Different from the last time

Walking into the first day of classes at KCP for the second time had a much different feeling than the first. Much like my senior year of high school, there’s a little bit of unwarranted cockiness that comes from being an “upperclassman.” Without the learning curve that goes with your first semester at KCP, the course content seems as if it is much more manageable this time around, although the scope is by no means limited. We’re going to cover the entire contents of the JLPT 2 test by the end, and things will move even quicker than level 3. The main different is that I won’t have to spend as much time looking up words that everybody in the class already knows but me. On the contrary, I’ve had to explain a couple of words to my new classmates, which never happened in level 3. This three-day weekend seems like a waste, because there’s honestly no place I’d rather be on Monday than at school. Give me a month or so to get exhausted from the daily kanji tests, increasingly difficult reading comprehension, and two hours and twenty minutes on a train daily and I’d appreciate it a little more.

Of course, the classes are shuffled from semester to semester, so it’s goodbye for a majority of last semester’s classmates. I am still together with Encaron, as well as Yi (who lived in the same dorm as me) and his roommate. There are also two other girls who are still in the same class. This semester’s demographics are actually more heavily Korean than last semester, and there’s also about a 70/30 majority of girls. I’m the only American.

It’s too early to draw any conclusions about the teachers, because there’s only been one class. If you remember from last semester, there are three teachers, two teach two classes a week, and one picks up the other. On Friday, we met one of the twice-a-week teachers, who is named Watanabe-sensei, is from Kyoto, and this is apparently her first semester. She seems really young, and seemed slightly more mortal than last semester’s teachers. I recognize the name of our Thursday teacher, who is the really soft-spoken male teacher of my Intermediate Kanji special class last semester. I don’t recognize the name of the other teacher, but I’ll find out on Wednesday.

In terms of content, this semester is weighted more heavily toward reading comprehension. I’m happy about that because reading is a really good way to learn new words, but you need to be at a certain level or else you’re looking up a word or a grammar structure once every sentence and it’s too frustrating to continue. I’ve got five Harry Potter books in Japanese at home that I’m hoping to be able to read when I get back. Other than that, the course objectives are largely based on the JLPT level 2 test that I’ll be taking in the beginning of December. The point being that I won’t likely have to study anything outside the actual course content in order to get what I want to get out of this semester.

Outside of classes, this semester has already been dramatically different than last semester. For the first part of the weekend, we drove over to Chiba prefecture and stayed the night at a friend of Rina’s house. It was a couple with two children, the oldest girl about the same age as Serin, and a boy about 4 or 5. Of particular interest to me was that the husband words at TBS (one of the major television stations in Tokyo, located right next to where I work) directing commercials. We wound up talking for about an hour, during which I found out about the editing software workflow commonly used (he estimated that Apple has recently outpaced Avid, although they are about neck and neck at the moment), different film director philosophies (auteurs vs. collaboratives, and did I mention that holy crap this guy actually met Akira Kurosawa??), and the possibilities of me being able to get a tour of TBS some time (very possible, and he even seemed excited about it.) All in all, it went very well, and we’ll likely have lunch again some time together since we work within a kilometer of each other.

This afternoon, everyone went over to a nearby park and the kids did kid things. While I was sitting on a bench, after pushing their younger boy on the swings, it struck me that this was a situation I would never be in if I were still in the dorm. Heck, I would have considered it a small victory if I ventured someplace beside the 7-11 all weekend.

Of course there are trade-offs. Time is at much more of a premium, and tonight when I was able to lay on my bed and listen to an entire album straight through without being interrupted, I considered it a small miracle. It turns out that six years old is the age that kids just like pushing buttons on people to see how much they can get a rise out of you. I sure would like to be able to sleep in past 7:30 on weekends, but I know that’s the time Serin will enter my room and literally jump on me. It’s all part of the experience I guess, but there are times I like the homestay experience and times I feel the opposite. I’ve been amicable for the most part, but I’ll likely adopt a more firm stance when she interferes with the serious amount of study and homework this semester requires. And of course there’s always the library, but it would be nice to have a period of time when I know I can’t be bothered in my own room. Again, something I’ll probably attempt to make explicit when school starts for real.

But although I’ve mentioned a few complaints, the good still far outweighs the bad, and I in no way regret choosing a homestay over another semester in the dorms.

Continuing on

I’m not sure what I’m supposed to say about school. It’s still going on, we’re trucking through at the same pace we’ve been going, it’s still not boring.

Fukumoto-sensei’s replacement, Hosoi-sensei, turns out to be a pretty cool person. She lived in Italy for a long time and is fluent in Italian. It doesn’t matter a whole lot in the long run, she only teaches on Thursdays and there are just three more Thursdays left in the semester(!). So this upcoming week is my second to last full week of classes. The final exam falls on the following Friday, with that week’s Monday through Wednesday being public holidays.

On Friday we had the much-anticipated bus trip to Chiba prefecture. We went to Shimizu park, which has three “adventure courses” set up. It’s like an obstacle course, where you go from station to station and give yourself points based on how well you do. I had a great time, because when someone says “obstacle course” I get excited. It seemed like I was one of the only people in my class who was actually excited about it. Many of the girls especially were pretty squeamish about physical activity, and spent most of the time at the park sitting around the lunch tables and wishing they were elsewhere. I thought it was cool though, and there was one section that was set up above a lake. Most of the stations had the danger of falling in the water as a key attraction point, and many people (including Encaron) did.

From Shimizu park, we then drove to a grape farm where we had all-you-can-eat grapes. I sure talk about grapes a lot in my blog, but they sort of just keep popping up randomly. These grapes were far better than even the best that I bought from stores over here. We ate heartily, but didn’t make much of a dent in the grapes at the farm. I bought two bunches for 700 yen to take home.

On Saturday, we had our last culture class, and I wouldn’t say they saved the best for last. The topic was Japanese business, and it was every bit as boring as it sounds. It was also just half a day, so there was no tour associated with it. At 12:00 we all just went home.

This weekend I’ve been doing a few things: working on my senior project(s), studying for a test on Monday, and relaxing. Sorry that this entry isn’t terrible exciting. On September 11th I have an Oral exam, on the 13th we have a “Special Class” that has yet to be explained, and then there’s the Final Exam on the 25th. I have tickets for the Ghibli museum again for the 27th, and Tanaka-san told me that I would likely move into my new housing at the beginning of the week of the 28th. 66 days and I have 137 days left. In other words, in about two days I’ll hit the 1/3rd mark.

I uploaded some more pictures to my Flickr page.