A Brief Update

I'm pretty sure that the most exciting portion of the first week has passed and that there won't be much to report until I start heading out to the bunka (cultural) activities on Thursday (we're gonna visit an elementary school! YAY!). So, I figured that, given that it's my last class-free day of SCJ (Summer Courses in Japanese, the summer portion of my program) and I'm not certain how much blogging I will have time for after classes start, I'd go ahead and give an explanation of the coming bunka activity entries now. I'm also going to go ahead and give the rundown of what my life was like today since I know you're all just dying to know.

The idea of the bunka activities is that if the students are just taking classes for 4 hours every morning, the experience in Japan will be less than ideal. The solution? Offer them lots of opportunities to travel the city/country and learn about/experience the culture. This means lots of trips to various places in the greater Tokyo area including, but not limited to, a visit to an elementary school (mentioned above), a Kabuki show, and, the one I'm probably most excited about, a trip to the Ghibli museum. And then, of course, there's the epic not-really-in-Tokyo-but-still-CRAZY-awesome Fuji climb that I'm planning on participating in. Don't worry, that's one part of the journey where I will NOT forget my camera.

Today consisted of the placement test (which served to remind me just how few kanji I actually know), a welcome lunch (complete with awkward speech from the president of ICU and introductions of all the teachers), a tour around the library (which was mostly just entertaining), and a campus tour (which served the opposite role of the placement test: reminding me that I can usually make myself understood when talking to Japanese speakers face to face).

Tomorrow we find out which language level we placed into, as well as the first day of classes. The classes are divided into seven levels, C1-C7, broken down into Basic I-III (C1-C3), Intermediate I-III (C4-C6) and Advanced (C7). Then I'll be hanging out all afternoon, probably freaking out about how much Japanese I've forgotten. I'm going to be near internet most of that time though, and this happens to be a (vaguely for normal people, relatively for college students) reasonable hour in the States. So, anyone that's around after 11:00 PM in CO or 10:00 PM in CA can feel free to shoot me an e-mail (adb02007@mymail.pomona.edu) or a facebook message if you want to chat on Skype or some such thing.

I should also mention that anyone that wants to chat more specifically with me about my travels or has any specific questions or even just wants to reciprocate and let me know how they're doing should feel free to send me an e-mail or facebook message. I'm not promising a quick response, but do feel free to do so, and would definitely love to hear from you. Take care!!

~ Anna