First of all sorry for breaking my promise to update at least twice a month. Contrary to my former expectations I feel like I'm getting barely as much free time here as I do at Oxford. The work load is without-a-doubt lower here, but unlike Oxford everything you need to do it not conveniently situated within a 2 minute walk away. There is also the extra challenge of being in a strange country and speaking the language etc.etc. which also takes it out of you on top of the work-load.
Nevertheless, I feel like I've made a small breakthrough with my Japanese in the last couple of weeks. If you're reading this and studying a European language then what I'm about to say will probably seem slightly pathetic but this week I actually managed to have a 2 hour long, meaningful one-on-one conversation with a Japanese person. I know this is not exactly worthy of a Nobel Prize but this was the first time I've understood the other person well enough to respond properly to them and not just babble a load of irrelevant gibberish.
Now onto the bad news, a good friend of mine living in Osaka (Aerynn, a friend from Oxford, the girl pictures in the purikura in my previous post) has moved back to England having decided Japan wasn't where she wanted to be right now. Aerynn, if you're reading, thank you for some hilarious weekends in Osaka and I hope you enjoying being back in the UK whatever you may be up to.
Today I had my mid-term Japanese test, which our teachers told us would be quite important. Thankfully I don't think it went too badly since in all honestly I've found the Japanese language classes here to be a bit up and down. I think there are two reasons for this: Firstly the lessons are 1 1/2 hours long each here and with two of these every morning, this is slightly beyond my concentration span! Gone are the days of Oxford where I would reluctantly roll out of bed at 10.30 ready for my 11am class; here it is a 7am start every morning. I know what you're thinking: 'Sean welcome to the real world'. However I feel that this may be a somewhat by-product of the second, 'root' cause: As a westerner having been thrown directly into the Japanese education system, I was not prepared for how radically different the class environment would be here compared to Oxford. For language learning in the UK, there is a commonly-held perception that using the textbook should be avoided as much as possible in favour of productive activities such as debates, writing newspaper articles etc.. In Japan, however, the situation is the total opposite. The textbook is closely followed 100% of the time, and the majority of the lesson time is spent on absorption of information rather than creative production. Also, in contrast to the UK, it is the teacher, not the students, who does most of the talking. I should say that this is not a criticism of the Japanese system it is merely an issue of lessons being conducted in way that I am not used to.
Classes aside *yawn*, November has been quite an eventful month. I have been trying to get involved with more extra-curriclar activities here lately. I'm not sure if I have mentioned this already but from January I will become a member of Kobe University Symphony Orchestra. I also attended a discussion group called TEDee (don't know what this stands for sorry!) about gender-equality in Japan. It is there I met a friend called Naho, a graduate law student, who has set up her own presentation workshop called iCircle. In the new year I will be giving a presentation there about the university student experience at Oxford compared to Kobe, and a large part of that presentation will be related to what I was talking about in the previous paragraph.
There have also been some really fun days out to talk about. I will start with our trip to Kaiyukan aquarium in Osaka, about half an hour away on the train. Whilst we were in Osaka we popped into a lovely little manga cafe (surprisingly, a cafe with manga comics) with which not only served really good karaage (posh word for fried chicken) but also to my total delight CHIPS (with salt and vinegar!). Kaiyukan is supposed to be one of the biggest aquariums in the world, so big in fact that there was not only the usual things you would expect to find at an aquarium but also capybaras (For some reason Japanese people seem to love capybaras), otters, and one solitary baby monkey! Apologies for my photography skills:
After 1 1/2 months of chip-deprivation this was really exciting
capybara- had to fight to the front to get this photo!
terrifying crab
funny worm-like things that pop in and out of the ground
Ferris wheel on the pier
Our student tutor's suggested we hire traditional Japanese clothing to wear around to make our visit even more atmospheric, right down to and sandals. Embarrassingly, I along with half of the Oxford group decided to take this offer up, and the results are quite hilarious. Needless to say a group of about 8 westerners dressed in Kimono attracted a lot of stares from the Japanese sightseers.
Me and my friend Sarah in Kimono (traditional Japanese clothing)
Entrance to the temple
Lovely cafe we stopped at to get Amazake. Pictured with my Japanese friend Moe
Red momiji
Admiring the momiji
Kiyomizu temple's main hall
Side on view of main hall
View from the main hall
Finally, last Friday I visited a city called Nara on a university-organised trip with my Japanese history class. I know I said earlier that Kyoto is though of as Japan's ancient capital, but Japan's first capital city was Nara. From what I remember of my Oxford lectures, Nara was established as Japan's first capital city in about 800 AD, representing the culmination of the Taika reforms. These reforms aimed to unite familial clans (uji) dotted all over Japan under one emperor seated in Nara, to bring Japan in line with the Tang (china) and Silla (Korea) empires on the continent (sorry about that impromptu history lesson).
Nara has been my favourite destination in Japan so far since it has retained a large part of it's historical architecture without turning into a huge tourist destination on the same scale as Kyoto. In the morning we visited Daigokuden, the headquarters of ancient Nara where Japan's first emperor took office.
my friend Sarah in front of Daigokuden
The throne
What would have been the emperor's view
In the afternoon we moved on to Todaiji (great temple of the east). Todaiji houses the daibutsu, the world's largest bronze statue of the buddha. Todaiji is also famous for its deer since (according to wikipedia) Shinto (Japan's other major religion) believed deer to be messengers of the gods. The deer in Nara were (amazingly) free to roam the streets with everyone else which was somewhat surreal. From what I could see the deer had enough fun pillaging tourists for food that they had no reason to leave.
Chinese tourist being mobbed by the deer
Todaiji
Lantern in front of Todaiji
Daibustu
more momiji
my friend Sarah trying to tame a deer
Best,
Sean
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