I have the package

Shortly before I temporarily left Japan, I shipped a big box of stuff to Canada. The postman came right to the dorm for his regular deliveries, helped me fill out the form, and departed with my stuff crooked under his arm. Five years ago, at the conclusion of my high school exchange, I sent a couple of packages as well...but it was a very emotional time, and I couldn't bring myself to open them at first, because I felt like in some way it would officially signal the end to a time I'd treasured. And then days turned into months and then it was just kind of a thing.

Today I opened all three. I barely remembered what I put in the one I shipped two months ago, never mind five years.

 Ok then, U-Pack. What have you got for me?

 Pokemon, the jinbei from English Club, some books, more Pokemon. All right, sure.

 Ah! FF for Jugs, Tales for Goku. Picked these up at Kyouto Animate. They were well-received.

 Here I have tried to arrange my Pokemon charms into the shape of Japan, their positioning corresponding to the region they represent. As you can see, I failed.

Enough of that. Time to jump into nostalgia in the worst way.

 It looks like I stuffed as many papers as possible anywhere they would fit. Right on top are the slightly crumpled lyrics to a song my class did for a contest. In Japanese high schools, you stick with your homeroom class, and the teachers come to you. Obviously this means that a Japanese high school student has nowhere near the course choice or autonomy of a Western one, but the main advantage is that the class becomes a family, and I really mean that. My class was the best part of my previous stay. It was full of wonderful, energetic, kind people who were not only quick to welcome me into the fold, but continually proved their willingness to help me survive in the school and not only endure but actively help cultivate my tottering and unsure Japanese.

Homeroom classes do a lot of activities together, one of which was a...I don't know what you'd call it. A singing contest, is what it was anyway. The more proactive students selected a few songs, we narrowed it down to two, thought up a little skit, and then competed with the other classes in our year. I gather it was a nationwide competition so the winners must have advanced to the intramurals and so on. We didn't win, but practising with everybody is one of my fondest memories from that time. This video from 1rittoru no Namida should give you an idea what it was like. As you can see we performed a half-English, half-Japanese rendition of “A Whole New World” from Disney's Aladdin. I can still recite parts of the Japanese lyrics from memory. My class also did “Oh Happy Day” but I wasn't part of that group. Remember that one pretty well too, though.

 On the first day we were required to do a test. Looking back I have no idea what the point of that was, since everybody there had already written an entrance examination, but I guess it was just to assess our abilities. Of course I was hopelessly lost, and though my teacher said I should ask if I wasn't sure what to do, I didn't want to take up time that would be better spent on my classmates, who, unlike me, were actually expected to perform somewhat acceptably.

Of course I was able to do the English section with no problems, even without being able to read the instructions, but the rest was impossible. I barely attempted the Kokugo. I was later placed in a Math class since that's pretty much the same in every language, but not only is Canadian Mathematical pedagogy woefully inadequate, I was pretty damn horrible at even that.

Hey, somebody check this and tell me if my math's correct. It probably isn't. On another page I adorably wrote “FOIL” in the margin, as if it was too abstract and complex an idea to hold in my head without having it in front of me.

 A, uh, pamphlet that's been scrawled all over with marker and shot to hell with a hole-punch. I can no longer recall its origin but it clearly must have meant a great deal to me at the time. Jesus but I'm a sentimental bastard, aren't I?

 I didn't spend every class with my class, as it happens. Some of them, like Kokugo, would have been too far beyond me, and the school's administrators thought (as did I) that it would be beneficial to experience a wide range of topics and classroom settings. So, for four blocks a week, I would trek over to some other class and sit down with them. One was Sekaishi, with a class that I always felt I would have loved to have been a part of every bit as much as I did my own, if it had shaken out that way. Hero of another story and all that. This paper was clearly from my Nihonshi class, where I first learned the word “bakufu.” There were a couple of girls in that class who sat near me that I always enjoyed talking to. They were hot.

 Whoooooakay then. No, I wasn't foisting my nationalist pride on everyone around me. These were supposed to be gifts. Obviously I didn't end up distributing them all, but they're good to have.

 Hey, I remember buying this! Seems I had halfway decent taste in high school. Still in ok condition, too. Never did know who DJ Honda was, though.

 ...yeah ok.

 Oh, right. I used to be kind of a nerd.

 Ah, Hagaren! Book-Off has always been good to me.

 They don't quite jive with the rest of the collection, though.

 An...empty plastic bag. Seriously, what the fuck was wrong with me?

 Aha! Cardcaptor Sakura was what I was using for reading practise back in the day, and it was every bit as difficult for me then as 1Q84 is now. However, I never quite completed my collection. Each volume, you see, was originally packaged with a bookmark in the form of a Clow Card. My ambition was to obtain a complete set of Clow Cards, so I always vowed to gather the rest whenever I returned to Japan. Unfortunately, since I refused to open up the box and check I had no idea which ones I was still missing, so I couldn't do it this time. Guess that just means I have to get back as quickly as possible.

 Actually, as you can see I was tantalizingly close to getting them all. Damn!

 A T-shirt, which I bought in 2008, that celebrates the Rolling Stones tour of 1981-82, which I was unable to attend because I was too busy not having been born yet.

Aaaaand here's all the Gundams I acquired over the course of a semester (along with two other still unbuilt ones that I bought in Canada). I seem to have packed them first and then jammed everything else in around them. In total, it looks like I bought twelve. I'd often arrange and rearrange them on my bed or a table, simply admiring them, glowing with pride every time another machine or two joined their ranks. Yes that's both a regular and Char Custom Zaku, and yes that's two versions of Freedom. Shut up.

I find it really rather unbelievable that I ever thought that this was a good use of money, or that I'd be able to find space in my room for them, or, most of all, that I'd ever, ever have the time to build all these fucking things. Amazing how priorities change.

