I just stumbled on a very cool little website called Laura at Sodai (早大, a contraction of 早稲田大学). She's a second-year student in SILS, the international school into which all the exchange students are placed. The site's a great, down-to-earth guide for foriegn students interested in (or already in) studying at Waseda. It's more targeted at four-year exchanges than one-years, but worth a read whomever you are. A few selections:
Q: Would you recommend living in a dorm, esp. Wakei?
All my guy friends who stayed/stay at Wakei can attest for the crazy rules and rowdy people, but I hear the food is pretty good.
It's important to mention that Senpai/kouhai relations are really important,
so you definitely have to be willing to show a lot of respect to your seniors, even outside of the dorm.
oh, and there's a biiiiiig staircase you have to climb to get to it. my
friend attests he lost a lot of weight because of it, haha.
Doesn't sound so appealing, I guess, but it's the dorm with the most culture/history...
If you were ever doing business with a Japanese company, and one of the
Japanese businessmen went to Waseda, you would definitely get on his
good side if you were to say you stayed at Wakei.
As well, Murakami Haruki stayed there, and his book Norwegian Wood
partially takes place there. It's also very close to the former
residence of Matsuo Basho.
All in all, it's a definite recommendation for extroverts who want a memorable experience,
but I couldn't recommend it for people who are more introverted.
Not a question, but part of a pre-summer post:
One of the most popular questions I was asked was specifically about
what kind of students SILS are looking for. I've given advice about
this in legnth before, but what I came to realize is that the question
is really much easier than you would think. Who are they looking for?
They're looking for you.
And I'm not trying to sound like a tool here at all... it's
true. People don't apply to Waseda as a safety school, an afterthought,
or because their friends are applying, too (at least I'd hope not).
More often than not (Putting my friend Michael aside, haha), provided
you're the kind of person that wants to go to school in Japan, you're
already a great candidate. If you're applying to SILS, you're the kind of person SILS is looking for.
It's up to you to stand out in an increasingly large stack of manila
folders. Just show them your an interesting person, with a true desire
to study in Japan. My only suggestion would have been to give them
passion. Passion is a hard thing to fake, so I don't mind suggesting
it. It's a boring answer, but it's just like applying for any other
college.
Here's a great longer-form piece, "Climbing the Ladder." I'd truncate and link to the full post, but there aren't any div markers on the site, so here it is in its entirety.
There are many many overused statements about Japanese culture.
My personal favorite (and frequently abused) is "Japan is notable for it's four distinct seasons."
For studiers of Japan and its culture, there is a certain ledge that one reaches--on what I like to call the "Japanese Aficionado Unanonymous" bookshelf--at which point previously insightful phrases like this one are reflexively scoffed at.
"Oh please" you snob, "are you here to tell me that the nail that sticks out gets hammered down, too?"
This is nature of the pathetically eclectic social order I belong to...
With each successive step up the ladder, admittance to the next level
becomes harder and harder.
Greenhorns don't count on this scale, but I suppose it's worth
mentioning that most people start out their journeys by loving ramen,
and memorizing catch phrases from their favorite anime... striking the
peace sign in family photos.
But truly, the first rung of the ladder is much above this. In
the earlier stages of development you have very simple tasks, such as
denouncing your love of Japanese animation, saying you prefer Dramas,
feigning love for acquired tastes such as umeboushi, prefering miso or
tonkotsu ramen over cha-shu.
From there things get a little more tricky. Membership requires you to
naturally blush red with embarassment when foreigners sprawl themselves
out in the reserved seat section of the trains, learning to wash your
hands before entering a shrine... you eat nigiri sushi (not that silly
maki business) with your hands...
Then you get into all these aformentioned concepts about
Japanese culture... "I know about Honne and Tatemae, about Aimai, about
Shuudan Ishiki and Giri and Oku." "I know what Japan is really like."
Somewhere along the line you head off to Japan and then it just gets
tougher and tougher. You must first declare all those cultural
observational statements as plebian knowledge. You must look down on
those below you on the ladder. You must reflect on your actions: do you
go all the way to the Family Mart across the street to get the
particular brand of tea you like, do you only listen to summer songs in
the summer and winter songs in the winter, do you have a teiki on your
PASMO, and did you get the PASMO because at one time it was more
convenient than Suica and you knew it? Have you walked all the way home
after missing the last train? Do you really like umeboushi?
What's interesting is that once you get past most of this standard
qualifier stuff, moving onto the next level of Japanese snobbery
requires you to renounce statements and beliefs that got you to where
you were: You eat tekka maki after all, liking Anime is okay and
necessary in the case of Sazae-san and Chibi Maruko-chan, Anpanman and
Doraemon; you have to have cried when you saw The Dog of Flanders, you
have to like Laputa best. You embrace the four seasons, you get excited
by Japanese Royal Family gossip... You get above it all only to slowly
sink in and flow along.
I can't quite fathom how many more shelves I need to climb
in order to be able to see how high up Dave Spector is, but I do know
I'll need to start liking natto before then (not to mention bleaching
my hair blonde) so I'll have to stay content for the time being at the
level I am at now, somewhere between reconciling my past love of anime
and being able to separate newly burnable from unburnable plastics. Let
me tell you, I'm pretty well up here.
So back to this statement, "Japan has four distinct
seasons," I admit to it, knowing how stale the phrase has gotten, but
agreeing like the good wa-protector I am. October first, I swear by the
Chuo line being delayed at this very moment, the Japanese government
flipped the season switch and it became Autumn. An instantaneous,
almost 30degree faerenheit drop, and now it's 60 every day and cloudy.
The short sleeved tshirts are away in storage, the trench coats are
out, chestnut candies are back in stock, and school is back in session. (風敗かないように） don't catch a cold, as they say,
because new TV announcers are in the studio and we all need to get on
with fall.
Finally, the gem of the site for prospective four-years, the Sils Setsumei. It may not be a peer-reviewed piece of academic excellence, but it rings true to me, mostly corroborates with what I've learned from talking to SILS graduates and upperclassmen, and is a great place for people thinking about doing college in Japan to start.
If you have heard this, then I applaud the student who graciously drew a distinction between SILS being a drag, and first semester being a drag. I will admit without refrain, my first semester at SILS was very very easy. In nearly all of my classes, I had the best English out of everyone, including the teachers. I was forced to take compulsory English writing, wherein I had to write three measly 800-word-peaking essays on prompts, me being fresh off of a Senior Year 25-page research paper. Compulsory Mathematical Statistics was like pouring onion powder in my eyes. Yes, first semester is pretty disconcerting....
...I know after graduating SILS I'll be able to pass the
JLPT (Japanese language proficiency test) level 1, which means I will
be able to work in major Japanese companies after graduation. But do
you want to be a doctor? Wrong school. Translator? Perfect match.
International Relations or International Business? Most definitely.
Culture studies? You'll have a very unique resume.
I can't decide whether the site is abandoned or just oddly put together, but it feels very late-90's to me. That said, the content's quality, so it's well worth a look.
Also, this strikes me as just the sort of site begging for a little sprucing up, advertising, and interactivity. To be the #4 Google Result for "Waseda SILS," but have no way to connect to or profit off the people accessing your page, seems a little wasteful to me. Even if you don't go to the advertisers, you could make a dandy little profit using your popularity to blackmail the SILS administration ;-)
