The thing is, there is little else I can do right now as far as Japanese goes except for studying(although I do hang out with the japanese exchange students here now and then). Also, even though I took a university course in Japanese, I've never actually studied for my grades or the like. I have from the start studied because I wanted to learn Japanese. The placement test doesn't really bother me, I just assumed that I'd get into IJ600 since they set the benchmark at 700 kanji and I'm comfortably above 1000 right now. I don't doubt that there will be plenty of stuff I don't know even at IJ600, so I want to get as much of the raw schoolwork out of the way as possible so I can focus on the experience, just like you said.
Also, if I manage to get my reading to a level where I can process normal articles without abusing rikai-chan too much before leaving for Japan, I assume that will just make the experience much more enjoyable.
I haven't seen any kanji/grammar list actually, you happen to have that available?
Also, holy shit wow this is amazing. Thanks, I'll jot down Hamada and Tsuda(and Okada).
I wanted to ask, how much of the raw writing(by hand) did you do at IJ600? Since I've pretty much only been studying on the computer lately, I feel pretty bad about writing kanji's by hand. It felt good when I was in my hardcore kanji session but I don't think I'd be able to write even half of them right now. Of course, there's no problem when reading or writing on the computer.
Do I need to go back and brush up on writing(again)? I've heard that they don't really focus on kanjis'.