There is one thing I didn't find amongst this clusterfuck. Over those five months, I kept an incredibly dense journal, filled with reams of completely unnecessary detail, that I'd hoped might turn up. The fact that it did not means that I felt it was precious enough to carry it with me in my backpack, and that it is most likely now lodged deep in some other box, in the bowels of my parents' basement, possibly on another plane of reality. If I ever come across it again, or just get the itch to reminisce, I'll share some of the stories from that period – and there are some good ones. For now, I hope you've enjoyed the snippets. Looking through this stuff has given me some perspective on my most recent ryuugaku, as in a lot of ways, they were really very similar: Joyous, painful, thrilling, and ultimately transformative. That is, everything a ryuugaku should be.

Exam season

As of last week, I have finally finished all my exams. This is always a bit of a trying period, but that goes double here, considering I not only had to tangle with the additional difficulty of conducting them in a foreign language, but am also trying to cram as much Japanese enjoyment into my remaining time as possible, and it's been a little difficult to fully relax knowing that there was still work left to be done. Hell, even now, I still have the spectre of travel preparations looming over me. But we're not talking about that today.

No, I just want to say that I still find the Japanese exam system, or at least the one used by my school, to be totally vexing. I mentioned some of the details when I wasrunning the gauntlet last semester, but I think they deserve revisiting. For one, each exam is blocked in for only an hour. One single, paltry hour. This is insanity. It took me longer than that to write this blog post, never mind trying to bring together all the knowledge I have accumulated in a full semester's course. Even more bizarrely, both Enjoyably Study Korean exams could be comfortably completed within about fifteen minutes or so, leaving 90% of the class to sit aimlessly until the required 40 minutes had elapsed and we were allowed to exit the room.

At my Canadian university, the standard exam block is three hours, and that's always seemed about right. And even then, the exam itself is only one, admittedly large component of your final mark. Throughout the preceding weeks you'll be hit with some combination of essays, one-page assignments, presentations, quizzes, maybe a special project or something. Usually the final exam is worth 60% (although I've seen it as low as 20%), so you can't just write it off, but you can at least do poorly on the exam and still pass the course.

In Japan, however, the exam is often all you've got. Now of course this has the advantage of a drastically lesser workload during the semester, allowing you to schedule your studying around the countless other demands on your time, but you're also getting no feedback. If you've misunderstood something, you might never find out what your mistake was. You've got one hour. One attempt. And if you had a sudden crisis and couldn't revise, or woke up with a concentration-crippling fever? Bummer. I can't say for sure, but my experience elsewhere leads me to suspect that the concept of a makeup exam is not one that Japanese professors would be familiar with.

And as I've said before, there isn't even a clock on the wall, making time management a bit of a guessing game. A few of the topics from last semester's History of Japanese Thought were reiterated this semester, but I decided to challenge myself on the exam and write on different topics. It would be good practise, I thought, and would force me to look more deeply into material I had not yet mastered. So I went in, and managed to hammer out what I thought was a decently written, well-reasoned, mostly coherent explanation of Shoutoku Taishi's 17 Kenpou, and was feeling pretty good.

But just as I was readying myself for an eloquent concluding paragraph, the teacher announced that 40 minutes had elapsed, and anyone who was already finished was free to go. Of course I wouldn't expect myself to be done by then, not for an essay-writing exam designed to be completed in one hour by native speakers. I would, however, hope to be at least half-done by the halfway point, meaning I was severely lagging. I rushed out my final paragraph, abandoned my prior aspirations, and went with the Juugyuuzu again, because I knew for a fact that I could at least hit the most important points. My efforts basically amounted to a list and I didn't even have time to do a conclusion. It might be interesting if I could look back on last semester's exam and see how much my writing's improved, but still. Lame!

At least this method requires real output from the examinees, though. A distressingly high ratio of exams seem to be strictly multiple choice. Not just like a multiple choice focus, but literally that's the only type of question. As a student I'm a huge fan of multiple choice, because they're by far the easiest question type (followed closely by matching), but if I'm going to make wildly speculative generalizations about the future of an entire culture and nation of people, I would have to say that this is a roundly terrible system for Japan. Multiple choice, as we all know, requires next to nothing. Never mind that you automatically have a 25% chance of getting a question right even if you guess at random, you don't actually need to understand the correct answer. Hell, you don't even need to reproduce it. You just have to be able to recognize it. All that's required to do well is a ton of rote memorization, which is rather fitting, seeing as it's kind of systemic of, you know, the entire Japanese education system. (And remember, I went through a semester of Japanese high school and a year of Japanese university, taking native-level classes the entire time; I'm allowed to say that.)

As I say, though, it did work to my advantage for World of Philosophy, as skills like process of elimination are naturally perfectly transferable to the Japanese setting. Since the content was almost entirely things I learned in English years ago, I really had only two obstacles with which to contend: Terminology and kanji, there being some overlap between the two. I definitely could have brushed up on terminology a little more, since being able to outline the distinguishing characteristics of empiricism and rationalism is useless if I don't know which one I'm being asked about. Kanji, though, is not a problem I can breach with a few nights of cramming. There were times where I couldn't read the question, or the answers, or both, and in those cases there was nothing to be done. I was able to read a lot more than I expected to, which was gratifying, but if I pass, I'll be so super stoked.

I'm not going to say that the Japanese system of exams is wrong. That would be a little summary of me. If anything, the entire institution of standardized testing is wrong, and both the Canadian and Japanese systems are just equally stupid manifestations of a wider problem. Either way, it's just one more wrinkle to smooth out. One way or another, my time at Japanese university is now over, and I've got mixed feelings about that, but I can certainly say that I handled it the very best I could.

