First day of class – Oct 2nd

Oh yeah, I forgot I was here to go to school! Today I made my way to class, not quite sure which building it was in. There are about 12 people in my Japanese class: Myself, Hans, Heather and Tracey from CSU, Aiko the spunky Australian, someone from Oregon, someone from Hawaii, someone from Helsinki, and the others are Korean, I believe. For some reason, our teacher reminds me of an older Masuyama-sensei (my teacher back home); not in her appearance, but there’s something about her mannerisms and the way she speaks. I can tell that she enjoys her job.

After a short self-introduction, we had a short test on grammar. I was the first to finish, but who knows if that means anything. I had already studied a good portion of the grammar I saw on the test, but there were some things I’d never seen before. I think I’ve been placed in an appropriate level. It turns out that it was a good idea to bring my BKB Kanji book along with me, since we’ll be using that for the class, along with a grammar book I’ve never seen, called 日本語中級J501、中級から上級へ (Intermediate to Advanced Japanese).

My next period was Topics in American Advertising. I walked into the class but wasn’t sure if I was in the right place. I wrote a short memo to myself;

“I’m besieged by Japanese students; if there are any other Americans, they hide themselves well. Odd that a class on American advertising would have so few Americans, but if there’s one thing I’ve learned, it’s to expect my expectations to be broken.”

The teacher is a stout woman with a booming voice; a commanding presence in the din of silent chatter. Japanese students do a great deal more talking during class than one would expect. I noticed some of the people next to me helping the others understand all the English being thrown at them both in audial and written forms, but I couldn’t help but wonder if the majority of the murmurs weren’t related to the scholastic topics at hand.

After class, I met up with Yukako, Kazaoka-sensei’s daughter, and she helped me get my student co-op membership card. I got the grammar book for my Japanese class, and ran into Stephen and Phillip, who was carrying SIX books for his level 3 class. I’m suddenly grateful I got placed in a higher class. I was going to go home from there, but I decided to stick around and be a bit more sociable. I ran back into Yukako, and a few other students. I got a call from the cell phone company about confirming my address, but the guy wouldn’t stop using keigo, so I passed the phone off to Yukako. Ehtesham (whose name I have been misspelling up until now) is really homesick, and is kind of depressed. I’m going to try to think of something to do to help him cheer up, but I’m wondering if letting Kazaoka-sensei know what’s going on would be considered snitching or something… It’s not like he’s doing anything wrong, but with all her experience, I think that she would have a lot of great ideas to help him deal with his issues without flat-out leaving.

We hung around the SILS building for a while, and Yukako had a Tennis Circle meeting to go to, so we accompanied her for the sake of seeing the 理工学部 (Department of Science and Engineering). Lots of ugly buildings later, she gave us directions back to the station, and disappeared into the mangled mesh of 1970’s era industrial architecture. We walked back through Toyama park and ended up near the Mister Donuts I had eaten at before. We all parted ways and I headed back home on a relatively crowded train. At home, I wrote my self-introduction essay with a bit of help from Okaasan, and watched the new live-action drama for 名探偵コナン (Detective Conan).

PS: I saw the stray cat in the photo above near the dorms, next to a restaurant. Quite cute, but I haven’t actually pet an animal since I got here, and for the record, I miss that contact.