Classes Begin

September 4. Classes Begin.
After a manual registration procedure in which the staff worked all weekend and on into the night to make course assignments, classes in the Center for International Education began today. All the students must take spoken Japanese, and they are strongly encouraged to take written Japanese, a requirement if they plan to stay on for the next semester. They are placed in 6 levels based on a proficiency test, and we were pleased to see that the Otterbein students were at level 2 after one year of Japanese at our college. They matched up well with the students from other similar colleges.

Courses fall into three categories:
1) International students here on study abroad, mostly humanities and business courses. Japanese students with appropriate English skills are also admitted
2) Pre-departure. Japanese students who will study abroad next semester. A kind of rehearsal of doing academic work in an English-speaking environment
3) Preview. Japanese students who are thinking about studying abroad but not yet approved.

Lyle’s course in comparative culture for the international students, is “Love, Sex, and Death in Bunraku, Kabuki, and Opera.” Field trips to performances are an important component. Meg is teaching one section of Japanese pre-departure and one section of Japanese preview students in “Japanese Men and Women at Work.” We both like our students a lot and have interesting groups. Lyle’s is very cosmopolitan, with students from Russia, Japan, Chile, Canada, and Korea, as well as the US.

International students are very lively in class, and some of Lyle’s students have a strong backgroup in one or other of the topics of the course. He has especially been fortunate to have a student who has done Noh Drama training and can demonstrate and involve his classmates in its techniques. The first field trip coming up in a few weeks will be to a Noh Theater in Kyoto.

The big challenge for his students, especially those who have experience with and interest in theater, is to accept the validity of an almost 100% stylized form of artistic expression, at the opposite ends of the pole from the American tradition of acting in which they have been trained. They did respond enthusiastically to a visit from the Iwazaki family, who played traditional Japanese instruments for them—koto, shakuhachi, and shamisen. Chieko Iwazaki has performed on the Enrichment Series twice at Otterbein with shakuhachi master Michael Chikuzaen Gould.

Meg is working hard to draw her Japanese students into discussion in class and to help them get the courage to express opinions, especially opinions that are contrary to what someone else in the class has already stated. Her students have high levels of English skills, and that is due to Kansai Gaidai’s focus on language learning and international studies. That Intensive English Program has a staff of mostly American instructors who are hired on full-time for up to 5 years. These instructors all have a background in English, ESL, or linguistics.

While our class hours as visiting profesors are not a heavy load, we both spend pretty much 9 – 5 in the office doing class preparation, seeing students, and carrying out other tasks related to being here. There has only been one meeting to attend so far -- is anyone envious?

Outside of Kansai Gaidai activities we’re making contact with as many alumni in Japan as possible, and we'll be representing Otterbein at a college fair. Lyle is investigating the local Japanese folk-song tradition, min'yo.

Faculty life at Kansai Gaidai is not all work and no play. The Japanese and foreign teachers in the Center for International Education gathered in the tatami mat room used for teaching sumi-e (Japanese ink painting) at the end of the first week for lots of beer, sake, and snacks. The young Intensive English Program instructors have lots of kids in their families, and they like to organize informal potlucks. A bar not far from the university knows them pretty well, too.

Japanese and international staff and instructors enjoyed a farewell at that place, “Bar Nagu,” for our “shepherd,” the staff member responsible for the visiting professors, a bright young man who is moving to Canada to continue his pilot’s training to the next level of commercial pilot's license.

Transportation and Shopping

関西外大
Kansai Gaidai University





September 7.
Transportation and Shopping.

Bicycles are a convenient way to get around our town, and the university has several bicycle parking lots, each with space for hundreds and watched by security guards. It's said that bicycles are sometimes stolen, but it's never happened to us. The Asian Studies Program that we teach in has bikes for the visiting professors, although they had lost track of them. Sure enough, we were able to locate our trusty iron steeds from our 2002 visit, dusty and needing pumped up, but otherwise none the worse for wear. One tricky thing -- remember to ride on the left and look right for oncoming traffic.

Stores provide parking for bikes, but at the stations bikes have to be parked in pay garages that cost as much as taking the bus. The result is that everywhere there's a "No Bike Parking Here" sign, there are a hundred bikes parked. The "bicycle police" swoop down occasionally and cart all the illegally parked bikes off to an impound lot, but that doesn't seem to be much of a deterrent. A new development since 2002 is that there are pay "stanchions" for bikes at some of these spots around stations. Lock up your bike, then on your return type in your location number and pay the machine so that the "stanchion" will release your bike. 90 minutes are free, but after that it's 200 yen ($1.75) for 24 hours. For regular commuters, that can really add up. In 2002 almost all bikes were basic 1-speed city bikes, like riding in low gear all the time, with a few mountain bikes making inroads. Now in 2006 the variety is much greater. 3-speeds are getting popular, and I've seen some 7-speed Shimano enclosed-gears-hub bikes as well as exterior derailleurs ingeniously covered by a guard that protects trouser legs. Electric-assist bikes are common among older folks. Hmmm. I'm thinking about that hill up from the train station.

The university is on a main road where many lines funnel down toward the station, so we have bus service every 5 minutes. 220 yen ($1.90) is the fare, but we can cut it 10% with prepaid cards. In 25 minutes we can walk to the station, but the highway is so congested and the walking path so narrow that it it's an unpleasant experience, maybe even dangerous. Walking may seem more appealing when the weather turns cooler.

