4. Oops- over a week later
ok, so i realise it's tuesday and you must have all been hanging on desperately for an update on sunday. i apologise. really, i do :P
problem is that when i left you last time it was right before uni started and all the days were distinct. now, they're starting to blend together. poor you will have to get general reports instead of minutely detailed ones. i know, how disappointing :P
so.... that monday was, indeed, the first day of actual classes. so, like the good little students we are, we caught the bus that would get us there about 40 minutes before classes started. some exploration around uni happened and then we were eager to get this thing happening. monday's class is reading japanese. awesome teacher, btw. it's all in japnese, but we can understand it. we got a basic outline of the course and a newspaper article as our first text. we get to choose the later texts, which will be exciting :D
have i mentioned that kanazawa university has class bells? they sound out over campus in the manner of an old grandfather clock and i'm always waiting for the gongs to sound the hour afterward. it's a bit like being in high school. except in high school the classes didn't all finish at different times, so you didn't here the bells before class was over.
once written japanese was done, outside we went to go and buy lunch. MASSIVE wall of sound. japanese students trying to recruit for their clubs is a scary thing. they line the entire way from the building with most of the classrooms to the eating hall and shout at you and shove fliers into your hands. well, not my hands, being the scary gaijin that i am. but yeah, it was a pretty intimidating experience all the same.
so was the food hall. crowded is an understatement. everybody gets the same lunch hour, so the line extends very far. efficient service get's you with a tray of food in not too long a time, but then there is the trouble of finding somewhere to sit. simi and i eventually found somewhere to filled our bellies while an announcement came over the speaker informing us (in keigo) that the food hall was busy, so could people please eat quickly and leave immediately afterward. very different to australia.
but we weathered it and came through the other side wondering whether we should try going to the introduction class to international communications or take the medical check-up. a quick consultation showed us that wednesday's check-up time also coincided with a class we wanted to check out and we opted for getting the medical check up out of the way.
why oh why do the japanese have their forms in kanji? a very confusing 20 mins later, where we tried to answer a bunch of questions with the aid of some enthusiastic medical people with dictionaries on their phones found us with the first couple of questions answered and then the knowledge that we didn't actually have to do it then....
filled with relief, we went through the system of being called into a van to have our chest x-rayed, moved to a line so a doctor could make sure we weren't sick and check our heart beat, up to another place where we had our eyes tested and our blood pressure tested, then on to have our height and weight measured (this seemed to cause quite a bit of problem where i was concerned, so i had to have it done about three times. and it's not because i'm tall. donal is taller and he only did it once. it's some sort of sinister plot, i'm sure). finally, we got the answer the questions with the aid of big, laminated pieces of paper which had the questions translated into english. exept for a few questions that had changed a bit since the translation had happened, we were good to go.
and go we did. i'm just not quite sure what we did afterwards. oh well, if it's stunning enough, i'll put it in another post :P
tuesday brought us to our second day of classes and our first C1 japanese class. the entire time was spent doing a placement test and oral interview to make sure we were in the right class. which, it turns out, we weren't. we were meant to be in C2- except for simon and amber, who stayed in C1. we got the email that evening. we were starting to wonder how many placement tests we would have to take.
another crowded, noisy lunch where we were accosted by loud people carrying brightly coloured pieces of paper to and from (and it appears the fact that i'm gaijin is not an issue in not getting them. julia got plenty. it's just me *sigh*) then we went our separate ways caitlin, simi and me to an introduction class of a course which looks at japanese texts that had been translated into english, a couple of others going home and the rest going to check out the course on kanazawa culture. simi and i enjoyed the literature class- seemed interesting and there were a couple of japanese people we got to talking with (yay for practise- though i'm not sure it was a good sign that they kept speaking back to us in english). caitlin stuck around to do the karate class while simi and i joined the others to go home. they had thoroughly enjoyed their class and we were all happy. once again, not remembering anything past uni except we found a pharmacy and bought anemia pills for caitlin. i think this is beacause we tend to do the same sorts of things after class and there's nothing much to differentiate them....
though that night those of us who hadn't attended the kanazawa culture class got sent an email asking us why and strongly recommending that we attend from the following week. we got the message that it wasn't really an elective and so said good bye to the literature course and the japanese people we'd talked to. :'(
wednesday was not a fun day. we had to be in class for 8:45, which meant catching the 8:00 bus. eleanor was running a bit late, but we decided to save our own skins and go to the station. as we arrived, another bus desitined for kanazawa university pulled up, so we all jumped on it. only to be running to class as the bells sounded (stupid stairs at kanazawa uni!). oh yeah, and eleanor managed to catch the later bus and got there before us....
after apologizing to the teacher and explaining that the bus was late, we got handed a whole pile of papers that had been given out in the previous day's class. then we were handed a test. based on the stuff we'd received two seconds ago. not a good start to the day..... but we got through the class easily enough (most of the grammar points were revision) and went forth into another confusing mass of propaganda. we figured it would be all over by the end of the week and so put up with it. i was even given some fliers!
simi and i were going to try out the history of japanese cinema intro class, but we got confused and gave up. we hung around until the next class we wanted to look at: intro to contemporary japanese culture and society. which was in a different building, so we got lost but managed to find it before the bell rand. only to discover normal japanese students also take this course and the room was crouded. we went in search of seats and found them after the teacher directed us to the ones he could see from the front of the room. and yes, the entire thing is in japanese. not overly hard, for the sake of us poor not-native speakers, but still in japanese. then we went to the japanese history course. taught by a new zealander (!!!!! :D :D :D !!!!!) wich was major fun because he showed us "the last samurai" in fast forward, mainly slowing down to point out what wasn't historically accurate. this brought us to 6:00 and i know exactly what we did after thet. we went down to the bus top and huddled together in the rain until a bus came along that wasn't ridiculously crowded and could take us back to the dorm and the waiting dinner and waiting beds.
thursday maked a return to late morning starts and the beginning of kanji class. being in C2, we got put in kanji C (stands to reason). the first lesson was a test revising what had been taught in kanji B. oh boy had i forgotten a lot...... lunch wasn't too bad, since we waitied for the inital crowds to die down, since we had nowhere to be right afterward. i was meeting my tutor at half past one. which i did. she's a lovely person called akane and i'm glad to have her as a tutor. we talked for a few hours and then arranged to meet the next friday.
early afternoon, all alone, but i didn't want to go home. i wondered around campus for a bit and then mustered up some courage. i'd seen some people doing juggling and stuff outside near the library, so i went over and asked them what they were doing. turns out they're the juggling and magic circle. they the proceeded to try and recruit me by showing me everything they could do (impressive is an understatement, btw) and then getting me to try and juggle (impressively bad is kind of accurate) it was much fun and i hung out with them until about 7:00. then it turned out that the next bus to the station didn't leave for 40 mins, so one of the girls walked me there and stayed with me until the bus came :D
i remeber friday being a fun japanese class, but not much more............
saturday.......... i hung out in eleanor's room writing a letter while the others went to a museum of contemporary art.
sunday...... i wrote a blog post and then went to a museum. cool art, good photography. we met those of us who didn't go to the gallery and had okonomiyaki (mmmmmmmmmmmm........) and that's about it for the week.
