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."