From start to finish, applying for and getting into HAL was a nerve-wracking experience. Although I had applied to Yamasa without any outside help, that was in English and this was in Japanese. Not to mention that the Japanese way of doing applications slightly differs from the American and Canadian one.
I was lucky to have Yamaguchi-sensei, who was my main class teacher at the time, and Taniyama-sensei, a private lesson teacher who I do gaming-related classes with, to help me through. Without them I probably could have done it, but it would have been a lot worse of an experience.
In what follows below, I’ll be detailing the process of how I got into HAL, from the beginning up until I was told that I got in.
Preparing to apply
Going through the pamphlets that came to me was exciting, but it was also frightening in a lot of ways. It didn’t help that I began looking into schools about 6 months ago, when my Japanese wasn’t at the level it’s at now, and all the technical words like 願書 (gansho, ie. the application paper) made me feel like all the Japanese I had learned up until then was crap. Looking at the application guide was seriously like reading a whole new language.
Most schools sent out two main pamphlets: a booklet that introduced their school and their curriculum, and a booklet that told you when and how to apply. Some had a separate pamphlet for international students.
In addition to the obvious stuff like tuition prices and possible living arrangements, my teachers and I specifically looked for the following:
- Did they accept international students
- Was there a test
- Was there an interview
- Was there an essay
The first item on that list might seem a bit odd to you (I know it did to me), especially since my name is obviously not Japanese, but I did, indeed, get pamphlets from a few schools that didn’t look like they accepted international students. I then narrowed my choices down to HAL and Tokyo Net Wave. According to the materials, HAL had a written test, an interview, and an essay, while Tokyo Net Wave only had the first two.
Yamaguchi-sensei e-mailed both schools to ask about the tests and other information. Tokyo Net Wave seemed a lot less strict — they said that the test was like the JLPT2 but you had to get a 70% to pass. HAL Nagoya (I hadn’t decided if I wanted to go there or Osaka yet) was more tight lipped, although eventually we did learn that they had changed their test for this year, eliminating the essay portion and replacing it with an aptitude test that included basic math problems.
When I finally decided on HAL Osaka, Yamaguchi-sensei e-mailed them to clarify some parts of the application process and in the process learned that their test was different than Nagoya’s. Instead of a math portion, their aptitude test was made up of problems where you determine the next item in a sequence. They also did not have an essay portion.
The application process
In order to apply I needed to complete the application form, take a payment form to a bank and pay it, and include some documents from my Japanese school as well as my diploma from UBC.
The application form was pretty easy — I had to attach a picture of myself, and then it wanted to know what I wanted to study, what my address was, my visa status, what schools I had attended, information about how I was going to support myself through school, and then it just asked a few basic questions about why I wanted to study at HAL. The only weird thing was that the information on previous schools was from elementary school onward, so I had to e-mail my mom asking for dates of when I went to which school.
The payment form was like the one for the JLPT; I had to fill out my name and address and then take it to a bank. I payed it, they stamped it and gave me a receipt that I would give to the school to confirm that I had paid the application money. All 30,000 yen of it (that’s about $300 USD). The weird thing about it, though, was that I wasn’t allowed to pay the money until the starting date for the application, so I had to wait until after October 1 to pay it.
Yamaguchi-sensei said that it would make a better impression for me to go in person to give the application instead of mailing it, so I decided that I’d go over the break. At this point instead of Yamaguchi-sensei, I got in touch with the HAL representative, Yamaguchi-san (yes, he had the same last name as my teacher… we all had a laugh about it). I confirmed the time and asked if I could bring some friends along because they wanted to see the campus. With everything set, all I had to do was to wait for October 3 to come around.
Going for the interview and test
When I got to the school, I was brought to a room to wait for Yamaguchi-san to arrive. In the meantime I had to fill out a little card asking for similar information than what was on the application. When he got there, I gave him the application stuff and he started going through it, asking questions as he did. Since I had actually had an old version of the curriculum, he had to fix the specialization area. I also had a little trouble with the address field of the new card because it wasn’t the typical one line, but rather split the information up in a way that was strange to me.
After that was out of the way, though, he showed us some of the projects that previous students had made and explained more about the school and how not all graduates get into the gaming industry. We then took a tour of the facilities and he explained about the various contests that HAL sponsors — the biggest one being a competition in the Tokyo Game Show, first prize of which is a trip to Hawaii.
When the tour was over, I went to go take my test and my friends went off to eat lunch. The test itself was only three pages: two of them were to measure my Japanese ability and the last was the aptitude test.
The first page was mostly reading and writing kanji (which I completely screwed up; writing is especially a weak point for me because I do most of my typing on the computer), some fill in the blank with the correct word, and then a particle portion. I was actually convinced that I screwed up on the particles, as I am won’t to do, but I got them all right somehow.
The second page was a short reading passage for which you had to answer questions. The first part was another set of kanji reading problems, of which I got them all except for 印刷術 (insatsu-jutsu, which is printing technology). Of course the next day I randomly saw the word in a different context and knew it right away. Sigh. Anyway, the short answer questions about the passage weren’t too bad, but I got marked off a little bit because in trying not to write too much, I wrote to little. Which is a consistent problem with me and not just in Japanese.
The aptitude test was actually much easier than expected. I either don’t suck nearly as bad at those kinds of problems as I thought I did, or they really were that easy. A few stumped me for a little bit, but all I had to do was start making various shapes around the letters that were the same and the pattern became easier to see. I ended up getting 100% on that section, which was wasn’t wholly unexpected but still very cool.
I actually failed the Japanese part by a few points — I got like 68.9% and passing was 70%, but because my interview had gone so well (probably because it didn’t feel like an interview when I was going through it… the practice interviews I did with Yamaguchi-sensei and Taniyama-sensei were much harder) and I still have 6 months to get my Japanese up to snuff, I got a pass. Meaning that I was in.
Hammering out the details
We then spent about a half an hour or so talking about the other details — living arrangements, how I have to wait until the end of the month in order to complete the application process because it’s still early, etc. At that point I was tired and I felt like I was screwing up my Japanese left, right, and center but my friends (who were waiting in the hallway) told me that Yamaguchi-san seemed really excited about me going to HAL. And he was really nice, telling me to contact him if I had any questions or whatever.
All in all, I still have a lot to take care of, but the main worry — whether or not I would get in — has been taken care of, so from here on out I can prepare in a leisurely manner.
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