WASHINGTON — Thirty students from the U.S. traveled to Kyoto last month under a new U.S. government initiative to boost the country's number of Japanese speakers, to make the country more competitive globally.
The student trip was sponsored by the U.S. State Department as part of its Critical Language Scholarship Program, known as CLS, a government initiative aimed at improving the foreign language skills of U.S. citizens.
The two-month program gives undergraduate and graduate students from across the country the opportunity to study Japanese in intensive, full-immersion environments at Doshisha University and Kyoto University.