授業 (Class)

So not gonna lie, class is pretty easy. The professor has told us that we are all more than likely gonna receive 4.0s. It is fun though, we don't have classroom time that often just three times last week and half a day this week. Last week we were assigned one chapter from two of the books that we received for the class. We had to read each one chapter form one book each day and had to write a brief 1 page summary of what we read. I both of these in bullet points and got full marks for each (easy, right?). Then in class we got with the other people assigned to read the same chapters as us and teach the other students about our chapter.

The first day, Ashley, Tori, and I taught about the Meiji restoration and Japan's 1st Constitution. We came up with the idea to story board the chapter with each of us covering one of the three main sections of the chapter. We performed quite well, especially for coming up with the pictures on the spot and my saying that the Japanese Constitution brought Democracy to America (@_@). The next day I was with Katie and Veronica and we talked about the difference in views between the Japanese and Chinese and how this affects both of their stances when it comes to the Japanese Prime Minister visiting the Yasukuni Shirine. The Yasukuni shrine is an important place for the Japanese because this is where casualties from past wars are enshrined, but the part that makes it controversial is that the shrine also encases 14 Class A War Criminals and this is where they Chinese get angry because they thing that the Prime Minister is supporting what they had done. So to show this the three of us had a faux-trial with Veronica as the judge, Kaite as China and myself as Japan. the best way to sum up the difference in beliefs is this, "The Chinese leaders view the Prime Minister’s visits to the Yasukuni shrine as purely political, while the Japanese view it as solely a religious aspect, paying respects to the dead."

長い航続と楽しいこと (Long Flight and Fun Experiences)

Good advice: Do not stay up all night when you have to be at the airport at 7:30 in the morning. I spent my last night in America hanging out with friends and seeing Thor. It was fun and a good way to say bye to them.

Anyway, Saturday morning myself and two friends, Katie and Ashley, had a 10:15 flight to take me to O'hare so that I could catch a plane to Japan for my summer of studying abroad. I was really excited for the first flight because it meant I was actually going to Japan, and then I was also excited when we took off for the second flight for the same reasons and then the excitement ran off about 3-4 hours into the 12 hours. I kept on dozing off and would watch random videos, one of them being a medley of Korean pop music groups. It was very interesting to say the least. After getting off we had to go through customs and all that jazz, it wasn't too terribly difficult, and we got there before the huge line appeared, so it was quick. Then when we were checking for the last flight of the trip that gave us a 4 hour layover, and they bumped us to an earlier flight that was leaving in the morning.This turned out to be a good thing because we had to tackle one last thing before we got to hit the gloriousness that was a bed, the Japanese Railway system.

So we had to get from Nagoya station to Maibara station and this doesn't sound like it would be too hard but when you've been up for 36+ hours (hence the don't pull an all-nighter) and do not know the kanji for the stations that you need and have luggage, it becomes increasingly difficult. Also, there was no direct route to Hikone. We took the station from the airport to Nagoya. There we had to transfer lines entirely which involved leaving the building and going into another building and then figuring out where to buy tickets. We finally figured out where we needed to go and got on a train to Maibara. We didn't know that we had to get off and transfer trains at Oogaki. The train attendant did point which way to go and we accidentally left the station so we had to buy another ticket. Then we had to wait half an hour for the next train and finally we got on and then arrived at Maibara station after a 30 minute ride. After leaving the station we got a cab and had to wait while him and another taxi driver fit 3 suitcases into the cab. The taxi driver then took us to the Hotel View, where we got a room and not even 30 minutes there, we all crashed and fell a sleep for 12ish hours.