SCHOOL LIFE: Tuesday, October 26 and Thursday October 28.

 Tuesday morning brought a sudden drop in the temperature- nearly ten degrees, celsius. And thus began the Japanese tradition of remarking on the cold every ten seconds. Being as adjusted as I am to Japanese culture I shared in reminding myself and everyone else how cold it was. Adding to the harshness of the complete lapse in time from early Autumn mugginess to Winter frigidness was that I arrived at school for first period's "Comparative Culture" to find that the class was off for the day. I sat outside practicing Japanese kanji until second period.

 In Intercultural Communication, students were asked to name daily cultural traits in Japanese culture (or if they weren't Japanese, their own culture). The answers were pretty standard, but the most interesting response was from a girl who had no example prepared and said nothing spare a few noises of puzzlement, and the professor remarked that this was a typical response for Japanese students, to remain silent instead of giving a definitive answer or simply saying "I don't know". This has been something I noticed as well, and it can be a test of patience. The reluctancy of Japanese students to give any response in the fear of looking stupid makes it hard for professors to engage in any real discussion in class. Questions by professors in larger lecture-hall classes often go unanswered even when it's a simple matter of raising hands. I suggested that be the girl's answer for an every-day Japanese cultural behavior. Other than that, it was just more studies of culture shock and cultural adaptation.

 I didn't see a lot of the third period class, "Interchanging Societies", due to having to wrap up some practice with member so the Folk Song Club in preparation for the school festival. The lecture continued to discuss the focus on urban and residential planning around train stations in Japan. Because of the projected decrease in overall population in Japan, the way that cities and areas are planned will have to be revamped. This was delved into deeper for Thursday's class.

 That was it for Tuesday.

 Thursday morning was Japanese language and culture, and the practice of studying news articles was carried on, this time with the accompanying children's news segments being shown. The stories included discussing China's next new leader and the anti-Japan demonstrations, harnessing volcanic activity for energy, and massive rainfall in Kagoshima that caused flooding earlier this year. An extensive story was shown on Tokyo's Haneda Airport and the transformation of its international hub. The language-learning was the same as before, focusing on listening comprehension and reading skills.

 In second period, Civil/Private Law was actually somewhat understandable for me. The lecture was about inheritance rights and how certain situations of deaths can lead to different rulings on the matter. While I could not pick up all the details, it was a case of feeling like I could understand the lecture even while not remembering much of what was said. This happens quite frequently for me when listening to complicated conversations in Japanese, but shows a general basis for comprehension that leaves room for growth. There will be a small exam based on some study points which I will attempt to do.

 "Interchanging Societies" built more on the urban planning lecture and how a decrease in population will lead to more densely populated areas around train stations. The layout of Japanese neighborhoods compared to American city clocks was also brought up, and the professor, Ueno-sensei, made a remark on how the grid-like layout of American areas makes it very boring to walk through them. He might be missing the point that much of the land used in the United States for residential areas is flat compared to the Japanese layout of areas contours to the largely mountainous landscapes. The lecture continued to describe the challenges of changing planning as populations decrease and increase in other nations. Many Americans find the thought of higher population density as undesirable, preferring to live in wider, more secluded areas. There was a graph displayed that in both Japan and the United States more people are satisfied living in rural areas than the amount of people satisfied in urban zones. The challenge described in the lecture is how societies will transform in the face of population changes, and how Japan's expected drop in population due to low birth-rate, another subject of lecture that has risen in the class, will effect the nation's future.

 In seminar, students presented their research subjects and the seminar professor certainly dragged out each presentation with his cynical and somewhat intelligent elaborations on subjects presented with bare-bone minimalism. One presentation on recycling and other ecological conservation practices led the professor into a rant about "being kind to the earth", which is a popular turn-of-phrase in Japanese (世界に優しい, kind to the earth) and stated that the only real way for humans to be kind to the earth is if everyone died, or something to that effect. He then went on about how milk is delivered to his house in glass bottles and how he reuses the bottles and hates the smell of plastic or something. His remarks, while long-winded and tiring, often draw laughter from his seminar students who exclaim how funny he is. His cynicism is something rare in Japanese colleges, and as a professor of French studies and language he carries the air of snootiness as well. The seminar students showed that they hadn't really though their research subjects through; the purpose of these presentations is to prepare students for writing their college graduation thesis papers, and many students put little effort into interpreting the information they learned and instead repeated the obvious points of research information as they researched it. Later in a meeting with the seminar professor he told another student who was present that college is not about learning new things but how to interpret and understand learning new things. I told him that Japanese colleges don't teach students how to do that, and he responded "but I do". His influence alone, however, cannot remove the classic style of Japanese education where students memorize information from lectures more than they intellectualize it. At least American college students can pretend like they know how to interpret their studies given their overly-inflated sense of worth in their thoughts and opinions.  In terms of my presentation next week, the professor suggested I rehash previous studies that I did at Evergreen regarding Japanese culture. I couldn't argue with his reasoning on college education.

 That closes the last week of classes. Things are going relatively well, even though I'm hitting a bit of a slump in how much effort I want to put into learning things here. Nonetheless, I am motivated by the work I have done so far and will continue to try and improve my language and cultural studies within and outside of classes.