Japan

This basic Japanese course is designed to improve speaking skills. A different theme concerning Japanese culture and society is chosen for each course and students are split into groups to engage in activities, discussion, and group work concerning the selected topic. The overall goal of the class is for students to widen their perspectives and deepen their knowledge regarding various issues related to Japan and Japanese society. The program offers various theme courses and students may take multiple sections. 

This course instructs on Korean language and culture in order to communicate with Korean people.  It covers Beginning Korean language skills: the Korean Alphabet (hangul); pronunciation, as well as reading, writing and speaking in a variety of situations. The course also introduces Korean traditional culture and the recent Korean wave, including K-pop or K-drama.

By the end of this course, students are expected: 
1. To know how to read and write Hangul (Korean Alphabet) as well as practice correct pronunciation.
2. To have acquired basic grammar as well as the basic sentence structure.
3. To have acquired basic conversation skills in ordinary situations such as self-introduction, shopping, and ordering in restaurants, etc.
4. To have acquired basic writing skills: emails, letters, and diary, etc.
5. To have acquired the socio-cultural knowledge to understand communication in a variety of settings in a Korean society.

The Individual Research Training Senior (IRT Senior) Course is an advanced course of the Individual Research Training B (IRT B) course in the Tohoku University Junior Year Program in English (JYPE) in the spring semester. Though short-term international exchange students are not degree candidates at Tohoku University, a similar experience is offered by special arrangement. Students are required to submit: an abstract concerning the results of their IRT Senior project, a paper (A4, 20-30 pages) on their research at the end of the exchange term, and an oral presentation on the results of their IRT Senior project near the end of the　term.

This introductory course aims to give students basic familiarity with the systems and language of law in England, the United States, and Australia. The course also aims to provide students some degree of confidence in tackling the difficult task of reading primary legal materials (cases and statutes) from these countries, which is essential in their future work as legal professionals or white-collar workers.

This advanced Japanese course is designed to improve speaking skills. A theme concerning Japanese culture and society is chosen for each course and students are split into groups to engage in activities, discussion, and group work concerning the selected topic. The goal of the class is for students to widen their perspectives and deepen their knowledge regarding various issues related to Japan and Japanese society.The program offers various theme courses and students may take multiple sections. 

This is a contemporary history (from late 20th century to current period) course on East Asia surveyed through the lens of multidisciplinary area studies. It highlights select important themes in political-economic developments that may potentially lead to better understanding of contemporary East Asian regionalism and affairs. These political-economic themes can be found in the case studies on East Asian regionalism, energy use, soft power, technological developments (including military-industrial complex). The course materials are also divided into three major regions of focus: Northeast Asia, Southeast Asia, and US-Pacific presence. This course does not pretend to be comprehensive but provides class participants with the essential knowledge to analyze and understand contemporary East Asian political-economic affairs and development.

This course aims to instruct students basic conversation, reading and writing capabilities necessary for everyday life in Japan.

Eligibility: Students who have studied no Japanese.

The objectives of this course are as follows:
A1 level in the CEFR/JF Standard for Japanese-Language Education

1. For students to understand and correctly use basic greetings and set phrases
2. For students to speak about things around them and interact with others using combinations of simple phrases
3. For students to understand simple informative texts and brief passages about familiar topics

In recent years, there has been growing interest in sign language along with increasing social awareness that sign language is a real language worthy of systematic study. This course is a general education survey course introduces students to the many different social and communicative aspects of signing found around the world in deaf and non-deaf communities. Even hearing communities such as aboriginal and monastic ones have found the need to communicate visually when, for whatever reason, speech cannot be used.

By the end of this course, students are expected to: Learning Goals:
1) Have acquired insight into a different visual world of communication.

2) Have increased awareness of changes in attitudes regarding disability, identity, and culture.

3) Have a better understanding of educational and social welfare practices affecting the deaf in Japan and around the world.

Globalization and Japan is usually connected with the oft researched policy of “Cool Japan, ” which emphasizes popular culture, particularly anime and manga. Courses on anime and manga tend to focus on an analysis of the object, whether it is a particular anime or manga title. This course aims to fill the gap, by shifting the focus to the industries as popular culture cannot exist without the complex structures of business, form and application of anime and manga.

The course aims: 

1. To introduce the student to the “behind-the-scenes” aspects of anime and manga.
2. To introduce the student to research on anime and manga from a case study.
3. To engage students in critical approaches towards familiar topics.
4. To encourage students in think critically through their own projects of a chosen case study.

This course teaches the community ecology of marine kelps through readings of chapters related to ecological topics in the book The Biology and Ecology of Giant Kelp Forests by Schiel & Foster (2015).

The course aims to understand the structure and function of marine kelp communities through the study of the ecology of giant kelp forests.