The way to get to Osaka (25 min.) and Kyoto (35 min.) is the electric commuter train of the Keihan Line. These commuter line companies are an interesting business concept, because the corporation makes lots of its money from its department stores that are located in terminal stations and principal stations like ours at Hirakata. The system is cleverly designed with limited express service and local service integrated in a way that maximizes speed and efficiency for all. In the years since we were here last, more limited express service has been added to Hirakata's schedule, a nice convenience for us. We find that we spend about us much on transportation here in Hirakata as would would maintaining, insuring, and fueling our car at home.

Shopping is a fascination and yet a frustration for us, even after having returned to Japan several times. Stores really put on great displays with real artistic sense, and the customer receives an almost unbelievable level of service. The variety and quality of food and merchandise is high and getting higher. The frustration, partly responsible for culture shock, comes from well, being an incompetent shopper. Those of us in responsible positions in our jobs aren't usually in a position where we don't know the answer, can't find things, have to ask for help, and generally feel stupid. Living in a culture with a different way of seeing the organization of things is a humbling experience both in high art and at the grocery store. Just because the package looks similar to a US product doesn't really count. We have bought pickling salt for sugar, chocolate for coffee, and some things that we really couldn't tell you what they are! Why isn't the confectionery sugar with the sugar? It's with the cake decorations, logically enough. The kanji Chinese characters used to write many Japanese words are a stumbling block in the grocery, too. How do you write "low fat milk" in kanji? Now we know, although for the first time today we saw a carton that also said "low fat milk" in Roman letters. It's a big help to memorize katakana, the syllabary used by Japanese to write foreign words. We needed cream today, and it's クリム, the equivalent of ku-ree-m(u).

As in many European markets, we bag our own groceries and take our own string bag. That's a little eccentric, because everyone else is happy to waste more plastic bags. At another time I'll write about the paradoxical situation of recycling--way too much unnecessary packaging, but a complex, strictly enforced recylcing procedure.

Japan still has many shops run by people who take a lot of pride in producing and selling a limited product -- tofu, for example. The small cafes and bakery shops are everywhere and display wonderful-looking goods. It can be a pleasant diversion just to drop in and try something new. Maybe it looks like a donut, but there's sweetened red bean paste inside. Generally, the Western-looking baked goods disappoint us, but they fly off the shelves to the Japanese customers.

Bakeries have fanciful "French" names such as our market's "Maman de Marché." We're still looking for a good stiff loaf of German sourdough bread, but a Japanese company called "Vie de France" has got some French recipes down well.

Settling In

関西外大
Kansai Gaidai University



August 23rd. Columbus to Osaka. The "magic" of frequent flyer points brought us our first ever business class flight to Japan on the upper deck of a stretch 747. (No, that's not us in the picture.) We're not sure if it was a good idea in one way, because it's going to be tough going back to "steerage." The fourteen hour flight arrives in Japan the following evening because of the international dateline, and the body's circadian rhythms are pretty well demolished. Is it age? Jet lag from switching day for night seemed to take a week to go away this time. In the meantime, we were prepared with good books to read at 3 am.

Our first week was spent settling into our university-provided apartment on the edge of campus. With a "2-LDK" in Japanese terms (2 rooms plus living-dining-kitchen) on first floor with veranda, large bath, and laundry, we're living more than comfortably. The apartment is furnished but with just the basics. ("Where is the toilet brush?"). The Japanese version of the "dollar store" is the "100 Yen Shop," and we filled a couple of bicycle baskets there on several occasions. We can find everything we need in the neighborhood, and we have our choice of shopping at large supermarkets, medium-size convenience stores, or traditional "mom and pop" stands for everything from tofu to fish.

September 1st. Opening Ceremony and Reception

The unversity consists of about 10,000 Japanese students focused on international learning and careers, and 455 international students, including 3 from Otterbein this year. The international students are from all over the world, including many sister institutions who have exchange agreements such as our college's. Here are some photos of the opening ceremony in which we were formally introduced. Speeches by the president and the general consuls of the US and of Australia followed.

The excitement among the students was obvious as they began this adventure. Both consul generals related stories of their first encounters with Japan at the same age, around 20, and touched just the right themes with humor and perception. After the speeches were over, the crowd moved to a reception lunch at one of the student centers, where never-ending supplies of sushi, sashimi, veggies, noodles, and desserts pleased faculty and students alike.

Hot Weather and No AC!. This region of Japan has very hot and humid, almost tropical summers, and when we moved in the temperature hadn't been below 90 degrees for a month. We had an AC unit not working. I told the office staff, and I suppose they were thinking: "Oh no, not another visiting professor who can't figure out how to work the AC." So the man in charge of the visiting professors came over to the apartment only to learn that it was indeed not working. Next he sent the equivalent of the Otterbein Service Dept over, who was probably thinking the same thing. But, they agreed that it wasn't working. so they sent a professional repairman-- who only needed to open it up and change a setting that caused it to dehumidify but not cool. As in most modern Japanese buildings, the unit is a "ductless split" high on the wall in each room that heats as well as cools. It's very efficient and fits the tradition of heating or cooling only the room you're using at the time. That's some adjustment to make for those of us used to central heating and cooling, but it influences the statistic that a Japanese person puts out about half of the global warming gasses that a US-American does.