Week 1 of Classes

My first week of classes were this past week and for the most part, the classes are not too bad though they are bit harder than I am used to. My schedule is as follows:

Japanese Elements I: 10:00am-11:20am
Japan in a Changing World Order: 11:30am-12:30pm
Japanese Culture: 12:40pm-1:40pm
Japanese Art: 3:20pm-4:40pm

These classes all fall on Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays, meaning I am pretty much in class all day three days a week. This is the first time though (in a while at least) that I had 3 classes back to back, followed by another class in the afternoon/evening. I hated it then but don't mind as much now. What I don't like is starving at 12:30, only to have another class for an hour. First world problems.

Japanese Elements I is my first class and easily my hardest one this semester. This is your basic Japanese 101 course, but I am terrible when it comes to learning languages. And Japanese isn't easy to learn, so this isn't a good combination.

(My homework. Looks fun eh?)

So, of course, I was going to hope that the class would go at a fair pace and I would gradually a difficult language. And my hope was misplaced. So very misplaced. In the first week of classes, we had two quizzes on the Hiragana alphabet and now are expected to have memorized already and read/write in Hiragana as we were fluent. Demanding and fast paced barely describe the course so far. I did manage to get a B on my first quiz, but then the teacher was like "if you didn't a perfect score, you pretty much suck." Oh, thanks prof! I appreciate the support.

Japan in a Changing World Order is my next course and is basically a political science course. The teacher spent the first day asking the class why we took the course and blamed the poorly written course description for our confusion, before ignoring it completely to design her own course. In this class, we are learning the political workings of Japan and connecting to current events, in particular the nuclear disaster. The class is not too bad, though some of my dorm mates do not share my interest in the course. There will be debates in class and they sound fun. 

Japanese culture follows after and is the same room (yay for not moving) and this class could be the best one of the semester...except that I have to memorize the map of Japan because the teacher loves his maps. Despite this, this teacher is my personal favorite so far because he makes the class pretty engaging and I don't have the desire to sleep yet. The subject matter has been interesting so far and the readings for class haven't been terrible yet. So far, so good.

My last class is Japanese Art, which is an art history course. Tracing the history of Japan through artwork has been...tedious at best. Staring at slides for nearly 90 minutes a day three times a week hasn't been that enjoyable so far, but I believe it is because we have been looking at ancient art so far and I don't like art until the feudal period when it comes to Japanese art so naturally my interest has yet to be piqued. Otherwise, the teacher is not bad except for a couple minor complaints I have. Otherwise, I have hope for the course since we go to on field trips. Those have potential.

Uneventful week otherwise, spent most of the weekend at home studying and getting used to having class. Did some cleaning and cooking. Your basic stuff. More to come later.