Japanese Program

Japanese Corner

Japanese Corner is a great opportunity for students to practice Japanese, meet native speakers, and find out more about Japanese language and culture. It's fun and open to the public. Please join us! Every Wednesday throughout fall semester from 6-7 PM in HAB 106 at CSB. For more information, contact Prof. Yuko Shibata (yshibata@csbsju.edu). 

Language Courses

Through our Japanese language program, we aim for the simultaneous development of speaking, listening, reading, and writing skills. From the start, students will learn hiragana, katakana, and kanji. In the classroom, we focus on enhancing students' oral proficiency through an extensive use of the spoken language, allowing for the development of accurate grammar and culturally-appropriate communication skills.

Celebrating Scholarship and Creativity Day

PowerPoint/Oral Presentations by students in JAPN 312, 311 and 212.

Students presenting during Scholarship and Creativity Day, 2012

Read students' essays entitled I Am A Cat (2011).
(CSB/SJU の文豪たちによる短編集「吾輩は猫である」はこちら) 

Culture Courses

Our culture courses provide students with the opportunity to surpass familiar cultural spheres and to engage intellectually in complicated issues related to Japan, Asia, and the global community. In the process of learning, students will become interlocutors, translators, and critics of the diverse cultures that they are exploring. We offer the following culture courses:

• MCLT 316 Radical Fantasies: Contemporary
  Japanese Women Writers (Modern Japanese Literature and Popular Culture; Women's
  Literature: HM, GE & Cross-listed with Asian Studies and Gender Studies)
• MCLT 319 Literary and Visual Modernities in Transnational East Asia (East Asian Literature and Popular Culture with a Focus on Japan, China, Korea, Hong Kong, and Taiwan: HM & Cross-listed with Asian Studies)
• GEND 360 Colonial Violence and the Mother-Daughter Relationship (Gender Studies and Post-Colonial Studies with a Special Focus on Asia: HM & Cross-listed with Asian Studies)

The Japanese Minor

For students who have achieved an intermediate level of proficiency (three semesters or more), the Japanese minor can provide a more rigorous study of Japanese language, literature, and culture, positioned in a larger Asian picture.

Follow this link for more information.

Study Abroad and Other Cultural Opportunities

There are ample opportunities to visit Japan and to meet native speakers on campus at CSB/SJU. Scholarships are available to assist students to study in Japan.

CSB/SJU students on the summit of Mt. Fuji at sunrise

• Our study abroad program in Japan in the fall semester is hosted by Bunkyo Gakuin University, our twenty-year-long collaborative partner. Bunkyo is located in central Tokyo, with a dorm adjacent to the campus for private use by CSB/SJU students. During the stay you will enjoy field trips to Nikko, Kyoto, Nara, Hiroshima, Mt. Fuji, and Karuizawa.

• Our three-week-long May-term Study Tour to Japan is also hosted by Bunkyo, coupled with field trips to Kyoto, Hiroshima, and Takayama.
• In the spring semester, we have exchange students from Bunkyo in our language classes as your conversation partners for three weeks. You will work jointly on various projects with them.
• Japanese Corner, inaugurated in Fall 2009, meets once a week on campus. Activities are led by Japanese tutors as a fun way to learn Japanese culture and language and to meet native speakers.