First Week of School

My class schedule is awesome.

Monday and Thursday I have:
Japanese M1 (wayyyyy too slow/easy)
Christianity and Japanese Culture (very interesting!)
Lunch
Modern Japanese Fiction (fiction about post-war Japan, WWII from the Japanese perspective)
Indian Thought and Culture (best class ever)

I start at 9:15 and end at 4:45.

Tuesday, Wednesday, and Friday I only have Japanese... then I am free for the rest of the day! Its kinda awesome, and I am really happy with it. The only class I have an issue with is Japanese, but it could be worse.

Sophia University is small but mighty. Its one of the top five universities in Japan. I am in the Faculty of Liberal Arts, which means its full of exchange students from around the world, and the classes are taught in English. Not that many Japanese students take these classes (unless they are REALLY good with English). So to meet more nihon jin (Japanese people) I have joined two clubs!

One is a social club that meets at lunch every Friday. Lunch was a bit awkward, but we all went out to dinner that night and then for coffee. That was a lot of fun. There was definitely a language barrier, but we all did what we could to get our points across. There was a lot of mixing of languages. Despite all that however, we had really interesting and culturally profound discussions and really got to know one another.

I am also planning on joining the Gospel Choir at Sophia. They seem to be pretty hard-core, so I am really looking forward to getting back into singing. I have really missed it this past year and a half or so since I quit...

Other than that, not much going on this week. But I am enjoying getting to know my new friends and finding my routine here at school. Life is good...

... except for the trains. Words cannot express the sardine hell that I go through every morning during my hour to hour and a half long commute during rush hour every morning. I've tried to take pictures but it doesn't quite work... Below are a few links to youTube videos that might get the point across. I literally have to deal with this every morning and sometimes in the evening (but only right before last train, and I don't stay out late enough for that on school nights). Make sure you watch the videos to the end, see just how PACKED they really get!

this is the train line that I take from my home station: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vCbdD8aGHRg&feature=related

this is the 2nd (out of three) train that I take during my commute to school: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a_qgpfmx0a4

this is the last train that I take to get to my school station: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b0A9-oUoMug

Thats all for now! ja! Matta!