First day of classes

To answer Jesseca's request. I do have an address, but I'm not too fond of putting that on the internet for anyone to read and send who knows what to me. So, if you want my address, send me an email to my school address, and I'll reply back with my address.

So, today was my first day of 6 weeks of classes. After eating a bit of breakfast in my room, I headed for my first two hours of class. This was Japanese Commmunication II, a two-credit hour course of intense pure Japanese speaking. My teacher handed out syllabi and other random papers. I hope I was rightly placed into this course. She speaks in Japanese all the time, and there often words that I don't know. I guess that's the whole point. Instead of like how a normal class goes, in our class we are going to focus purely on speaking communication. We aren't going to spend a lot of time on grammar, but instead, we're going to practice what we know and how to use it in different situations. It seems like I'll learn the most this way, but I'm not sure that I'm going to be able to keep up. She wants us to speak purely in Japanese, which I know is good for learning, but it's frustrating at times when you don't know how to say what you want. Plus, I'm not very good at using what I know to put the words into my head into words in Japanese, so it can be frustrating at times, but I'm sure I'll be fine.

After 2 hours of class where we went over at least a page of terms that we had come across and what we wanted to know, we headed to the cafeteria for a quick lunch. I just ate some soba, but I was pretty full afterwards. I found out at lunch that the other two classes were reviewing over stuff that I definitely did know, so maybe I was placed in the right level.

We then headed to the culture class in another building. This classes pure aim is to teach us about the culture about Japan, and we have to keep a daily journal of culture observations that we make during our stay. Our teacher is a lady who was born and raised in Japan, but then she went to college and then stayed 30 years in the US. She studied anthropology in America, and she seems to be a very interesting person. She seems to have a good idea of the culture differences in Japan and it will be interesting to ask her questions on culture differences that we come about.

Then it was study time. I had to write journals for the culture class as well as learn 14 terms for Japanese Communication and learn 20 or so terms for the technical Japanese class. I also still have yet to practice dialogues with my partner for Japanese Communication.

After a bit of studying, we head to a restaurant to eat. We went to the same restaurant as I had the chicken katsu at before. I guess it's called Kasanchi. I got something that looked good on somebody else's plate. I asked what it was and found out its called karage. So I ordered it, and was karage with rice. Of course, I find out that it was fried pork after I ate it, but that's how life is in Japan.

Then I came back and wrote some and did some homework and such.