amayadoli

My colleague worked full time during his ABD phase lecturing at a different university after funding ran out with our department. Because of that, he had almost no time to work on his dissertation, and it took him a lot of extra time to finish. That, and I don't know how your institution works, but we have the continuous enrollment system here, so once you hit ABD, you have to be enrolled/pay tuition every semester until you finish. If you have the funding (and tuition waiver) with your department, you should definitely stick with that until it's no longer viable.

I'm also giving it a shot this round! Good luck, everyone!

Received notification via snail mail today that I've been selected as an alternate. The letter was sent from the Japan Foundation New York office (postmarked April 13th), but they included the letter from the main Japan Foundation in Tokyo, as well (postmarked April 6th).

Oh my goodness, congratulations! I had really been hoping they would email something rather than waiting until the very end of April, haha. Glad to hear that's the case!

By the way, if anyone has contacted them to ask for any updates on their timeline, please post it here. I contacted them once several weeks ago, but I'm getting a little, uh, antsy. (My deadline to confirm to my department whether I will be here or not next year is April 15th, so JF is cutting it quite close for me).

Nope, I'm still waiting--I know several people who applied as well, and nothing from any of them yet either. I happened to speak to some of the Japan Foundation people at AAS, and from the sound of it, they didn't plan on sending out anything in March this year the way they had in past years. Here's hoping that now that it's April, we'll hear something soon.

I'm also at OSU, and at least within my department, it's pretty common to get funding after the first year if for some reason it doesn't work out for the first year. EDIT: I would like to qualify, however, that your likelihood of funding can depend heavily on how your department works. Even within my department, the chance of getting a TAship starting the second year is quite different between the two halves of my department (which is a language department).

A colleague of mine heard back about interviews for Japanese via phone call last week. Thursday (3/15), I think?

Just to add to that, both myself and the others I know that applied for the IDRF received rejection emails on 1/31, and then the SSRC sent me a second rejection (lol) by snail mail in the week after that. If you haven't heard anything at all, it might be worthwhile to contact them.

On campus is definitely easier! That was one of the reasons I chose it actually--I was moving back to Columbus from abroad, and I didn't have the chance to look for any off campus housing. The quality of it is definitely not bad since it was all built recently. But, if you're in the humanities/social sciences, the rent for on campus housing is basically half the monthly stipend. It's not bad for a year, but living there makes it basically impossible to put any money in savings. Another option, if you don't mind living around undergraduates, is trying the University Village (http://universityvillage.com/). It's off-campus, and a good bit cheaper than on-campus housing, and there's a dedicated University Village bus that runs to and from campus from the complex. A lot of international students live here because it's easy to arrange from overseas, and the majority of the apartments seem to be furnished.

Honestly, the grad housing on campus could be worst. The buildings on Neil Ave. and at Gateway are quite new, and because you're in the Linguistics department, if you lived at the one on Neil you'd be literally a block and a half from Oxley Hall. The main downside is that it's exceedingly expensive (~$800/mo and up) for what you're actually getting with the apartment. I lived in grad housing for a year when I started here, and minus the cost, it was pretty pleasant. Off-campus, I'd suggest Harrison West, Victorian Village, Grandview, or Clintonville. Harrison West and Victorian Village are both right next to each other, and on the lower end you can expect to pay about ~$900/mo for a two bedroom (I split a $1000/mo townhome with my spouse in this area). Clintonville is a bit north of campus, but it's right on the Olentangy River bike trail, which makes for a super pleasant commute if you like biking. I've also had a number of colleagues who have lived in Grandview, and they had nothing but nice things to say about it, though it's a bit harder to bike to campus from there since it's on the other side of a large highway. I feel reasonably safe walking in all these locations at night, and each of them is on one of the bus routes.

Solidarity from Ohio!

Greetings, all! Since resurrecting this thread seems to be a yearly (biyearly?) tradition, I thought I would do the honors this time. Has anyone else applied to the Japan Foundation fellowship this year?

I mean, it depends on your research interests and where you were hired. Two of the linguistics track students who graduated a year or two ago got R1 TT positions where they teach both Japanese lx and language, and they still carry out their own research where they are. My department has three official tracks (linguistics, literature, and pedagogy), and it also houses some who fall outside those tracks somewhat (like ethnomusicology, history, anthropology, etc.), so it's not as though everyone in a language department is there for the exclusive reason of teaching the language. However, we all receive the training to teach language regardless of actual research specialty, and that goes for every language department at my school afaik.

Hi! I'm currently a Ph.D. student in Japanese Linguistics, and I am employed as a Graduate Teaching Associate in Japanese Language. For a graduate program in Japanese, unfortunately two years is a little low. Generally, in my department non-native speakers enter with at least seven years or so of study, and the ones that teach have held JLPT N1 certification for a few years. Though, many of them spent several years abroad before entering the program, so it's not really necessary that you learn Japanese during undergrad or anything--as long as you have the in-country experience to balance it out, it's fine. (As a side note, JET really isn't the best way to obtain fluency, and the application process is both needlessly complicated and largely random. Interac also lets you teach in schools, and they offer in-company language lessons for teachers wanting to improve their Japanese. I haven't worked through them personally, but several people in my building the last time I was in Japan did, and they seemed to enjoy it.) In language departments, graduate students are most typically employed to teach the language (at least at large universities). The better your language skills when you enter, the more likely you are to be awarded funding. Someone above mentioned getting an MA in Japan to improve your Japanese--this is also not a bad idea. However, be aware that most programs (that are completely in Japanese) will require at least N2 certification, if not N1, for admission, so working for a year or two while you attend a Japanese language school would probably be the better option in the mean time. (As a side note, if you would be okay with teaching Japanese at the high school level, Waseda University offers an in-English masters degree in Applied Japanese Linguistics which is focused on training non-native teachers of Japanese. Definitely not adequate training to teach college level, but I've seen far less qualified Japanese high school teachers here in the States. This is the website: http://www.waseda.jp/gsjal/english/) Contrary to several of the comments above, it is absolutely not impossible to be employed as a Japanese professor as a non-native speaker. Non-natives from my department regularly graduate and go on to hold Japanese language teaching positions while also carrying out research on their own. However, it does require extensive teaching experience, near-native fluency (meaning 10+ years Japanese language experience), making serious connections at conferences, and the support of a program with a language pedagogy program within the department. EDIT: Also, I'm a non-native speaker. I just realized I didn't make that entirely clear.