Duelling speech contests

I'd love to enter a Japanese Speech Contest. I'd get to try something new, force myself to use the language in a way I'm not accustomed to, and just plain see where I'm at, like a Prime Minister testing the confidence of the populace by calling an election in mid-term. Well, I entered one, but they only accepted five people, and I wasn't one of them. Maybe the content was too abstract, or they didn't appreciate the style I constructed. Maybe I messed up the paperwork, or made an insufficiently compelling case for myself. Or, you know, maybe I've been put on a blacklist for the sexual harassment thing. To be fair, I have no idea how they selected the contestants.

The eligibility rules were a minor clusterfuck of “buts” and “provideds” founded on the abstract that you could only enter a contest whose language you did not speak natively, which initially sounds quite obvious, but one of the many language epiphanies this ryuugaku has granted me is a somewhat vaguer understanding of what the hell a “native speaker” is. (What, could Mother Russia enter a German contest?) The Europeans are unilaterally denied on the basis of their English being too strong, which is like disqualifying a would-be sprinter for running too fast, but that's how it goes, I guess. So to keep them out, they decided to institute this rule of “residency,” so that only residents of Asian countries can enter the English, and those of anywhere outside Japan can enter the Japanese...which led to an idiotic loophole in which a Brazilian girl who's lived here for six years could not test her Japanese, in which she is proficient, but was let into the English, in which she can barely make herself understood.

The Europeans were not pleased. She won, too. And then could not make an acceptance speech, because memorizing three minutes for the contest was one thing, but saying a few words off the top of her head for thirty seconds was beyond her.

The judges always come up with questionable choices anyway. I learned early that fairness has no place in this arena. Obviously when the outcome is entirely dependent on human whim nobody's going to agree with the results 100% of the time, but I imagine things might be different if there was only a single judge instead of three. Though it's probably too much accountability to put on one person, I have a sneaking suspicion that when judges have to determine a winner by consensus, they may differ on who was best...but they're willing to give first place to somebody that all of them agreed was good. In other words, rather than give a standout performance, you have a better chance of winning by performing competently in kind of a mediocre way. Which is shit, frankly, but that's the performing arts for you.

I was a little bit anxious to see Insufferable Dumbass get knocked down a peg, and boy did he ever. “I have this problem, I always have to be the best,” he told his parents over Skype, because he Skypes with them like every fucking day. This was news to me, because I'd always assumed he must be aiming for the opposite. Anyway, he genuinely believed that he might win, which is pretty incredible, though I certainly didn't want to see him crash and burn; he's actually an extremely kind, generous person. He's just irritating. And extremely young for his age. And louder than most battlefields. Also there's the fact that he's fucking stupid. I mean really fucking stupid. Anyway he stuttered and mumbled through his train wreck, and for a moment I thought he would burst into tears right there on the stage. He disappeared for a couple of hours afterward. I would feel bad, but I think the wake-up slap probably did him good. Tiny Korean Girl came second.

I was quite unimpressed to see that the number of spectators more than doubled after the intermission. In other words, a gigantic crowd of Japanese people came to watch just the English portion. In fact, even a couple of the English contestants didn't show up until it was their turn to go on! Come on, guys. That's a little fucking disrespectful. We stayed to watch yours, you should come to watch ours.

Worse, one of the English contestants cut his own legs right the hell off. He submitted an energetic, elegantly enunciated, well-structured speech about a two-month ryuugaku he'd done in New Zealand. He talked about some of the differences in socialization, how New Zealanders will take any opportunity to strike up a conversation, and how he was always made to feel like he was an individual before he was a foreigner. Good stuff, delivered in an engaging and interesting way. But then he dropped the bomb: “Of course, people in New Zealand speak only English, so if I had a problem, like when my gas got cut off, no one could help me. So I had to rely on myself.”

OK, fair point. Would have been a lot better of one if he'd said “Of course, very few people in New Zealand speak Japanese,” but unfortunately, I think he'd truly never considered that people from English-speaking countries might be learning some language other than English. After all, all white people speak English and only English. Didn't you know that? I thought everybody knew that. Also, everyone not from Asia is white. He still could have recovered, but when people find themselves in a hole, some don't know when to stop digging, and some requisition a backhoe.

The speeches were all followed by a handful of questions from the judges. The purpose here is partly for them to clarify and inquire, but more importantly it's to test the speakers' ability to formulate a response extemporaneously. In this case, he actually cut off one of the judges in the middle of her question, answering, “For example, I have to use English here, because you can't understand Japanese.” He had no way of knowing that this particular woman has been here for over twenty years, lives Japanese, and works as a professional translator. Her response was justifiably curt: “Yes, I do.”

Oops.

“But actually,” she continued, “I was going to ask you what advice you would give to your New Zealand friends if they were to come to Japan.” The look on his face said it all. People do that? Eventually, he managed to spit out one final facepalm: “Well, I would advice them to learn Japanese customs, like eating with chopsticks, or taking shoes off for coming inside.” The judge was Canadian. Whatever the other two may have thought, I am quite sure she had already decided to torpedo him at this point. I certainly would have. He did not place.

Interestingly, the two sets of judges handled Question Period very differently. For the Japanese it was like – holy shit, you guys. You've spent years learning this language. You've come all the way here to improve your abilities. You have formulated a speech and delivered it in front of an audience largely composed of native speakers, and now your every mistake and insufficiency is going to be brutally scrutinized. Here, have a couple softballs to hit out of the park. You've earned them.

The English, though, was: We are going to test the living shit out of your English skills today. Then sacrifice your immortal souls to Belial and personally feast on your bones.

