Japanese for Exchange Students: Your First Month on a Japanese Campus

The first month in three sentences

Three things to be able to say in your first week, before any grammar: that you want to speak Japanese, that English is not necessary, and that you would like to be corrected. Said early, they set the terms of every friendship you will make. Said in Japanese, they prove you mean it.

Orientation week: who you are and what you need

The first days are introductions and forms. You will say what you are and where you live dozens of times, to staff, classmates and the dorm manager, so make those sentences automatic. The four cards below are the ones you will use most; the vocabulary that follows is what the forms and the staff will use.

Two visits sit outside the campus. Within a set period after moving in, commonly fourteen days, foreign residents register their address at the city or ward office; at the same visit most students join the national health insurance scheme. Your international office will tell you exactly what to bring; the words below let you follow what is said at the counter.

Dorm life: the words on the kitchen wall

A Japanese student dorm, ryō, runs on a handful of rules that everyone is expected to know: which day each kind of rubbish goes out, whether there is a curfew, how the shared kitchen and laundry are used, and when quiet hours begin. The dorm manager, often called ryōchō or kanrinin, is the person to ask, and asking in Japanese on day one is the best first impression you can make. Rubbish sorting is taken seriously everywhere in Japan; the categories differ by city, so ask rather than guess.

Tsukattemasu is the spoken contraction of tsukatte imasu; dropping the i is normal in casual and even polite everyday speech. You will hear it constantly in the dorm.

Circles and clubs: how recruitment works and how to join

Japanese campus life happens in groups. A bukatsu is a club, usually official and fairly serious; a sākuru is a circle, student-run and often relaxed, covering everything from tennis to tea ceremony to international exchange. Recruitment, called shinkan, peaks in April with stalls, flyers and welcome parties, but most groups take members all year, and autumn arrivals are usually welcome if they ask. The normal first step is kengaku, watching a session, and the normal first question is whether a beginner is all right.

Circles are also where friendships form, because you see the same people every week doing something that is not studying. If you want Japanese friends, join one circle that has few other exchange students in it.

Part-time work: the rules to check before you start

Many exchange students work part-time, arubaito or baito, in cafés, convenience stores, language schools and tutoring. Before you start, check two things with your international office and official sources. First, whether you need permission for activities outside your visa status, commonly called shikakugai katsudō kyoka; students on a student visa generally do. Second, the weekly hours limit, commonly stated as twenty-eight hours during term and more during long vacations. Rules depend on your status and change over time, so treat this paragraph as a reason to ask, not as the answer.

At the job itself, the first conversation is the interview, which for a student job is brief and friendly. Being able to state your permission and your availability in Japanese often matters more than fluency.

Jikyū is the hourly wage; minimum wages are set by prefecture and change yearly, so compare offers locally rather than against what friends elsewhere earn.

Making friends who keep speaking Japanese

Here is why classmates switch to English: they are being kind, they want to practise too, and your pause looked like distress. All three are solved by saying, in Japanese, what you want. Explain that you came to practise Japanese and ask whether you can speak Japanese together. Then make it fair: offer to help with their English on another day or for the last ten minutes. Finally, remove the trigger for switching: when you are lost, ask them to repeat or to say it more simply, in Japanese, so that the conversation never leaves the language.

The second half of the trick is to be easy to talk to. Ask questions, react, use the casual forms your friends use, and suggest the next meeting yourself. Exchanging contacts on a messaging app usually happens in the first conversation, and the phrase for it is below.

The negative question, tabenai? or shinai?, is the standard casual invitation among students: literally won't you eat?, in effect shall we? It sounds far more natural than tabemashō ka at a cafeteria table.

Mistakes that build the English bubble

• Sitting with students from your own country at every meal. Eat with your circle or your Japanese classmates at least half the time.
• Letting the buddy programme do the talking. Buddies are a start; ask yours to introduce you to their friends, in Japanese.
• Switching to English yourself at the first pause. Ask for a repeat or a simpler version instead; the pause is normal.
• Using only polite forms with classmates. Students speak casually; if you do not, you sound like a visitor, and they will treat you like one.
• Skipping the circle because you are not good at the activity. You are joining for the people; being a beginner is the best conversation starter there is.
• Treating the first month as settling in. It is the month when habits are set; the Japanese you speak now is the Japanese you will speak all year.