FRIENDS COZ LOADS OF PEOPLE SEEM TO HAVE LOADS OF FRIENDS‼️
ps. sorry for rambling sm idk how helpful this was 😭😭

SUPER HELPFUL TY I am indeed neurodivergent and being alone in public spaces (school specifically) is lwk terrifying😭 Not to mention I'm splitting off from a friend of over 9 years since she's leaving London for uni- BUT I'm glad the Japanese department seems so chill from all the posts I've read and hopefully I find cool ppl 🙏

I decide to study coz japanese coz I’ve wanted to live in Japan since I was like 10 haha and my fav part is the teachers. omg everyone says SOAS sucks but the japanese course teachers especially are AMAZING. seriously I’ve never had teachers I absolutely love but this year gahhhh they’re so sweet and all the classes are super fun- like last week we were doing origami haha. so even though the course is pretty intense and fast paced they make it super enjoyable and you really learn so much!! also people start dropping out super quickly (as in like a month in lmao) so the classes start getting super small- at the beginning of the year there were like 20 people in per class (there’s 3 classes in total) and now every week there’s 9 at MAX (usually it’s more like 6 LMAO) so it’s basically like private tutoring and the teachers can really help you. hopefully that answers it haha )