To my delight, pride, and, to be honest, genuine surprise, Shiga made it into the top three. He earned it. I listened to where he was at a month ago, and I thought, buddy, you're going to do a great job...and you're going to get destroyed. But he smashed my expectations. He spent day and night practising his speech, in his head or under his breath, translating every moment of transit time and other wasted hours into an opportunity to get that little bit better. He had me record myself reading his speech, as you do, and listened repeatedly in an effort to nail down the intonation and delivery. He checked in frequently to have me adjust and refine his pronunciation. And it paid off! Maybe I should lean on him for a cut of the prize money.

Just three days later, I went in to watch a Recitation Contest. Since I'm not a buin, and a 4kaisei at that, I was in no way required to attend, but I wanted to show my support, especially since it was to be one of my last chances to see the English Club all together. The concept is to take a short excerpt of a famous speech, in this case Obama's “Yes we Can.” and have fifteen 1kkaisei each perform it for the assembled club. All of them. The exact same speech. Over and over again. Any speech contest involves a certain degree of downtime and boredom, but this one was downright stultifying. However, it was no doubt a good chance for the younger students to get a feel for the competitive format and atmosphere without having to tangle with content generation, an additional layer of nuance and difficulty.

For me, I think the most important thing is rhythm and flow, the ability to draw the listener in and hold their interest, which is probably, at the end of the day, the single most important communication skill after “making sense.” Pronunciation is another level down, but while very few people will ever completely erase their accent, the ones who sound the most fluent are those with the most natural intonation, pronunciation being what it may. As for the speech itself, I feel that structure and a good hook are worthy of scrutiny, but the subject is immaterial. Last comes speaking skills such as eye contact and gestures, because I feel that, while certainly important, they are not what's being tested. In contrast, one judge asserted that speed and pacing were the most important, while the other was all about the pronunciation, because, she said, “If we can't understand you, there's no point,” which was not only assholish but ironic, since she kept saying “pronounciation.”

Because nearly every active member made a showing, it was fun to watch the social dynamic, too. The participants were off to the side, while the 60 or so 1kkaisei gathered in front, backs straight, respectfully attentive, silent as the grave. The 30ish 2kaisei, behind them, were much the same, if a little more relaxed about it. The 15 or so 3kaisei were mostly in charge of running the contest, while the rest sternly monitored the action. Finally, I sat at the very back of the room with the one other 4kaisei. We lounged around haphazardly, chatted at inappropriate times, and were generally just carelessly disruptive in an attempt to keep ourselves entertained. And of course we did, because who the fuck's going to tell us not to? The 3kaisei? Not if they know what's good for them.

The kid I've been coaching didn't place, but I thought he did very well, and I would have put him in second myself. He was a little down after “losing,” but I kicked his ass about it, reminding him that the most important thing is improving and doing your best, and placing is just a bonus. He responded really well to that, and now he's already getting pumped for the full-on Speech Contest in October. Oh to be 18 again. Meanwhile, both first and third place were from my section. Conversation, fight!!

Learning Korean

My Korean teacher is a badass. That's a horrendously overused word and I don't toss it around lightly. He earned it. He teaches Korean with an attitude like, “Oh, it's you people again. Well, I'm just going to think out loud about Korean now, maybe write some things on the board. It's part of my process. You're welcome to stick around and experience it if you wish.” But then when the time comes he is very careful about actually going around to each student in the class of about twenty and making sure they have all, individually, understood the concept he has introduced before he moves on. Sometimes he'll pick somebody at random and quiz them. He doesn't hand out undeserved praise, and he'll laugh at incorrect guesses – but not in a way like “Haha, God but you suck,” more like “Look, we are learning a language! Isn't this cool?!”

He also has the looks to be an actor, a penchant for tardiness, a distant preoccupation that suggests a storied past, and a fine wardrobe and sense of style. When I got singled out twice in two classes I thought he was being hard on me, but then I realised he was actually just treating me like an equal to my peers. It's only that I've grown accustomed to being condescended to. 10 times out of 10 I'll take the teacher, or the friend, or the stranger who makes me work for my keep over the one who thinks I can't tie my own shoelaces. A few weeks ago he introduced us to a number of K-pop fixtures, because, after all, this is “Enjoyably” Study Korean, so it's not all writing drills and call-and-response. This turned out to be a great excuse to show off Bubble Pop during class time. As if you need one.

Before we could get to this, though, we had to endure a fairly brief and painless quiz. I'm finding hangul to be elegant in its complexity, as every time I think I've more or less grasped the gist of how letters come together to form characters, I run across one in my blogsailing that stops me dead. I had this faulty idea that all characters were made up of two to three letters; I've actually seen some with, like, six. I'm horrified by the knowledge that Korean has spelling, and it seems to be every bit as bemusing as that of English. In Japanese, you can write a character incorrectly, you can use the wrong one, you can mishear a long vowel or a double consonant, but you can never actually misspell a word. I've sort of grown accustomed to the idea that words in foreign languages are just written the way they're written.

On the other hand, whenever the day comes that I first decide to sit down and read something in Korean of my own volition, even if I have to look up every third word, at least I'll just be able to type it into a dictionary and get the meaning instantly, rather than hunt through a radical table making tactical use of the clipboard. Maybe if I tried to read 1Q84 in Korean I'd be more than 15% of the way through after working at it for six months. I'll tell you one thing that Japanese has over Korean, though: If I see a Japanese word I don't know, I can scan over a character, or even part of a character, and work out an idea of what it might mean, maybe even look at the tsukuri and guess at one of the Chinese readings. I can't say for sure, but I imagine you could probably study Korean for several years without ever realising that the connection between hwisa (会社) and sahwi (社会) is more than coincidental. Realistically, my own Korean etymology is unlikely to ever reach that level. I am still quite satisfied with my gradual progress towards Korean semi-literacy however, and was even pleased to find that 가 (ka) has stopped saying フト to me. Unfortunately, the 0101 on the side of the Marui Building now says 이이 (i i).

