Shinwa Foreign Language Academy

I really enjoyed this class. The course went over chapters 1-24 in the minna no nihongo textbooks with tests every week and a final on the last week. This also includes intensive hiragana and katakana workbooks as well as a kanji book we started on the 3rd week. I did not pass the class because I did not study enough. However, I highly recommend this class for new Japanese learners because through this class I made significant progress in understanding the language. Far more than I was managing with self study.
The one major issue I experienced is that this school seems more geared for Chinese students so I did not have many English speaking classmates. Which means that if you don’t understand something there’s not going to be someone you can rely on to quickly explain it in English if you’re completely lost. I was in a class of 12 people and I was the only American. There were 8 Chinese students, 2 Vietnamese students and 1 French student. From the looks of it that was common throughout the whole school. Personally, I was okay with this because it forced me to interact using the class content and I couldn’t realistically communicate ideas by falling back on my native tongue. If you take this class I highly, highly, recommend going to the English counselor for assistance if there’s anything you don’t understand.

I liked how organized the content was taught, for instance, each chapter would progressively built on the past lessons. I've also noticed that the teachers would change the grammatical structure of their sentences in order to demonstrate how the new chapter's content could be used. The location was nice and easy to access, I've been able to travel to my classroom via Tram, Subway, JR and all of them were very convenient.

I did not get to participate any activities nor use any provided houses so no comment.

I did find it troublesome with the pacing of the course, I took the 10-week session with Shinwa found it somewhat difficult to catch up if I fail to understand the current chapter's content. I also found that there is a lack of discipline in some classes. There was a day when the instructor didn't come and my class was split and merged with another class that was loud and disrespectful. It was not a good environment to learn in, as my peers would chatter in Mandarin and the instructor was not able to control the class.

Had a great time. Teachers were passionate and accommodating. Loved my time there.

It has been nice. Teachers were friendly and overall everyhthing was ok.
Maybe just the teaching method was hard for europeans, due to different
method of learning

I was picked up at the airport and guided by a Ben from the office who took me to me accommodation by train, then registered me at city hall, got my insurance, hanko, bank account and mobile phone. He was really helpful.

Classes began a few days later and were hard at first as they do not use English at all so it’s fully immersive and intensive. But I soon caught up and adapted to the study culture of Japan.

Teachers helped me a lot and were really supportive and enthusiastic. They helped me to apply for college and I got in too.

Ben helped me a lot in his free time too, taking me to hospitals, dentists and even to sort out my first bills at my apartment.

I studied for an 18-month course and graduated last year. The course was fast pace and hard to keep up for the first 2 weeks. But teachers organizes man to man classes after in English to help me catch up. After a week of these, I was back on track.

Japanese schools teach in Japanese only which was daunting at first but once you pick up the language and self-study you can learn very easily.

I went from beginner to N3/2 level in my time.

After I graduated I returned to the states and now work in a company that needed a Japanese speaker so I often visit Japan now.

It’s a good school and the English speaking staff, Ben was super supportive and helpful. He taught me basic grammar in his free time when I was stuck and helped me with registering at city hall and stuff.

Can’t recommend this school enough.