Cruxay.com

Saturday after (I can’t hear anything out of my right ear…) 3:36pm sept 27th, 2008

Once again, it goes without saying but SO freakin’ much has happened since my last post. In a 4 day range since tuesday I’ve been through quite a fair number of experiences I’m not really used to going through back in Canada. I really think there are some of you who are really curious as to what I mean, and I know I’ve been nothing but unfair in my updates, leaving out lots of details, and not even getting my posts up! I shouldn’t have decided to have this site if I wasn’t going to update it. I’m really sorry, but I’m still waiting on my roomates to split internet costs, and I haven’t gone through the appropriate procedures at school yet to get wireless on my lappy while on campus. I will very soon though! Life has just been taking me on one hell of a ride that I haven’t had too many chances to get off of yet. I’d hope someday that you too can understand my feeling now.

Let’s go chronologically here, starting with the first day of school on Wednesday.

Wed Sept. 24:

Classes being, the campus is packed full of students. Dokkyo is actually quite the beautiful campus, not only in terms of how it looks, but how the people look as well. I know that somewhere in the past (maybe 5-10 years ago) Playboy magazine ranked my home university as having the 2nd largest population of attractive females of a post secondary institution, in Canada. If I were to go by that standard and apply it to Dokkyo, not only would Dokkyo be 1st amongst all of Canadian universities, but it would be by one hell of a long shot. There is just no way any Canadian university compares to this level. Japanese are on a completely different level when it comes to looking good. I know that most people say that my home university is one of the few universities around where the girls actually dress up to go to school, but at Dokkyo, every night is Friday night for them. It is really quite something to witness.

Moving on from fashion, and to my classes. The material is challenging and the pace is quick. I have about 5 hours of classes a day, all instructed in Japanese. At the moment I am not taking any actual university courses but a specific intensive Japanese education program set up by the university. Depending on how I do, next semester I might take a few regular classes. But the material, professors, and pace are definitely already helping me to improve. If I were to compare the amount of time I have Japanese classes here to how much I did back in Canada it is about 5x as much. 20 hours a week compared to just 4 a week in Canada. And was is better is that once I leave the class room, I talk to Japanese friends, text people in Japanese on my phone, watch Japanese programming on tv, etc etc etc. I can see how much this experience my Japanese in the long term. Also, we get new professors for everyday of the week, a system which I think makes worlds of sense because of several reasons. 1) It gives me a chance to listen to different people constantly instead of just getting used to the way one person talks, so it keeps my brain more active. Some professors talk easier/faster/quieter/slower than others, so it is a good work out for my head. 2) You aren’t totally SCREWED if the teacher doesn’t like you/ is sexist / racist / holds prejudices against you because they are not the only ones marking your progress and improvement. Something I’ve struggled with greatly in Canada, as many of my friends know. Some profs here are very harsh, while others are kind. It is a very good mix, and a good balancing factor for improvement.

Now for the highlight of my Wednesday, and probably the biggest culture shock I’ve experienced EVER while in Japan (although I’ve known and heard of its existence forever now). 12:15pm rolls around and its time for lunch, but no ordinary lunch but a welcoming party lunch… complete with a large, large, LARGE abundance of Japanese female students whom were overly eager to meet this year’s exchange students. It was the wildest experience of culture shock I’ve had yet (next to Friday night which I’ll post about later). The professors introduced themselves, then the new exchange students, then some clubs, and after that it was an absolute free for all. Needless to say, Fabian and I jumped on the opportunity (which most of the other male exchange students were hesitant to do), and made our place just about smack-dab in the middle of the room. What happened next, usually only happens in your dreams or when you pay really good money, but they flocked. By the dozens, girls were surrounding Fabian and myself, asking us questions. The ballsy ones would ask us stuff in English, while others realized we spoke decent Japanese, and stuck to that. Every other second I was asked what I wanted to eat, and 3 seconds later it would be handed to me. We didn’t end up eating much because we were constantly being asked questions and engaging in conversations.

Again, needless to say, but they were all so damn cute. By the end of the lunch however, I ended up with 2 male students numbers and only 1 female student’s number, but I was satisfied with that as I wasn’t there to pick anyone up in the first place. One of the Japanese male students I’ve already become friends with and we’ve hung out a few times already this week. Seems as though he prefers hanging out with foreign dudes though, as his english is really damn good. It is nice as well, because I don’t have too many Japanese male friends, and from what I’ve heard, we foreigners aren’t too liked amongst the male students on campus (for obvious reasons). The one girl’s number I got was a really outgoing 20 year old Spanish major who spoke good english, but also spoke a lot of Japanese to me as well. Although we were suppose to go around and mingle with a lot of different students, which I really attempted to do, she ended up being the most talkative and easy to approach. I’ve been texting with her a little bit, and we are going out for a few drinks tonight (post about later). Many people would introduce themselves and say “let’s be friends” but nothing more beyond that really. Only a few were really talkative. After all was said and done, Fabian and I were 30 minutes later for our next class! Whoops! The prof let it slide and just asked if we had met lots of nice girls.

After classes that day, despite being dead tired, a bunch of us went to Karaoke that night at around 9pm to about midnight. I invited Shige (the Japanese male student who was really good at english) to come along, and he showed us a REALLY cheap Karaoke that was a bit out of the way, but it was well worth it, because he saved us a lot of money. The karaoke place he took us to was like a motel set up, with a front desk, and 2 floors of rooms. It was pretty funny, I assume it only happens when you get outside of the bigger cities. We got the “free time” package which came with unlimited drinks (if we paid 3 more bucks it would have been unlimited alcohol!!!!), which came to 1200 yen each ($12CAD). If we wanted we could have been there until 5am and the price wouldn’t have changed. It was so insanely cheap.

Well, that was some day. I said I was going to write about Thursday and Friday as well, but I suppose I’ll write them up now and post them separately because this post is just massive!

Thanks for reading!