Courses available in January
Language, history and culture
Japanese is written and spoken by 130 million people and Japanese culture is popular world-wide. As the world's third largest national economy, Japan is also one of Canada’s most important economic and commercial partners. About 40% of Canadian exports to Japan originate in British Columbia. Learning to speak and write Japanese can be very beneficial for your career in today’s global economy. Camosun’s Japanese courses also provide transfer credit that can be used in your future academic pursuits.
Learning Japanese at Camosun
Camosun offers introductory and intermediate Japanese language courses, covering the three writing systems, kanji, hiragana and katakana.
Historically, kanji was used by men, especially Samurai. Hiragana evolved from kanji and was initially used by women. Katakana was used in formal documents up to the second world war, and in modern Japanese, katakana is used to write loan words that have been adopted from other languages.
Camosun's courses focus on the dialect that is spoken in the Tokyo (Kanto) area, which is generally understood in all areas of Japan. Cultural and historical materials are added to enhance the understanding of the language.
Program or individual courses
You can take Japanese courses within one of our 2 year programs or as individual courses within our university transfer program. If you plan to take individual courses at Camosun, when you apply online, you will select University Transfer as your program option.
Camosun students perform at 2015 PAAS Asian Language Speech Contest
Several Camosun students participated in the 2015 PAAS Asian Language Speech Contest held at UVic.
- Nigel Decontie second place, Beginners individual category
- Yixuan Huang (Sabrina) and Tsz Wing Ng (Tiffany) pair first place, Beginners group category
- Mins Kim and Yuejing Liu pair second place, Beginners group category
- Chen Wang second place, Advanced category
“Japan never considers time together as time wasted. Rather, it is time invested.” Donald Richie