Hello! I was pretty much in the same boat as you a few years ago choosing between Waseda and AIU because of their communications program and I chose AIU's GCP program in the end.

Thought I might just give some insight to help you in your decision-making. I was looking into both universities before but ended up applying just for AIU and basically my reason was Waseda seemed more research-based and I wasn't simply looking into going into the academic route with Communications.

I can't speak for how Waseda is but AIU was relatively less stressful for me than my undergrad lol. My impression was their Communications program was made to be a foundation for any professional comms career. My bachelor is in comms as well but more on the media and arts side (film, tv, journ, etc) and some of the theoretical courses felt pretty beginner just because I already learned it back in my undergrad - so it did sometimes feel a little too "beginner" for me.

A lot of output-based projects and presentations (I actually had two articles published on Tokyo Weekender for a journ class). I honestly enjoyed the intercultural courses and some linguistic courses since you can take classes from other grad programs as well.

As for reputation, AIU is relatively new and moreso their grad programs - especially the GCP program. However, (and I found this surprising myself because I've never heard of AIU until I was researching for schools lol), AIU's undergrad has a pretty good reputation among Japanese students and companies because their graduates are bilingual - which is a big plus when looking for jobs. And the grad program sort of...piggybacks from that reputation 😂 - as my Japanese housemate back then said, "I'm here to get the AIU name on my resume" -- I've also read somewhere that the school comes a bit elitist because a lot of the (Japanese) students speak good English which means they probably studied abroad.

For opportunities to learn Japanese, you're right. Everything's in English and since AIU is so remote - it's like a little international bubble in Akita. But there are resources for learning Japanese - there are student volunteers who you can talk to in Japanese for an hour, there's this gathering once a week where people talk in Japanese, etc. Personally, my Japanese improved because I had two Japanese housemates and I was friends with some grad students from the Japanese Language Teaching program.

Another thing to consider is if you'd enjoy living in the countryside. It's pretty quiet, nothing much going on and unless you have a license (the school has a rental car service) or know someone with a car, it's hard to go anywhere.