Days 15-18: First Week Impressions

So, school is finally underway and all my classes have given me sufficient time to decide what I think of them.

A week later and I can say that Japanese is going to be a beast. I tested into complete newbie Japanese, but I didn't want to sit there and learn nothing for two months, so I decided to jump into the next higher level. For the first week, we've just been reviewing material through Genki, our textbook. The problem? I'm "reviewing" material I never learned. I never touched kanji in my life, so I went in with a completely fresh outlook. Three classes later and I've got assigned 58 different kanji to memorize. And that's not even the worst of it. The grammar we're covering is stuff I never learned in beginner Japanese. Te-form, as well as the conjugation of adjectives, i-verbs, ru-verbs, is a bunch of stuff I never learned about. So what is a boy to do? It's been fast-paced, of course, but it'll be slowing down substantially next week. I have a weekend to memorize a crapton of characters with stroke counts ranging from 2 to upwards of 20. If I bomb this class, my GPA will take a drop. If I soar, then I'll be the champion of Japanese and potentially be able to speak it like a boss. If I drop to the lower level, I'll be bored as hell for months, but I'll have time to perfect and solidify my foundations of knowledge on the language (and I can always study on my own some too). Plus, GPA booster. Any thoughts or opinions on this, I'd love to hear.

Strangely, both of the teachers for my other classes are British. So while they know Japanese, their accents make their Japanese sound absolutely atrocious. One of the classes is Contemporary Japanese Culture and Society. Our first class covered population numbers, trends, and theories as to why the population has gone the route it's gone over time. The second class, we discussed the idea of "Nihonjinron", or the idea of "Japaneseness". What it means to be "Japanese", as well as why there are so many books out there on revealing the "Japanese mind", while there are no such books for, say, revealing the British mind. I like the class and I think the teacher is pretty good, despite his rather monotone voice.

The second class is just Japanese Culture and Society, which centers around the Tale of Genji, considered to be perhaps the oldest novel ever written still being studied to this day. This Brit teacher was a little faster and more all over the place than the first, so it was a bit more difficult to follow him. However, the information and discussion we had regarding the first chapter, learning a little about the history/architectural trends in Japan, were pretty interesting. I'm interested to see where this Tale goes, as I've never read the book before. It shouldn't be too much work besides lots of reading and weekly writing assignments.

And then there's the UC Director's Lecture, which isn't exactly defined in what we will cover every week. It's kind of a hodge-podge of topics regarding culture, not unlike Contemp. C&S described above. It's a UC student only class to reconvene with each other weekly and share our diary entries/opinions of life in Japan, but we're also learning things. We had a guest lecturer come in for the second class and discuss Buddhism in Japan, which was absolutely fascinating. I'd read some books on the religion in the past, of course, but nothing compares to hearing about it from an expert. Someone with a Masters IN Buddhist Studies and also lived as a monk for 5 years. Pretty amazing. I really liked that particular class. I wish Religion was given this quarter, but alas, it was reserved for the Spring students coming in. Such is life.

So these are my classes. My culture classes are cool, my director's lecture is random, and my Japanese class may or may not be my downfall. Again, any comments, questions, or opinions should definitely be voiced. Please. Save me. I'm being buried alive in kanji and grammar ;_;