10/30 School

Japanese university life is different than American university life. Of course. For one, they use a period system. So instead of having class time chosen by the professor's convenience, classes must be within period 1 through 6. Being from 8:30 AM to 7:30 PM. However, most classes end by period 5, which starts at 4:20 PM. All students get  a 50 minute lunch break between 11:50 and 12:40, which makes that the worst time to go eat the delicous cafeteria food.

I'm on the main campus, Johoku. It's really small, with most buildings being several-floor, reinforced, earthquake-resistant blocks of classrooms. I can probably walk from the southwestern most point to the northeastern most point in 5 minutes. Sac State would probably take half an hour.

You're not really missing out much on the buildings. They are bland colors with that weird white and black speckled shiny floor and basic messaging throughout. The buildings are not much to write home about. Obviously they can't design the university to look like Harvard, because this is a public school in rural Japan where there are slightly more disasters. 

The classrooms are a little bit different though. You get rows of rolling desks with separated chairs, unlike the prison desks we get at Sac State, and they even have cubbies in them! I can put stuff inside my desk! Also, there are hooks on the sides of the desk to hang my backpack so it doesn't have to get dirty on the floor!

The front side of classrooms are slightly elevated wooden platforms where the professor can preach to the choir. Other than that we are allowed to touch the lights, windows, and AC, and there is a chalkboard instead of a whiteboard.

Above you can see my schedule. The yellow classes are ones that start in the fourth quarter, so December, while the white ones are third quarter through the fourth quarter. The green ones are the two days where I am paid to help students learn English. Actually, of all the students I am the only one whose native language is English. There is one student from Uganda and one from the Phillippines who both work as tutors, and they are both fluent in English.

My kanji professor is very scary. Takahashi-sensei, yelled at a student for not understanding her directions during the placement test. She also knows my Sac State Japanese professor. 😕 The class is more like guided self-study of the textbook. The day starts out with us getting into groups of people who are learning the same thing, we meet our Japanese volunteer for the day, and we take the test we made ourselves the previous class. From there we work through the book, and at the end of class we go write a sentence using kanji from the week on the back chalkboard, and make out quiz for next class.

The C2 reading and writing professor is Murakami-sensei, and he's nice. We are using a grammar textbook, and class so far consists of us just going over the homework for an hour. It's a very simple and straightforward class.

Online Japanese has two professors, Murakami-sensei and another one name Itsuki-sensei. She is also nice. The unfortunate thing is that it's twenty minutes after kanji class, so several students and I have to leave class immediately to go bike back to the dorm to be in time for class. From there we sit and have horrible zoom class for an hour and a half. The textbook is a free online textbook meant for adults working in Japan. It's very helpful, but way below many students' level. Nobody in the class needs to be in it except for two students. It's very basic topics like asking questions. Sometimes they challenge me slightly but it's still too easy.

Japanese culture and society is with Hidding-sensei! The one I have met online during the past couple years in winter school, and when I was here for a week. There is no homework and it is a very simple, fun class. All we do is learn about Japanese culture, and sometimes go on excursions in and out of town.

C2 reading and writing is probably the hardest class so far. We have to write a one minute speech every week, memorize it, and present it. The first class we all decided the topics, and then sorted them in order of easiest to talk about to hardest. On class days, we get into groups, practice, and then go up and present.

I've met almost all of the international students. Most of them are from China, followed by Korea and Indonesia. Everyone is nice, but not necessarily friendly at first. All of the students grouped up by language and culture similarity. Chinese and Taiwanese students grouped together. Southeast Asians grouped up. Africans grouped together. Then the Europeans, American, and Columbian grouped up. I wonder who the sole American could be?

Other than that I have joined two clubs. The first one I joined is the Ehime University Wind Band 愛媛大学吹奏楽団. We meet two or three times a week for 3 hours. The practice chairs are very uncomfortable! Practice is on the third floor of the cafeteria building, but first we must take our stuff out of the instrument room. Students don't take their instruments home to practice, people practice in the band room before rehearsal. That was a culture shock. So, while at Sac State we are already supposed to know our part before rehearsal, we are supposed to learn our part during school practice. Also, there is not professor to conduct the ensemble, it's two students. One thing, however, is how if you can't play your part the conductor focuses on just you to help you out. The stressful part is that he doesn't speak English. Nobody speaks English. So, I understand basically nothing that anybody says. But so far I've learned a couple words. There are also no music stands, so I had to go buy a portable one, which I now leave with my flute in the instrument room. People were very friendly, but only at first. Since then nobody really comes up to talk to me, but if I start talking with someone then it's alright. I don't take it personally, because they probably have no idea how to communicate with me. English is hard, and I don't speak Japanese that well. I just like playing my flute! I usually talk with some of the guys after practice though.

I'm looking back after writing this and man, I cannot write properly. I am really tired though, lol. This is pretty much a brain drain before going to bed.

The other club I joined is the Christian Students Association キリシタン学生協会. There are 12 members, but so far I have only met two. They meet twice a month. The difference between American Christians and Japanese Christians is interesting. I'll talk about that more in a different post. We watched a video on one of the member's laptop from the larger Christian organization in Japan, it felt not too unlike those opener pre-recorded videos at church that talk about what's going on. They young guy talked about the upcoming Christian student conferences in December. I was invited to go with the group to Okayama for one after Christmas. We went over some verses talking about lampstands in Revelations, and talked about it. I, as always, could not give any meaningful insight. Then the Korean professor took us all to Motomachi Cafe and treated us to lunch. They got stew and I tried the Japanese spaghetti, it's good but sweet.

I think I talked about it before but my temporary advisor at Ehime University invited me to join his seminar class. His students go over their research progress every week, but I just talk about what I did. They go on research trips as well, but so far I've only been on one. Every week my professor, Tokuoka, brings something for us to talk about. This week it was some sort of twigs that I was told are similar to laurel, which we made interesting tea out of. And, wild mountain yams the size of beans. He overcooked them in the microwave, but they were good.