I can't believe I've only been in Nagoya for two weeks (and two days) - looking back on my last post, everything there seems like it happened ages and ages ago. I guess it's a good thing, since it means I've done lots of fun/interesting things since then.
Classes have been going on since Thursday, which is almost exactly a week now, although it's only been the international students so far; Japanese students start tomorrow! I'm very happy with my schedule; I've been able to stay in all the classes I registered for, and they all seem pretty fun. Japanese class is actually probably my hardest class (which is definitely the opposite of what it's like at Carleton), because 600 level is really no joke. Most of the people in the class have been taking Japanese for around 4 years, so coming in from only 2 years worth of experience makes class kind of overwhelming, especially since all the other students are so good at Japanese. We have three teachers, one of whom is very nice but also really scary/strict; the other two seem pretty energetic and fun. Japanese class is also five days a week, for roughly 3 hours a day - they're not kidding when they call the classes Intensive Japanese! It's certainly a change being at the bottom of my class, but I'm sure by December my Japanese will have improved tremendously. My other classes all seem really interesting. Japanese linguistics is actually phonology, which I've never studied before, and it's a class with Japanese students so I'm looking forward to it (the first real class is tomorrow), and Japanese culture has a very friendly teacher and some really interesting topics, like women's language and the concept of uchi/soto (inside/outside) in Japanese culture. I also really enjoyed my first calligraphy class; we learned the names of/how to use the instruments and spent the rest of class writing the character for 'moon' over and over again. It sounds boring, but it actually takes a lot of concentration and is hard to get right. Still, it's great to be taking an art class again. Observation and analysis of Japanese activities will probably be the most interesting class; it's an open class with Japanese students and basically we'll be interacting with each other and other Japanese people and analyzing those interactions. The professor is really funny and laid-back, and he also knows my Japanese teacher from Carleton! It's a small world.
As for fun stuff I've done in the past week, there's plenty of that, too. As I mentioned in my last post, I went to Sakae with some international students and some Japanese students; Sakae seems to be the hot spot for young people and I'll probably go there a lot - although unfortunately it's not on my commuter pass (next month I'll make sure it is). I was again there today for karaoke, too, which was fun. On Wednesday, the CJS office organized a field trip for the international students - we went to the Tokugawa Museum and Nagoya Castle, both of which were really interesting and beautiful. My favorite part of the museum was all the maps of Nagoya, which were huge and really detailed; another odd thing is that they were apparently drawn from all different directions (the labels were all oriented on different sides of the maps). The best part of Nagoya Castle was definitely the view from the top; you can see Nagoya spreading out in all directions, and it's breathtaking. On Friday I went to a party hosted by some other international students; they offered to let us spend the night so I did instead of leaving early to catch the last bus (which is at 11). It was a fun party and sometime in the middle of the night we left to go karaoke (I've only been in Nagoya two weeks but I've gone to karaoke 4 times already), which was again very exciting. On Saturday I went to Osu Kannon with my host mother to resume our mission of finding me a yukata, and this time we were successful! It's yellow with little bunnies on it, and I also bought a white obi to go with it, which was already premade into a bow so all I have to do is slip it on. :)
I also had what I guess was my first experience with culture shock yesterday - I haven't really had any trouble adjusting to life in Japan, but I guess there's always something. Up until now I'd been trying to spend lots of time downstairs with my host family, since I wanted to interact with them and not just stay holed up in my room. I also didn't want to leave my host mother all alone all the time, since my host father doesn't get home until late. Yesterday, though, she basically asked me to spend more time in my room. Apparently her sons (and most other Japanese students, apparently) would always just go straight to their rooms after dinner to study, so she was worried about my doing homework in the living room with the TV and everything, and also she wanted some time alone/time to talk with my host dad. It's very reasonable and also probably better for my studies (honestly I think I need the quiet/alone time too), but I just thought it was funny that my concern was for spending lots of time with the family, while hers was having time alone.
Anyway, I haven't started my homework for tomorrow (bad), so I'll end here. I'll try to update more often, but life is already starting to be crazy so we'll see how things turn out. :D
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