1998.05.30 SAT

Got sooo homesick this morning - they had a big get-together with a bunch of host families, and I felt sooo lost x.x It got a little bit better, though, I got coerced into softball and had fun despite myself, and now I don't dislike the sport so much any more ;b

Well, enough of the bad news, I suppose ;b Classes are pretty comfortable now - at this school, each class only meets once a week, for about an hour and a half. Most of the classwork gets done outside of class, though, as the students are expected to study on their own. Right now, most of my classes are Japanese language classes - conversation, listening, and reading / writing. The books for these classes are WAY better than the books back at ECU - they're actually written in a way that makes SENSE.

So far the only problem I've had is that the kanji (writing) class that I was in went WAY over my head - I needed to know about 170 kanji for that class, and I knew maybe 45 or so... I don't remember the kanji very easily, and since I didn't remember those first 45 the first time, I opted to drop back to the first class to make sure I learned them correctly. (Either way, I get the same credit for it, I just want to make sure I LEARN them instead of BSing my way through a tougher class...)

But at least now I've got something to study - before, I just plain didn't have ANYTHING to do. Now most of my free time is spent catching up to the rest of the Japanese students - I actually started class about a month and a half late so I've got a biiiit of catching up to do.

Graphic design class is a little different - me and James are actually enrolled in a graduate-level class here... but it's really okay, because we're going over things that we learned in the first year at ECU. Graphic design is a lot different over here... I haven't even figured out how yet, but I just know that it is ;b

So far, I've only been to one art class. The graphic design teacher, Shimakage-sensei, took me and James out to dinner the other night so that we could work on my schedule. He's a pretty cool guy - while we were sitting there waiting for the eel to arrive, we played around with Shimakage-sensei's digital camera. He made James look like a demon and stuff, it was pretty funny. Here in Japan, James said that it was expected that the professors take their students out for dinner and such... Shimakage-sensei tried to get me to drink some the other night, but I was still sick from before x.x

James and I also got a job, teaching English to this one lady for two hours a week or so. This lady's daughter is getting married to an American, and she wants to be able to speak English at the wedding so she's asked us to teach her. Pay's going to be pretty good too, about 8000 yen each day (about $60) - basically, if James can't make it to a session, I'll go in his place, and whoever teaches on a particular day gets the money ;b Here in the dorm, though, we got a pretty mixed bag. Me, James, and Adam all come from the same university - we're the only Americans in this part of town, it seems. James kinda stands out from the crowd with his red hair, and Adam just shaved his head bald, and we're =all= pretty darn tall. But a lot of the other students here in the foreign students dorm speak English too - the guy sitting next to me now is named Chris - he's from Canada, and knows four languages. The four of us usually hang out with a guy from Thailand, Rashapoon - there's a lot of other Thai people here as well.

Most of the other foreign students here are Chinese, but there a few from other countries as well - Harry (He goes by the name Aroodo, I think because it's easier to pronounce) is also from Brazil. There's people from Malaysia, Mexico, the Phillipines, Taiwan, and even Zimbabwe.

Communication was kinda tough when I first got here but I think I'm starting to get the hang of it. Most of the Chinese people usually have excellent Japanese, but a lot of the people here don't. A lot of the people actually prefer to speak in English, even though that isn't their native language either. Even the TV programs often get shown in English as well - there's one channel that seems to specialize in English-language movies - subtitled in Japanese, of course. The news broadcasts on the HDTV / BSx channels usually have dual audio tracks, too. Sometimes the channels here just rip stuff directly off of American TV - I was watching the Bulls-Pacers game this morning - NBC announcers, and it even had some of the NBC commercials in it. I'm pretty lucky English is my primary language, in that respect ;b

Well, I wrote a lot, and right now I'm probably going to start tracking down a dinner date. See ya later!