Japanese Summer Course at Kyoto Institute of Culture & Language
Ever since I was a child, I always wanted to travel to Japan. Along with my brother and father, I practiced Judo for years, and I was fascinated with Asian language, culture & history.
While working in London for the Placement year of my University course in England, I decided that I should do something special over the summer. Naturally this meant travelling to Asia - but I didn’t want to just travel, I wanted to live like a local and experience Japan from a ground-level perspective.
One of my Taiwanese friends from University had moved to Tokyo to study Japanese, and she recommended going to study in Kyoto because of how beautiful it is there. I researched a few language courses, and KICL’s Summer Intensive Course came out on top. I am a photographer, videographer, musician, sound engineer, and I study Tonmeister (Music & Sound Recording), so the fact that KICL shares a campus with a creative university was an added bonus!
I made videos of my time in Kyoto and Tokyo, which you can see on my Youtube channel: tinyurl.com/dajathwi
I learned Hiragana, Katakana and some very basic Japanese before I attended the course, and previously studied Mandarin Chinese (so I knew some Kanji), but I was still a bit apprehensive on the way from Osaka to Kyoto about how well I would be able to communicate with other students. This turned out to not be a problem, as many other students spoke English or Mandarin, and everyone picked up Japanese so quickly that we were soon able to communicate quite well - I found that speaking to students who didn’t know my native language was a great way to practise our Japanese. I was in class 1-B, and the course helped me learn so quickly that I was even able to translate for a customer at the local ramen restaurant near my accommodation after just a couple of weeks!
While I was in Kyoto, I visited Kyoto International Church each Sunday, which turned out to be another great place to meet people and practise Japanese - at the church, there is a mixture of Japanese and International people, and they also host weekly language exchange sessions. The people there are extremely friendly, helpful, have lots of great suggestions for places you can visit throughout Kyoto and the rest of Japan, and can also offer advice on being an International in Japan because many of them have learned from their own experience.
I come from Northern Ireland, and the weather there is normally colder and not very sunny, so getting used to the Japanese Summer was difficult, but as time went on it became easier to manage. I tried to avoid going out during the early afternoon, so I didn’t go to many of the KICL afternoon activities (but I now wish I did!). Instead I did my homework in the afternoon, and went out to explore later, into the evening - this worked out well, as August is the peak of the 祭り (matsuri - festival) season, so many of the temples were open until late with light installations!
Kodai-ji’s Bamboo forest, lit for Kyo no Tanabata
KICL’s 和太鼓 (Taiko Drum) class
Arashiyama’s famous bamboo forest
線香花火 at Demachiyanagi
One of the floats for Gion Matsuri on Shijo-dori
線香花火 at Demachiyanagi
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