Kyoto

15 April 2009

It’s Wednesday, the middle of the week. So far I have attended three Japanese language classes, International Law, and Gender and Development. The rest of my schedule is somewhat up in the air until I can talk to my academic advisor, Morigiwa-sensei.

I have been spending A LOT of time drilling on Hiragana! There are 106 characters, and we had to learn them all in two days. According to Sam, this is not even as intense as it could be...but still! I learned the first thirty fairly solidly, but I need to keep working on the last 73. What makes it harder is that we are learning to recognize and say them while at the same time learning to write them. I have been mostly practicing the writing part, since that is what we are quizzed on. When the professor holds up cards and asks us to read them, however, I have a hard time.

For some reason, even though I knew I would have to learn to read, I didn’t picture having to do so much work to do it. Silly? Yes. I have been spending a lot of time just doing lines--copying out the characters over and over again, trying to cram it into my brain.

The weird part is that, okay, I know the characters and I can say the sound that each one is assigned to--so I can read out loud--but I don’t know what the word means yet! I just have to have faith that this is going to work, and I will be able to learn to speak and read at at least a 4 year old level, so I can at least be polite and say certain things.

The upside of all this is that I have been walking a lot, and have lost a couple inches already. I know because the pants that Jen fitted for me before I left are too loose now! I’m going to try washing them in hot water and see if they will shrink a bit. I’m counting on losing some poundage while I’m here, to give me a head start so I can just get the extra off.

Last weekend I went to Kyoto to visit Heather, Steve and Jamie. Heather’s parents, Connie and Ken, were still there so I got to meet them too. We went to Daigoji Temple and caught the last bit of the cherry blossoms.

It was a hot day (it has since cooled off considerably, after a rain yesterday). We crossed town on the subway (Jamie was tired and didn’t like the noises the train made) and got on a special bus that took us to the temple. Most notably, the temple is home to Japan’s oldest five-story pagoda, built in the 900’s. They were having a festival, where people were dressed up in period dress (I think 1600’s) and reenacting a visit from the shogun, complete with his entertainment. The cutest were the little cherry blossom hat-wearing girls, who did a little dance in a circle around an umbrella decorated with cherry blossoms.

I also took the Shinkansen (bullet train) to and from Kyoto. Talk about fast! But you can’t even feel it. It only took about 40 minutes to get from Nagoya to Kyoto. To put it in perspective, it takes about 30 minutes on the train to get from the Nagoya airport to the subway connection to my building.

The problem with the fast train is that it is expensive to ride--about $100 round trip--but I wanted to do it once, for the experience. I doubt that on future visits I will be taking such a luxurious ride...the JR train goes too, and it’s about half as expensive. It just takes three times as long! Shouldn’t it be a third as expensive, then? Hm.

So basically I’m settling in fairly well, missing my peeps, but enjoying the beautiful weather and learning new things. I hope to finalize my classes by Friday and settle into some kind of routine. I can’t believe I’ve only been here a week and a half. It seems like a lot longer!