Two Weeks of Classes

here's my thoughts on my classes after nearly two weeks.

Most of the classes are pretty well-named.

Japanese Language is the JSL classes i came here for. 7 of the periods are grammar/speaking and 1 is kanji, which is the more complicated system of Japanese reading and writing based on Chinese characters. we end up with, like, 4 teachers, but the teaching style is still pretty consistent. their styles are even similar to my Japanese professor at Coe. They tend to have pretty good humor, too, so class is usually pretty fun.

Japanese Society has this fun, cool old guy for a professor who comes highly recommended by one of our friends, Kengo, who we met at Coe on exchange. He has a really good sense of humor as well and his English is very good.

Japanese Religion is what it sounds like. It's a lecture style class. The professor has decent english and writes his outlines in japanese and english for both exposure and the sake of the students in the class from asia who are better at japanese than english. However, most of our last class consisted of call and response of the notes in japanese, and then a reading of them again in english. not particularly helpful. there was also a video covering some of the festivals/rituals from the various major religions of japan. more helpful. i find the material interesting, though. we'll see how it goes.

Karate-do is an actual karate class in Japanese. His english is next to nill, but most of the class is demonstration and practice and i can follow most of what he says except the long explanations. He, too, has a notable sense of humor and i think that he kind of likes to show off, in a fun way though. I mostly took the class to make sure i got some activity, but it's proving fun as well. Amy and I are feeling the class though. For me, it's mostly im my wrists because of the types of exercises we're doing at the moment. aside from our own practices, the professor demonstrated on several of us and decided to throw Amy and i... at the same time. Like i said, i think he likes to show off.

The Art and Culture seminar has the most interesting material, i think, but the class goes kind of slow because the professor struggles with english a bit more than most of them. But i like his class because he seems very inwardly enthusiastic about what he's teaching. He, himself, is an artist (he works mainly with ceramics) and has written many works on art of both the east and west. he spends a good deal of time in eastern europe for artist events, projects, and gatherings. and, if i heard things right, he worked production on Ultra-Man; i believe the words "assistant producer" were used. He's one of those professors that's more professional than teacher. He's pretty cool from what i've seen though. the first half of the term seems dedicated to ancient art and the process of modernization of art in japan. the second half gets more into manga (comics), anime (cartoons), film and special-effects (ultra-man, king kong, godzilla, etc.), and the last week is a lecture on video game production! I still wanna stick with it.