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.