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I know it’s been a while since I posted last. Well, now it’s time for two or three posts to make up for that. First will be a summary of my first full week of classes. You don’t want to hear about my classes? Then don’t read this.

I’m taking 18 credit hours here, between classes administered by Kanda University (神田外語大学) and the IES Center. Wow, Anthony, that’s a lot! Sounds like it, but I don’t think it will be that tough. Definitely shouldn’t be anything compared to I-Core. Plus, if I can get good grades, they will figure into my GPA at IU when I go back, which needs some padding. Oh, and if I really want to be sneaky, I can drop any class that I start doing bad in (except for Japanese, which is un-droppable). Withdrawal date here is NOVEMBER 20th or something ridiculous like that. Also, IES doesn’t put “W”‘s on transcripts, which would mean that it wouldn’t go back to IU. So it would be like I never took the class. Heheheheh, I can’t lose.

JP401 Japanese in Context (実践日本語) (7 cr): Meets every day for an hour and a half (1 period here). Japanese language class. Same teacher as Survival Japanese, which I had for the past two weeks as the lead-in to this class. Same students plus two new Korean girls. Honestly, this class probably shouldn’t be 7 credit hours for the amount of work I do. Which is less than I did for IU Japanese (bahahaha and how much did I do there?). Mainly I have a few quizzes, some papers, and a few presentations. Not bad at all. It’s pretty much just a continuation of Survival Japanese, so no surprises. From what Brian has told me, I think that this is going to much easier than what the folks at IU are doing with Rubinger. Taught all in Japanese.

Kanji Level 3 (2 cr): Amazingly, I tested into the kanji level that corresponds with my language class. At least I’m not behind. This class actually has the same teacher and 4 of the same students from my JP401 class, so that’s kind of funny. There are also about 10 other foreign exchange students. It’s a mix of Americans, Chinese, Vietnamese, and Koreans. Meets for one period every Tuesday. So far, we’re doing kanji I have already studied, so it won’t be too bad. If anything, this class is going to bore me to death. Taught in Japanese. Oh, and here I will mention 2 of the American students. They’re not IES, they’re with the other foreign exchange program here called Bekka (別科). I cannot stand these two guys. They’re both cocky, arrogant, and definitely not as good as they think they are. The worst of the two tries to seem super mellow and emotionless, and apparently he is a huge computer dork. During our self introductions to the class, he stated his hobby as “my computer,” after which he turns his cocky head to me and mutters in English “it’s my baby.” Seriously? Hey that’s great man. Why don’t you take the thing and jump off a bridge. Also he couldn’t write the kanji for fire (火) correctly, which is one of the most basic ones out there. We’ll see how these two turn out. But for now, I can’t stand them.

AN345 The Fantastic World of Japanese Manga and Anime (3 cr): I was fearing this class because I figured it would be full of the anime dorks from the IES program. I was half right about this, but the Professor seems really cool. He started off class asking who likes anime, and a bunch of us raised our hands. He then asked who would be considered a “mania” (like otaku, the world here for super-obsessive fans with no life), and there was only one guy who raised his hands. I knew he would. I won’t name names right now, but this kid is a very typical American otaku (the kind that I hate the most). Professor Aoyagi then proceeded to say he “doesn’t want those kind of people in his class.” The otaku’s head dropped. I was loving it. Taught in English primarily, and we’ll be doing a lot of analyzing and relating things to cultural conditions, etc. Sound like what I was looking for. The class will be pretty interesting, and if it transfers to IU as Kierstead’s anime class, I will be done with my Japanese major. And won’t have to deal with as many super otaku as Brian did. Bahaha

AN391/S391 Seminar: Social Organization of Japan (3 cr): This is the semi-weekly seminar class that goes with my field placement in the Japanese high school. Other people are placed in schools, non-for-profits, businesses, etc. Basically we will be trying to analyze Japanese organizational and group structure from the inside. It will be pretty easy. Taught in English and Japanese. The only thing I don’t get is why the class is only 3 cr hours. Sure, the seminar itself only meets every other week, but the field placement is once a week for around 8 hours (a regular work day). Seems kind of unbalanced. Ah well, it should be interesting.

HIS336 The History of Tokyo (3 cr): First bad sign: this class is in the IES conference room. We all sat in foldable chairs facing the teacher who had a desk and a whiteboard. For about 25 students, we really need a bigger and better room. No desks is a pain, and the room was a bit too hot for comfort. It will be an decent class, because I’m interested in the topics (looks like we’re analyzing Edo/Tokyo from the Tokugawa period to present day. The professor is a nice lady, but seemed really nervous. Hopefully she’ll get over it and go through material a bit quicker.

Musashino Line trains stop running from Kaihim-Makuhari at around 11:40PM. If you miss it, you have to wait until 5:02AM to get another one. What do you do if you are lucky enough to miss the train, and are stuck in the Makuhari area for 5 hours in the middle of the night? Spend an hour or two walking, an hour at a weird Chinese restaurant with a 200 yen “Soft Drink Viking,” sleep on a bench outside of Kanda University, then wait outside the train station until they open the gates at 4:30AM. Then, get home finally around 5:30 in the morning and sleep for 12 hours. Good morning!