For the quiz, we were given a list of 21 words to memorize, 10 appeared on the test, and we were tasked with translating them from Japanese into Korean. To study, I sat down a few times for a few minutes each and did a little bit of rote memorization. Quizzed myself when I started feeling confident, took another look at the ones I got wrong. It was great. It felt like good, honest work. My level of success enjoyed a direct relationship with my level of effort. See, the point where I'm at in Japanese, I'm starting to really dig into the meat of the language, and everything I learn is all abstract concepts, subtly different technical terms, and grammar points that have usage notes like “only to be used immediately after a refreshing rain on a fine summer's day when the speaker is wearing purple socks, barring any exceptions as detailed in Appendix Q.” For this Korean test, I memorized words like “dog” and “I.” Kasu is kashu. Toro is douro. Great, got it!

Korean, at this point, is still something I can sit back and relax with, the way a hockey player might relax with an exercise bike after a tough practise. It's still a toy, a parlour trick, not something I'm using to communicate with people, yet. I haven't experienced frustration at not being able to express myself adequately, or had my pride injured through not knowing something I should have learned by now. There was definitely a time, after I'd mastered the basics but before I stopped sucking at it, that I had a lot more hate than love for the Japanese language. I was Rocky, Japanese was Apollo Creed, and the first movie had just ended; I was lying beaten and bloody on the floor, and for a while there I seriously considered giving up on it completely. It was just too hard. The grammar was too alien, the kanji too numerous. Every time I reached a new plateau I saw that the peak was farther away than I'd thought. But I persevered, the sequel came, and this time I won. Japanese started working for me. But it was a long and lonely road to get there, and if I continue with Korean, eventually I'll arrive at the same crisis.

All of this raises the question of how far I plan to go with my Korean. It'll never be as good as my Japanese is now; I know at least that much. Japanese has almost a decade's headstart, I started learning when I was still physically almost a child, and this is the language of the country that I intend to spend my life in. It dominates my attention, and I can't see any other hobby ever displacing it (unless, to continue the above analogy, Korean turns out to be Ivan Drago). My interest in Korean is much less fundamental; it comes from a desire to speak with Koreans, maintain numerical parity with Europeans, and impress Japanese. In any case, I don't think I'll ever just stop learning now that I've started, but if I can get to the level where I can maintain a simple conversation – ask for directions, talk about mutual likes and dislikes, invite a girl to a hotel – I think I'll be satisfied.

Across the Universe

Unlike all other classes at my university, which are conducted only once a week, Enjoyably Study Korean and its sisters are split into two partially overlapping sessions in a five-day cycle. You are free to pick whichever of the multiple offerings you like, as long as you take both the A and B courses. The other, it would seem, is more about ancillary aspects of studying the Korean language, while today's is a slightly more straightlaced rendition that aims to have us actually sitting down, scratching out unfamiliar shapes, and getting to grips with grammatical nuts and bolts. It's a principle I can get behind; I'll be the first to say that consistent patterns are the key to successful language-learning.

Then I studied another Asian language, Japanese this time. For the final of my four required academics, I was once more with the same group of Chinese people. I'm really getting to like them; maybe because they're all foreigners themselves and know that we all have a secretly desperate desire for friends, they seem not to be shy about just walking right up and introducing themselves. Anyway this class was all about Reading Comprehension, vital for both the JLPT (whenever I decide to take it) and also every aspect of my entire life. It's also a subject that has a lot of potential for excruciating boredom, but this class at least put out a little effort by having us conduct a series of quizzes. By making it an active process and turning the focus towards our own selves, it became ten times as engaging than it would have been had we been made to just, say, struggle through a passage.

In the late afternoon, Mother Russia and I went to check out the Astronomy Club's regular Friday activities. After a brief reminder of upcoming events, there was a half-hour break while we waited for dusk to fall. I can only imagine that this is going to cut more and more into their actual activity time as summer approaches and the days grow longer. In the meantime, we popped into English Club, because I felt bad for abandoning them on a day I'd regularly have joined in, and Mother Russia was a big hit with the guys. No surprise there. Her Japanese is better than average and, personal taste notwithstanding, nobody would argue that she isn't a striking young woman. Shiga is smitten. I had to laugh at that. She would eat Shiga for breakfast.

Finally it was dark enough to see the stars, but...! The sky was far too cloudy to see anything. Which was awfully bad luck, considering that at this time of year they're trying to lure in new students by showing them all the fun things they do. Luckily, they have a regular backup prepared for just this time at lunch, and inflated a big black tent-like thing in one of the music rooms, then usshered us inside. In the middle they'd placed some kind of pill-shaped machine that projected the basic pattern of the major constellations onto the surface of the nylon bag in which we sat, creating a celestial sphere around us. One of the older students then walked us through locating Ursa Major, the story behind Cassiopoiea, and other such things. Every once in a while the tent would lose some air and begin to sag in places, and the older students would expertly move to right it. It was a pretty fun time, although I did wonder whether the novelty would wear off if you weren't super into stars, and also where a student club gets the money for that kind of setup.

They also set up a small telescope outside and aimed it at Jupiter and Castor, which reminded me of the vastness of interstellar distances and heavenly bodies, the incomprehensible age of the universe, and the insignificance of both my own life and, really, all of humanity in comparison. That started to depress me, so it was fortunate that at that moment Mother Russia decided it was time to go home.

Overtime

Formal class time wrapped up yesterday, and for us that meant our final exam in Reading Comprehension. As I've mentioned, reading and writing is my greatness weakness by far, so I think it's safe to say that I maybe didn't do so well. Or at least, I definitely didn't do so well on the recognition. The actual comprehension component, in which we were made to read a simplified news story and then report back on its content, might have been ok, because I know how to dress up my answers while still being honest. My kanji knowledge may be lacking, but my test-taking skills are tops.

