Foreign exchange to japan & Rotary Schoolarship?

Question

I am looking into being a FES to Japan. I would most likely do it through Rotarty. I am a freshman now, but would like to go my junior year.

Has anyone done forgein exchange to Japan? Did you like it?

Would I be able to lean the language easily?

Also, is it easy to get a schoolarship through Rotary? I have a B average in a Catholic school (we have a harder grading scale, so B's here are equal to regular A-'s at regular school). I am the freshman president, and I make friends very easily. I am also motivated and good at communicating and adapting with people.

If I didn't get a schoolarship, about how much wold it cost?

Thanks for answering my questions! :)

Answer 1

First, I would NOT recommend INTRAX. They are NOT on the CSIET official list and thus there is very little oversight of that organization. (I admit they have a spiffy website though!)

You really should stick with one on the list. (www.csiet.org). Many high schools won't work with organizations not CSIET listed, and that could be a problem transferring credits.

As to learning the language, I've never been there but just the fact it's a new alphabet will add to the challenge! However, you can always take some language lessons and/or purchase Rosetta Stone to get a good head start! Don't let that get in your way.

From what you say, you sound like a good candidate for an exchange. You really need to contact Rotary soon ... the earlier you start these processes the better. Also, if your school knows you want to take an exchange in your junior year, they may schedule your sophomore year a bit differently.

As to cost, a program will average $7,000 - $10,000 depending upon length of stay and the program itself. Rotary IS considerably cheaper so definitely look into that first!

For lots more info on being an exchange student, check out http://www.exchangestudentworld.com/

Good luck

Answer 2

I definitely recommend Intrax Study Abroad if this is for high school study abroad.  Their founder is japanese so they have the best Japan programs around...in my opinion they are experts in japanese culture.

here's a story from one of their students:

To those who have not experienced Tokyo first hand I think it can be summed up with images of people and steel, harsh clashing forms cutting across one's vision scarcely before they can be comprehended. Like all cities, people congregate in swarms, great herds of man-flesh moving through these cold rain-swept streets, each one moving toward their own ends and seemingly leaving the individual with nothing but a sense of isolation to his name. When one looks up and sees the great buildings looming over you as you scuttle along some tight alleyway with two strangers at either flank dragging you along by sheer momentum and a strange sort of peer-pressure, one begins to feel alone, unimportant, like some errant cog of a great construct which moves with no care to how he is slowly ground away until such time in which he must be replaced, which he promptly is.

But if you move along the right alleys, take a proper turn at Yoyogi station, and look for green bedazzled arms reaching out to comfort you then you will find one of the most majestic places mankind has yet been graced with on this earth.

As soon as you cross the torii (gate), the formerly cacophonous clamor of streetcars and trains dulls till it is but a murmur, a murmur which, strangely enough, does not distract but rather elevates the consciousness. It is not like a monastery located on some distant mount, trying desperately to pretend that a cold, harsh world of machines and men does not exist. Dreaming dogmas that cry out only in denial and which attempt to create a Utopia by gouging out ones eyes. No… this seems far wiser. Rather than flee from the fire, it bends with it, adapts to it, like a certain type of tree that uses forest fires to thrive, letting itself be consumed so that its seeds may disperse and proliferate. So that each seed may find itself a human mind, a human soul, in which to grow and to be made all the grander then the mother tree from whence it spawned.

So you are there in this forest surrounded by trees. By lush greenery that seems to contrast so sharply with the pitiful, half-dead shrubs that struggle to grow up in pathetically small allotments of ground along sideways and bypasses. No, these actually carry a true vitality, that if not for that consciousness-elevating hum (which, if I may interject does not sound unlike on of those bowls which a Buddhist monk would tap and the move a small wooden peg around its circumference creating a deep, hum that seemed to drag the mind into the realm of thoughtfulness) would make one think that one is in the country.