So what about school...

GEOS Kudan (just smile, my dear colleagues, this one happens to be quite a big language school chain) is located in central Tokyo, just a 10 minutes walk from the imperial palace. It belongs to Chioyda business district, but it is not really downtown, the big business places are located in the southeast (Otemachi, Ginza) or even farther off in Shinkuku. Besides the offices present here, you have a lot of universities around, and the lower part of yasukuni-dori (avenue) is full of bookstores.
First school day, was like total chaos! There was the placement-list for all the newcomers, the names written in katakana (the syllable-script for foreign words. No problem writing, but try to find your name on such a list. Furthermore they use forenames, so I had to look twice anyway...). Class started at 13:30 after a short self-introduction by everyone with the teacher just talking rapidly in japanese and – oh my goodness – the students just responding in japanese in a relaxed manner. While i didn't understand anything!
In fact class is held in japanese only. So new vocabulary is described with (mostly) more basic words. This is an overall characteristics of teaching here, things are not explained but shown (in a more or less transparent way). That applies to the structure of exercises as well. With some it took my over 2 weeks to figure out, how they really work (Especially those with pictures only, leaving you just wondering what they are supposed to mean already).
The level of the course I am in, is quite challenging for me, it is at about the level of the university course i took in Austria. But it is much more relaxed and fun, and there is a lot of interaction. Not only plain grammar repetition. After all I am quite positively surprised.
A propos repetition, yes, you have that kind of jointly reading aloud texts, fortunately only for some short times during the whole week.
One more thing: School is crowded, like most places in Tokyo, there is not much space. Classrooms are mall and 15 people fill it up quite well. During the breaks you can stay either in the classroom or in the hallway, where it is crowded. So most of the time I join smokers in the closet (smoking second hand). This is just the only place where you need not constantly give way for someone passing by.