My Professors

I have to say, as much as I feel like the school work here is too easy, I really like my professors. Every day I go to my Practical Asian Society and Culture class, I find myself respecting Professor Sumi more and more. He really knows what he's talking about, and I like the way he teaches (I'm not talking about the lectures). Today in class, one student asked him if he thought that the subject we were talking about (it's too complicated to explain here, but it had to do with equality and the convergence debate) was good or bad, and he replied that he didn't think those were the right words to use, but that he personally "liked" equality, though everyone has different value perceptions, and he is able to understand where people are coming from. For an example, he told us how his parents are very traditional in their opinions, and his mother believes women should stay at home; he explained that this is a very pre-war view on life.

I don't think I'm explaining very well, or doing him justice, but I really respect him. He also takes into account that the small amount of us Americans in the class don't know all about the history/economy of Japan, so he occasionally gives short explanations even before I get confused. He does the same for the Japanese students when he talks about the USA, and he frequently invites people to let him know if they disagree with him. Oh, and one fun fact: He looks a lot like Uncle Edgar. It really threw me off the first time I saw him, because he didn't look anything like the picture online, so I wasn't expecting him to look like Uncle Edgar.

Koyama-sensei, my Japanese professor,is awesome. I don't know how she does it, but she gets us learning really quickly, and she gets all of the material in to each class. She makes class fun, and yet she is really strict, so there's no fooling around.

Professor Morland...is okay. She knows her material, but class is pretty boring, and she says "um" too much.

Wow. I forgot the name of my art teacher. *looks it up* Shinobu Akimoto. I think I mentioned it before, but she's a real, full-time artist...until now, of course, since she's teaching us. I Googled her and she was the first link on the page, haha. http://www.h6.dion.ne.jp/~shinoart/index.html Everything is in English, though it's a little difficult to navigate the site. The stuff I found on it seems pretty interesting, though, so it's worth checking out. I really want to see her gallery at the Canadian Embassy, but I don't know where it is. (I have the address, but I really don't understand Tokyo addresses yet.) Anyway, she said her medium is "installation"...and I don't understand what that means.

Tomorrow I'm going to Shibuya with Brittany and a bunch of other people from the Ontakesan dorm...since we need to get art supplies. I couldn't find charcoal before, and I forgot to get fixatif. Oh, and I'm going to try to get up early in the morning and see if I can get a bike from Seiyu. Brittany got a bike today for around 10,000 yen, and registering it only cost 500 yen. Her bike also came with a basket, a light, and a lock, so that's pretty awesome. I didn't really want to pay that much, but usually you can sell the bike to some other store when you are done with it (the Office of International Students (OIS) claims that they can help us with that), so hopefully I can cut the cost down that way. Plus, getting a bus pass for three months cost around $200, and I would rather have a bike for getting around here. I wouldn't use it on rainy days, or when I go somewhere with multiple people, but I think I would be able to make it worth the money. I'd feel a lot freer with a bike. I can't even begin to describe how much I miss my car right now. (Btw...Dad, did you ever figure out why it refused to start the day before I left?)

Speaking of cars...I keep seeing Smart Cars all over the place, and I REALLY want to drive one! They're so cute! Just like toys! The little old Mini Coopers are cute, too, and are so much smaller than Mom's car, haha.

Oh, oh, I almost forgot. I had this REALLY good meal from 7 Eleven this evening. It had one shrimp, one hard-boiled quail egg, a bunch of unidentifiable vegetables, sauce, and then noodles. It looks really gross when it's in the store, but then they heat it up at the store, you mix the noodles with the other stuff, and it was sooo good. They gave me a spoon to eat it with, but that was nearly impossible, so I brought out some chopsticks, and that made life a whole lot easier. Haha, I'm getting hungry just thinking about it.