Thoughts from Kyoto - January 16

Thomas the tank engine makes an appearance on the Keihan railway.

The KCJS library in Kyodai Kaikan (京大會館)

The KCJS library in Kyodai Kaikan (京大會館)

Part of my everyday commute.

Part of my everyday commute.

This is an interesting way to pump gas. I take it there's no self-serve...

Morning in Kyoto. I'll get another shot from this location when there's snow in the mountains.

Absolutely delicious.

The large classroom in the jPod, Kyodai campus.

A narrow street.

In the morning, one of the Keihan railway trains had THOMAS THE TANK ENGINE pictures on it. Ah, so many nostalgic memories. Funny how I can get nostalgic for childhood looking at both American productions (Thomas) and Japanese (Totoro). I think it says something about the different sorts of opportunities you have as a child of immigrant parents – in my case, specifically Taiwanese growing up in America.

Holy crap, you can directly send stuff from your phone to others (and vice versa) using not just messaging, but Bluetooth or infrared. Huh? My phone has an infra-red sensor built into it, with which I don’t have to type out friend’s difficult-to-spell names – they just send it to me, complete with whatever other information they wish to include, such as E-mail address (for the phone or otherwise), birthday, and other interesting things. I definitely appreciate having an E-mail address for a phone, because it means I can send stuff from my Gmail to the phone. I tried making my own ringtone, but Goldwave doesn’t have the format required. Ah well, can’t expect everything to work out. Something I found particularly amusing was that (rumor has it) according to Japanese law, cell phone cameras *must* emit some sort of sound when taking a photo – it cannot be silent. Is this a pre-emptive strike against perverts?

So we basically had our first full day of Japanese class – while they technically started yesterday, that was spent basically shaping our syllabus, which I greatly appreciated. I was told to expect a lot of flexibility from KCJS, particularly because we would be coming in halfway through the year and they would have to tailor each Japanese level to the dynamics of the class, coming from different Japanese backgrounds and schools in the States. We decided the how many kanji questions we’d have per week, how many kanji per day, how many grammar forms per day, and so on. In the end it was quite a bit, but I just thought of it as the Intensive Japanese program that I had survived back in sophomore year, but in an even better environment with TONS of people who can speak the language.

The library at the Kyodai Kaikan is very nice – it’s quite small, but from what I’ve seen, the books look quite interesting. Of course, one really shouldn’t judge a book by their cover either positively or negatively, so perhaps I should hold this thought in reserve. I anticipate spending a significant amount of time there, because I don’t plan on buying all of my textbooks and lugging them back and forth. Back at Michigan it was easier because I never had more than 3 classes in a row before I had a chance to walk at the most 10 minutes back to my apartment and switch books. Here though I basically leave home at 7:30AM, and get back after everything is done, thus forcing me to bring everything with me on a commute that involves a significant amount of walking. There certainly are some downsides to living with a host family.

If you ever go to a Japanese convenience store, try out the ice cream called “Pino” – I’m thinking that we might actually have it in Taiwan too, though I never really looked carefully at Taiwanese options.

Had my first class at the jPod, which is KCJS’ building on the Kyoto University campus. It’s quite an interesting building – I can’t remember how this came to be, but there was a lot of wood used in various experiments or projects or something and they couldn’t legally be sold, so either Kyodai or someone else decided to use it and build something. The effect is quite nice, with nice large windows, wooden floors… I like having class in my socks.