Everybody else in the house then immediately celebrated their impending two months of freedom, but I had one more day before I was done. The examination period is stretched out over almost three weeks, so naturally I had two exams on the same fucking day. Fortunately we were given our Nihon Shisoushi questions in advance, so I was adequately prepared. The first essay required us to pick one among ten or so topics, of which I meandered through several. I started with Hounen, and then quite reasonably contrasted him with his disciple Shinran. These two are kind of the Plato and Aristotle of Japanese philosophy, in that they were master and student, the student is somewhat better-regarded in modern times, and they're about as fundamental as you can get. I then added a brief discussion of their differing views on nenbutsu, which was yet another topic entirely, and finished with a discussion of egoism as a basis for ethics, which existed up to Hounen but was mostly abolished with the rise of Shinran, and which, also, was never at any point discussed in this class, even once.

The second essay was on the Juugyuuzu, a series of ten pictures depicting a person's metaphorical journey from layman to master of Buddhist wisdom. At this point I was running slightly behind, because, if you can believe this, the exam was only an hour long. Before now I don't think I've ever in my life sat an exam that was less than three hours, and to make things worse there was no clock in the room, making proper time apportionment a bit of a challenge. I ended up just listing off each of the pictures (from memory!) and explaining what I supposed their deeper meaning to be. Then the chime sounded, so my conclusion ended on quite a lame note, coming off as something like “and then he went back and shared his new wisdom...with...uh, people.”

It's one thing to fail, but it's quite another to think that you could have done better, and I'm happy to report that I have no regrets. Even better, I don't feel that the content would have been substantially different had I written it in English; it would have been more eloquent, and better organized, and wouldn't look like it was written my a ten-year-old, but I didn't feel like I was leaving out anything significant because I didn't know how to express it. Besides, Philosophy claims this teacher is happy if we ryuugakusei can just write something halfway coherent, so it should be good.

Really though, it's amazing how living abroad can make you feel like a superhero. You can get pumped from accomplishing mammoth tasks like riding a bus, or buying something from a store. Today I located a classroom, interpreted a seating plan, figured out some instructions, and wrote an exam!! As did 200 other people!!

My Kyouto Culture Discussion exam was much less successful, mainly because it was multiple choice, and thus asked far more of my reading abilities than they could give. Many of the questions were kind of stupid and unfair as well, like “what station is closest to this landmark?” and “of the following four temples and shrines, name the one that is slightly more significant.” There was even one which read, “One class, I brought in two objects to show you. What were they?” Which I guess is sort of a curveball for those afflicted by chronic absenteeism or narcolepsy. It's also the only question that I'm 100% sure I got right, so I'm not complaining. Mostly it was a matter of the standard techniques of elimination, great concentration of common denominators, and picking B if all else fails (it doesn't matter what letter you blindly guess, as long as all your blind guesses are all the same – if the correct answers are evenly spread out over all letters, and they never are, but if they are, then you're statistically hedging your bets.) Who cares, I don't think I'm not sure I'm even getting credit for this class anyway.

Next week I have my Foreign Policy exam, in which I will make insightful observations about Japan's relationship with South Korea with respect to comfort women, Takeshima, and the future of the Korean War. And then I'll be free until April, with no responsibilities and no money to spend. Something tells me I'll be getting a lot of studying, writing, and walking done.

Day in the life

January 15^th, 2013

08:26

The screech of my phone's alarm jerks me awake. I stayed up past 5 am rushing through the last of the leftover homework for today. Easily avoidable and my own stupid fault, but I did get everything finished. No time to shower, but at least I'm not in danger of missing my exam. Thank fuck for that.

Cologne has taken to kicking my bed as hard as he can when he knows I have to be up. Actually, it is quite effective and helpful. Today it's my turn. It's nice how roommates help each other out.

The sky is overcast, the air uncharacteristically crisp. It puts me in a good mood. I'm amidst a gradual migration towards the school, like a Japanese Exodus, except only ten minutes long, and people are going to class instead of fleeing Ramses II. I see that I have enough time to go the long way, which means I get to take the escalator, which means I get to appreciate the hot girls riding it.

08:54

Of the other six students in my class, only Hecate has beat me to class. We barely acknowledge each other as I enter and I go stare out the window. All told, Hecate is one of my closer foreign friends.

Today is Grammar. Although I already know the majority of the patterns we're being taught, I actually find this class the most helpful, as it focusses on usage. Conversation is fun, but a joke, and Listening Comprehension is just meh for everybody. My kanji deficiencies make Reading Comprehension a battle at best, but at least I'm improving.

09:00

For our group, both Grammar and Conversation are taught by the head Japanese teacher, a woman in her early 30's. As always, she arrives almost exactly as the chime sounds. Unfortunately her contract was not renewed, which is nonsensical and stupid, as all students from every level agree that she's the best by far. Arzenchia arrives several minutes late, prompting a tongue-lashing before the exams are distributed.

I haven't studied at all, but I'm not nervous. As I work through the exam, I'm finding it's so easy that I actually go back and read the instructions just to make sure I haven't misunderstood something. I finish the hour-long exam in just over half an hour, so presumably I did either very well or very poorly.

09:41

Huh. Ordinarily I'd be spending all day on campus, but today I guess I've got some free time. I rush home to shower. The weather is all like, “Maybe I'm gonna snow, maybe I'm gonna rain. Haven't decided. We'll see how I feel.” A city truck is parked in the road, blocking an entire lane of traffic. Cones are laid out in case the workers milling around aren't enough of a clue, and one guy's job is to direct cars around the truck, in case they aren't sure whether they're supposed to just drive into the back of it or what.

