Daily Life in Japan

I realize that I have thus far written very little about what I actually do from day to day here in Japan. It seems less exciting than actually talking about trips, but I suppose it is more representative of what I'm really doing...Anyway.



My host family's house in Yawata city, Kyoto

As you probably already know, I live in a city in Kyoto prefecture called Yawata, and it's about 45 minutes in either direction to downtown Osaka or Kyoto. Yawata is a pretty nice town, mostly residential, and there are a lot of small restaurants, karaoke bars, and shops in the area. My house is about a 15-20 minute walk from the train station, depending on how fast I go, and I am lucky to have a fairly scenic walk, part of which runs along a little creek where I sometimes am able to spot fish, turtles, and various kinds of birds.



A bridge along my walk to the train station in Yawata


The Yawata City train station

On the average weekday morning, I get up at around 7 or 7:15, at which time my breakfast is usually already sitting out waiting for me on the kitchen table. My host mother has work at a local factory from around 5:30 am until the late morning, so she is long gone before I wake up. She always prepares a lot of things for me, usually an egg and some kind of meat, as well as fruit and yogurt, and puts out a plate and jam for toast. It is a little hard to get used to eating that much in the morning, compared to the cracker or one slice of bread that I would probably eat at home in the morning, but it is pretty nice to have it there. My host father usually sits in the adjacent room watching TV and telling me he thinks I'll be cold. (Seriously, Japanese people dress so warmly all the time--even in 60+ degree weather when I am almost sweating just wearing a T-shirt, everyone else will still be wearing winter jackets and boots.)

At 8 or so I leave the house for the train station. Unfortunately it has been raining a lot lately...I had thought that it would mostly stop raining by mid-April, but today it has been pouring all day, and the weather forecast says it will continue through next week. As I said, it takes me about 15 minutes to get to the train station, and from there 10 minutes on the train to Goten-yama station, and then about a 20 minute walk to the Kansai Gaidai campus. That walk is not as scenic as the first leg, and is significantly more hilly. Highlights of the walk include making it to the top of the initial giant hill, a big apartment complex that is under construction but seems that it will be done within a few months, and a long walk past the construction plant next to Kansai Gaidai. Pretty exciting, no? All in all the commute takes me a little under an hour.



The venerable Center for International Education

All of my classes are at the Center for International Education, or CIE, a big building in the middle of Kansai Gaidai's campus. I can't say that Kansai Gaidai is too attractive of a university--all of the buildings are made of the same reddish colored bricks, creating a uniformity that is un-heard of in Oberlin, and there are not too much grass or other plants in between. Usually when I go into the CIE at 8:45 or so in the morning, I do not leave until at least 5 pm, save for an hour or so break in the middle for lunch.

I have class starting at 9 or 10 every morning, and there are usually 2 hours of Japanese, and sometimes a 2-hour block of ceramics before noon. The Japanese classes here are pretty relaxed, but they pack a lot of information in, and the professors are very good. To avoid time conflicts, all Japanese language classes are offered in the morning, and all electives in the afternoon. My spoken Japanese professor is named Shikaura-sensei (sensei means teacher), and is a very funny middle-aged woman. She is kind of weird, but in an endearing way, and our class meets at 11 every day. The entire second half of the semester is centered around the Japanese movie "Shall we Dance?" (you may have seen the American remake featuring Richard Gere), so we usually have to watch a 7 to 8 minute clip of it and the next day we talk about what happened, and are quizzed on grammar points and vocabulary that they use. As a result of this I have learned some fun words, such as "debu-babaa," whose meaning is similar to that of "cow" when used as an insult, and "hentai adzukai sareru," or being called a pervert. In the reading/writing class, which meets for an hour 3 times a week, we learn a lot of new grammar and vocabulary words based on articles that we read at the beginning of each chapter of our textbook. The professor is named Yuki-sensei, a young woman who looks to be in her 20's, and who I'm pretty sure does not weigh more than 75 pounds. She is extremely cute and cheerful, and is very patient with all of her students. The main focus of the class is learning how to write formal essays in a scholarly-sounding style, so we also learn about points relating specifically to written language, and sometimes we have writing assignments or in-class essays.



