Placement

placement testing is now complete. The feeling that my skills are vastly inferior has been confirmed. amy and i have been placed in Japanese 1-1. they wrote the name of our book in romaji. bleh. whatever. maybe it'll be good to start from scratch. yobi, a second semester exchange student, was in 1-1 last semester and he said it was a good experience. and he's really good at japanese now, probably just from living here. classes start next thursday, the 24th.

we also had a campus tour in the afternoon. most of it came a little too late. we have been here for a week now, and they are just now getting around to showing us the market and the post office. most of us, seeking food and money, have already gathered this information from returning students. this is just one item in a long list of information labeled "that would have been nice to know a long time ago, perhaps even before we got here."

support for students coming here seems rather inefficient and incomplete. much of the information they give us is late. they don't allow students to leave things like cook ware here, even though it is certain that the next group will just have to purchase more. They tell us that we should purchase a bike, somewhere around 6000-10000 yen, and then have us dispose of it (for another 10000 yen fee) at the end of our stay, knowing that the next group will need bikes, too. it is similar with televisions, though they are not as necessary. and we are charged if we leave useful things in the room, even if they will simply be used by the next people. i think it would be kind of fun to have lottery-like room set-ups: "what did your room come with?" ours did have some dishes in it, and one girl even ended up with a TV, but we don't know if the last people were charged for that.