10:31

I run into a guy from English Club. Actually, he kind of annoys the shit out of me. We make plans to hang out.

10:39

I've arrived at 日本思想史 or “History of Japanese Thought,” my legit class for the day, because Philosophy major. I never realised just how much of Japanese intellectualism was influenced by Buddhism, but of course it makes total sense that religion would inform philosophy. Right, Descartes?

Philosophy and Hikikmori Girl are always ten to twenty minutes late. The teacher, at least five. A sternly comedic academic, his Japanese is easy to follow, but his lectures range from concrete and example-filled to incomprehensibly abstract. He isn't afraid to exude a little teacherly intimidation when he starts to get pissed off, but he'll also sometimes, for example, scold an inattentive student and then start laughing. Once, he stopped in the middle of the lecture to gravely announce that we would now hold a small, impromptu rock-paper-scissors tournament to determine who would read the next section of the text. He's equal parts serious and silly as the situation demands.

He studied in Germany in his own college days, an experience from which he often draws examples. As a helpful side-effect, it means that he is well aware of our unique needs, which is helpful. He will also sometimes reference us three when making a comparison to support the point he's making, though he has the unnerving habit of doing so without looking at us.

Now he's going on and on about Dougen. I struggle with the handouts for this class, on account of I can't fucking read them. I don't even have the energy to try to follow along with the readings today, so I just listen.

12:19

Another long break now, so I make spaghetti, chat with Anarchy in the UK, and then contort myself into the confines of the common room couch and catch up on some sleep. If I go to my bed I'll sleep too deeply, and either miss my next class or interrupt my REMs, which will actually make me more tired.

15:03

Eyes open. Well, my class started three minutes ago, but fuck it. I take my sweet time getting ready and making my way over, taking the escalator once again.

15:21

Science & Technology, baby. The one 18 roped me into. Passing this class requires little more than a pulse. The teacher is a middle-aged Scottish guy with a ponytail who dresses like a hippy. Today I just have to describe a TED talk, which I watched shortly before writing a 1000-word essay in literally five minutes and then sleeping.

15:45

Released into the wild. Early, again. Hamburg and I stop at the on-campus Family Mart, where we run into a friend of his. She's damn cute but I quickly deduce that she's taken. Unprompted, she starts telling me that I should get a girlfriend, and trying to give me advice on how to do it. Uh, thanks.

At the dorm, they meet up with some guy from France or Borneo or something, who lived here a semester ago and was very popular with Korean girls. Myself, I've got another class.

16:43

Of the 11 (!) classes I took this semester, Japanese Literature may be my favourite. Today we are not only handing in an essay and a journal of notes we took on each reading, but also doing a presentation on a Japanese literary work of our choice. I deliver a flawless five-minute dissertation on Sei Shounagon, every word of it straight off the top of my head. It feels fucking badass. Not that I sucked at it before, but VP'ing Japanese Club back in the day taught me how to talk on my feet, that's for sure. Finally we have a brief exam. So you can see now why I only slept two hours.

18:09

I wait for the bus with one of my friends from Literature and History. Consider asking if she wants to get some food, but I'm too tired.

18:55

Home. Finally. Hamburg and his buddies are still lingering around the dormitory lobby bullshitting about the old days. I head upstairs to spend my evening dicking around on the Internet, as I spend every evening.

20:22

...which brings us to the present moment. Time for some sleep, 'cause the exams don't stop.

Katsudou

To a greater or lesser degree, the current era seems to be have a slight fixation on the English language. I don't completely understand this mindset and I secretly hope this changes under Chinese rule, but for now English speech contests are a fixture of school life at all levels of education, and I suspect most of you will be familiar with them. For the battle held at my university, which is aimed at English Club members and has been conducted annually since the 1960's, competitors are free to choose any topic on which to pontificate, though it is tacitly agreed that the winner will speak on something profound like disaster relief rather than, say, their favourite flavour of condoms. They speak for seven to nine minutes, after which they must respond to teachers' questions for three.

Starting last week I was quite happy to sit down with some members of the English Club's Conversation Section, with whom I am primarily affiliated, and spend some time correcting their speeches and working on their delivery. I can't help but observe that I've been involved in this club for less than a month and have already become one of its more powerful and respected members without even intending to. That can't just be down to my English; I do have an Alpha personality, that's just fact. I must have been born under the sign of Ayn Rand with Richard J. Daley's blessing. I'll try not to brag, but I've accumulated some English scholastic achievements and won a number of extemporaneous speaking competitions, so I am decently qualified.

In the meantime, they conducted club activities as usual, though with a twist: To provide the 3kaisei (third-tier members), who are usually responsible for organizing each day's katsudou, with additional preparation time, the 2kaisei and 1kkaisei would each create and execute a slightly more involved activity of their own, with which they would strive to surprise and impress the rest of the section. They undertook the challenge with the desire to entertain and the fear of embarrassment weighing equally on their minds.

I made use of my usually unhelpful outsider status to observe both groups in their planning stages, at which point I realised that they had come up with strikingly similar ideas. Both reported in to the club Kaichou, so that we were the only two fully aware of these parallel plans. Kaichou is tiny, disorganized, a sort of nervous and awkward kind of cute, and possessed of an unnerving resemblance to one of my ex-girlfriends, except better-looking. She's also very much a tekitou na yatsu, so when I, drawing from myexperience, suggested it might be better to subtly steer the two groups in slightly different directions, she kind of shrugged and said “Well...maybe it'll be ok?”