A late-afternoon view over Hirakata City from the 4th floor of the CIE

I am also taking a modern Japanese literature class called "The Intersection of Fantasy and Real Life in Modern Japanese Fiction," a title that is quite unwieldy and has proven to have little to do with the class itself, since only about half of the books that we read had anything to do with fantasy, whether it be people's imaginations or science fictiony type stories. (Why not just call it "Modern Japanese Fiction"? I don't know.) It is taught by professor Berry, previously mentioned for his laugh (I hope he never reads this), and he is an American who also teaches classes on manga and Japanese cinema. I have enjoyed the readings a lot, although some of them were pretty bizarre, and I think in total we have read around 10 books, though I didn't count. There are no more books left on the syllabus so I'm not entirely sure what we're doing from now on. (Today we watched a movie based on a short story by an author whose work we read.) Unfortunately the classes are not as interesting as the books. We meet for 90 minutes on Tuesday and Thursday afternoons, and the classes are rather painfully long. I will give him credit that it is hard to have class discussions with around 35 people in the class, but still there is just not that much to say about the discussion questions that he picks. Sigh. Thankfully there isn't a lot of homework outside of the readings, so that is good at least.



The ceramics studio, with Inomata-sensei in the middle


Bowls that I made in ceramics--note that this shot is from awhile ago so I am making more interesting things now...

My favorite class by far is ceramics. We have 8 hours of work in the ceramics studio every week, scheduled around our other classes, so I come in for 2 hours each on Tuesday and Friday mornings and for one 4-hour stretch on Wednesday afternoons. The professor is named Inomata-sensei, and he has apparently been teaching ceramics at Kansai Gaidai since before I was born. He is pretty funny, and he speaks in a strange mixture of English and Japanese that some how comes out being pretty easy to understand. I think he is a good teacher, and he seems to like me. So far we have learned to make a lot of things, including cups, sets of bowls, vases/sake bottles, goblets, and teapots. Each piece involves 3 steps, including throwing the piece on the wheel, trimming the bottom once it has dried, and later glazing and firing in the kiln. In addition to learning throwing and trimming techniques, we have also learned about a variety of ways that Japanese pottery is decorated. I wish I had more time in that class--I will only have 2 days next week in which to finish throwing things, and after that I will be spending all of my remaining time trimming and glazing everything that is left. I really hope I will be able to keep pottery up once I get to Oberlin--there is a pottery co-op that I could join, but I don't actually know that much about how it works or how much equipment they have there. Anyway, I've been working on trying to make stuff that I will actually be able to use, which is always a plus.



The CIE Lounge, where I spend much of my free time, especially on the computer

Most of my time, when not in class, is spent in the lounge on the first floor of the CIE. It is a pretty big and comfortable space, and there are always a lot of people there. Since I don't have internet at home, it is also the only place where I really use my computer. There are always a lot of study abroad students hanging out, and many Japanese students also come to practice their English and make new friends. Because the Japanese academic calendar is different than the American one, the regular Japanese students here have been on vacation from the first week of February until a week and a half ago, so lately the campus has gotten way more crowded with Japanese students. There are a few brave Japanese students who take classes in the CIE (I think that they offer business-related classes taught in English to them in the mornings, and a few of them opt to take regular classes with international students) as well.

I usually eat lunch at noon in the cafeteria. There are 2 cafeterias on campus, and also a dining court type thing with a McDonald's and a Seattle's Best Coffee. For students in a hurry, there is also a convenience store directly above McDonald's that sells packaged snack foods, and also bento boxes, nigiri (rice balls), sushi rolls, and the like, and that are pretty good. The Japanese students are free from 12:15 to 1:15 for lunch every day, so going to any of those locations at that time is a nightmare, with lines out the doors and no place to sit, so I do my best to avoid that hour.



A Thomas the Tank Engine train

I usually leave the campus a little after 6 pm, although some days I leave earlier, and take the same route home. When I am lucky I get the Thomas the Tank Engine train instead of the regular green ones.



Host father's place for prayer to ancestors, in the living room


Koko

I usually get home and eat dinner while watching TV with my host mother and father. Before dinner, my host father often rings a bell, lights incense, and briefly prays to his deceased parents and ancestors before the thing pictured above. I can't remember what it is called, but it is a Buddhist thing, and is fairly common in Japanese homes for the purpose of remembering the dead. My host family also has a little dog named Koko, who is around 17 years old, and is mostly bald and blind. It smells kind of bad (well, I guess it just smells like a dog) and is very skinny and frail so I don't really like petting it that much, but I guess it is kind of cute in its own way. Still I miss my cats.

After dinner, I generally take a shower and then a bath, which is a big part of Japanese traditional hygiene and is used mostly as a soaking tub, and which is very nice when it's cold inside of the house, and then I go to my room and read or do homework until I go to sleep.


Anyway, hopefully this has been an informative post. Sorry if it a little lackluster but I am tired right now. It is weird that my classes here end in a month! I can see the end drawing nearer...