Well my today seemed like a really busy day, but in actuality, it was not. Woke up around 7 or 8, got ready to head out to Kanda U campus. Oh but today is Wednesday, and there is no class. So what did I get to go out there for? A TEST. Yep. Kanji Placement Test, so that I can take a kanji elective class. Note: For those who don’t study Japanese, kanji = “Chinese characters.” Japanese uses these characters in addition to their two phonetic writing systems. Mainly for names, verbs, nouns, and pretty much anything. There are something like 2000000000 kanji. (OK not really, but there might as well be).

Finally got to campus, after riding 20 minutes of trains and walking about 20 minutes in mind-blistering heat and humidity. Get to building #2 and who is there to greet us students? Why it’s Ichikawa! But we heard through the rumor mill last night that he was fired. And yes, we got an e-mail this afternoon confirming he is no longer with IES. What was he doing at Kanda today? None of us know. Maybe he doesn’t want to admit that he’s been canned. Or he’s going crazy…

On to the test. There were 4 levels. Once you take the first, you can move on to the next. First exam was easy. Second was kind of tough, but I think I did OK. Got the third one…. it seriously looked like Chinese to me (written entirely in kanji, and I had no idea what it said). I flipped through it, gave it back to the proctor with a “akiramemasu” (I give up), and left. That was that. I’ll probably be in Kanji level 2 or 3. Fine with me, I need to learn this stuff.

After the kanji massacre, bummed at the IES Center for about 3 or 4 hours. Nothing like wasting time with everyone there. Finally got a group together to go to Tokyo. It was me, Derek, Seth, Dan, Bryan, Adam, and Mii. Met up with Yuuji, Ari, Mike, Annie, and Merry along the way. We went to Ikebukuro for a Yakiniku Tabehoudai, which means All-you-can-eat Korean BBQ. Man it was good. About 2400 yen for 2 hours of all the food you want. You get plates of raw meat, vegetables, etc, and cook it on your table (has a little gas grill built in). I was so full.

Wandered about Ikebukuro for a while afterwards, nothing really going on. Came back home, and now I have to write another fun 600 character report for tomorrow morning’s class. Plus at 4PM tomorrow in Tokyo I have my “interview” at the high school where my field placement is at. I’ll be helping the English teacher there I believe. I don’t really need an interview as I already have the position, but I guess it’s just procedure. Time to get writing this report…

Let’s see….yesterday, Saturday, I did absolutely nothing. That is slightly overexaggerated, but not by much. I woke up around 9 or 10 and bummed around. Got my TV that I rented here at the dorm, and got that all plugged up (it’s only a 14 inch screen, but I can watch weird Japanese TV now). Actually, weird Japanese TV probably deserves it’s own blog post.

I decided to not go on the “Tokyo Tour” with the other IES kids and the e-pals (have I explained that these e-pals are Kanda students who are basically supposed to lead us around? We each got “assigned” to one a little bit before we left, and conversed via e-mail. Mine was at the airport the first day, but haven’t seen her since. I guess I’m just that great.) So, instead of going on the tour to places like Harajuku, where I’ve been several times, I decided that I would be better off on my own. And what did that amount to? Why, taking a nap in the afternoon that lasted until around 4 or 5PM! Bryan came back to the dorm, I had dinner here with him (first and only meal of the day), and that was about it. I fell asleep before 10 while watching バイオハザード (Resident Evil).

Sunday: Woke up today around 7, nearly in perfect time to watch Dekaranger and Kamen Rider Blade on TV. After that, slept for another hour. Finally showered and got out of the dorm by noon. I was really bored so I decided to go to Akihabara. And lucky me, by the time I had left it had started raining. Actually, despite the slight drizzle, it was nice. The weather was about 10 degrees F cooler than normal, which was a welcome change. Made my way to Akihabara, AKA dork’s paradise. Didn’t buy anything except for 2 little keychains which costs less than 300 yen. Spent a few hundred yen in arcades, which netted me an old-school Super Mario Bros hand towel. Yippie.

After a bunch of emails and cmails on the ol’ 携帯(cell phone), I coordinated a few people to get together for dinner. Note that I am seriously going to STOP using my phone as much as I have been, particularly in downloading stupid stuff (ie, Kamen Rider ringtones), as my bill is going to be ridiculous. I actually spend a good portion of the evening worrying about this. Here on Japanese cell phones, you get charged by the “packet,” some unknown, mysterious unit of data. I have no idea how many bytes or kilobytes a packet is composed of, but I DO know that I’ve transferred a buttload of them. Yarg…..

That was about all that happened of even remote interest to me this weekend. It’s about 10:30 now, I have to write a 6oo character paper for tomorrow (less than a page), and on top of that, I also have to wear a shirt and tie for tomorrow’s 入学式 (New Student Ceremony). Note that it’s even worse, since it’s not the big, all-school event that these things usually are. Japanese schools start the year in April, not September. So now is the beginning of the second semester at Kanda. So the only kids who are going to be here tomorrow are the foreign exchange kids. What fun is that?

Finally got my ghetto DSL modem to work, so I have internet here in my room. This weekend I’ll probably update the Blog with what has happened lately, and maybe add some pics to the website. I’m exhausted, so good night (oyasumi).