The 2kaisei did their thing last Tuesday. Each member of a group of six was randomly assigned a role, either a travel agency employee or prospective customer thereof (mine was がめついOL – covetous female office worker). We then had five minutes to consider how we wanted to play it, and would then be basically made to do improve comedy in a foreign language. Since I was the only native speaker in the room and it fit my character, my group told me to just talk as much as possible, as fast as possible, for as long as possible, about as little as possible. I'm surprised Clubber Lang didn't materialise and knock me unconscious, that's how good of a job I did, and I kept the audience paralyzed with confused laughter.

At the end, the best sketch was determined by ballot. As it turned out, my group won! The comments came flooding in, many of them in praise of me and my performance. And then:

“Don't let Rude Boy do all the talking. Rude Boy, don't talk so fast. Besides me no one in my group could understand. Kaichou.”

I didn't let that stop me from helping her with her homework from the International Law class, one of those taught in English. I even provide this service free of charge, because it's a good chance to practise my technical Japanese, and becau...ok fine, I do it because she's adorable. You know what? Shut up.

The day after a sort of dress rehearsal before the rest of the section, all Club members from all three sections gathered on a Saturday to settle their differences with talk. In fact, I was the only non-official English Club member present and also the only attendee not wearing a suit, though it might not have made much of a difference even if I owned one, because it's not like I could just blend in anyway.

The one guy I got to see had clearly worked hard on the pronunciation points I'd provided him, and during Question Period he was quick on his feet and even managed to get creative, his wry smile betraying the fact that he knew he'd just done something clever. And you have to hand it to the little 1kkaisei girl who was so nervous she couldn't even look anyone in the eye, but swallowed her fear and did it anyway; next year she's gonna do great, I'm sure of it.

In fact, every competitor was impressive, though the judges less so. One was an earth mother-looking older lady from the UK, who seemed to desperately want every competitor to succeed and asked probing questions that seemed to reveal a genuine interest in every topic broached. The other was an older Asian man from the United States, likely of Japanese descent, a bit of a bullying dick who deliberately phrased his questions to make them difficult to answer or even understand. Neither was particularly effective at the task they had been assigned, as you can guess.

During halftime, every competitor who had not yet spoken, individually and without noticing any of the others, decided to get in some last-minute practise in front of the window:

                

Only one member from my section placed, and even then only third. Pity. I really wanted Kaichou to win...obviously.

The following Thursday brings us to today, when the 1kkaisei did their katsudou for the rest of the section. It was a little less developed and significantly less entertaining, but was still a lot of fun. I had agreed beforehand to judge this event, with my magical native-speaking powers. Minutes before go time, I rescued Anarchy in the UK from having to perform, promoting him to judge with my magical Kansai-ben powers. This was actually a calculated move on my part, as I'd realised the day before that I didn't want my decision causing social controversy, and by making it more of a “panel” arrangement I could deflect some of the responsibility for the verdict.

Teams were tasked with creating a sketch utilising a list of phrases. Criteria for judgment was supposed to be mainly humour and general flow, with more detailed considerations such as number of phrases utilised and pronunciation kept as nudge. Unfortunately, I neglected to ask for them to submit the phraselist prior to the event, and so while I had suggested more useful (if stilted) serifu such as “You can't be serious!” they had come up with keepers like “I love you more than anyone in the world,” “Hold me tightly,” and “I like these kind of things.” Though one sketch involved a car accident, most followed the vein of the winner, which depicted a love triangle, and the second place, in which a pronoun mishap gave birth to a lesbian relationship, depicted by two men.

Careful placement

Saturday saw us taking a written accuplacer that would help to determine which level of Japanese classes we will be taking this semester. It came in at six pages of graduating difficulty, ranging from “I am aware that Japanese is a thing” to “I am capable of reading an essay literally written by a kindergartner.” Almost everybody then spent the next couple of days stressing out over how “badly” they had done, which of course is a completely wrong-headed way to think about it. The test, after all, is intended to measure one's ability; it's not a pass/fail proposition by any means.

But uh, maybe that's easy for me to say, since I scored the highest.

The night before was solemn and quiet as most people huddled over the textbook of their choice, reviewing grammar points. The night after everyone got extremely wasted.

The second component of the placement process was a face-to-face interview with several of the Japanese teachers, broken up into groups based on what happened with your written test. If anything, this proved even more nerve-wracking for most – the fact that we were made to gather in a waiting room before facing the firing squad can't have helped – but I can happily say that I was in my element. I'm like an atom when I get to talking, able to effortlessly maintain the same speed almost indefinitely, yet requiring a tremendous amount of energy to bring to a halt.

As much as my reading and writing may be lagging lately, conversation is one area where I can really show off my ability. One girl noted that much of the stuff she'd learned in class was completely inapplicable to actual communication. Though vocabulary in the vein of “agriculture” and “rescue squad” has its place, its not quite as utilitarian as the Japanese I've learned from watching TV and talking to people, which put me at a strong advantage. Even so, I felt a lurch in my gut as I sat down before the panel, painfully conscious of every twitch of my body and lapse in my keigo, their awkward stares making my eyebrows itch.

The last question the head teacher had for me was whether a particular textbook seemed difficult. Thinking carefully, I said honestly, “It does look difficult, but I think I could do it.”

The nervousness that everyone else seemed to have been feeling finally hit me in the lingering moments before our placements were announced. What if I'd messed up? What if I hadn't been put in the highest group? What if I was...average? But if my placement had hinged on my answer to the textbook question, clearly I'd managed to take the right action under pressure, because I found myself in the highest level. And now I'm having the opposite problem, worrying that I'm grasping beyond my reach, that I will quickly be forced to flee in shame and take refuge in a less demanding class.

Actually, there is a level above, but it's populated by Chinese students, who can read anything that's put in front of them but tend to have weak grammar and next to no speaking skills, which is actually why they're separated into their own level. So whatever.