Also, the reason we all went to go get tacos in the first place was to pregame for the movie screening! ^_^ Last term, the Friday speaking class--not me, that's when I was taking business Japanese--filmed a movie! It's a murder mystery...sort of? They wrote, filmed, directed, and edited it themselves, so it was rather an interesting production. Lol. But, since the editing and stuff finally got finished, last night we had a screening party up at the big house on the hill, that Ben, Connor, Bridget, and Travis are sharing (cf Thanksgiving).
It was a super party--Amy brought "和風 Rice Krispy treats"--so called because there are no Rice Krispies in Japan, so she used cornflakes instead. But they were really good! And Senda-sensei brought over some fantastic guacamole! XD
Yes, that means the teachers were there, too--Senda, Akizawa, and Kouno. (getting drunk with your teachers is always interesting.....)
Anyway, it was a much-fun party. The movie was a big hit, and we've decided that the next step is to release a subbed version, and make it the next Youtube sensation! ^_^ So, everybody watch out for that!
No pictures in this post, either--I took a few, but sadly certain IUC students who shall remain nameless have forbidden me under pain of death to let them see the light of day, either here or on facebook. So, sorry, no luck this time.
The adventures of a former North Carolinian and recovering Yalie, loose in Japan for the first time.
The nightmare is over!
Lol.
Well, not a nightmare, exactly, but 3rd term has been pretty draining. After 4 months of having the same classes every day, the switched-up schedule took some getting used to. Sometimes literature, sometimes pop culture..and IJ thrown into the mix twice a week. IJ which, more often than not, ended up getting the short end of the stick, homework-wise. Oops.
The hardest part overall was definitely the lit class. We've been going at a pretty fast clip, and along with each short story, we also read a related scholarly article, and wrote our own essay. Some of the stories were longer and harder than others; I actually think the first story we read, the Endo Shusaku one, was the easiest even though it was the longest (and, I think, the oldest). Some of the stories I liked, and a couple of them made me want to bang my head against the wall.
I had my end-of-term interview with Ari-sensei on Friday morning. As expected, she talked about how I need to work on upping my kanji skills over the next term, and introducing some more formal words into my vocabulary. Which is something I've been sort of self-conscious about too, mostly because I feel like since most of the other kids here are grad students and stuff, they're all coming from a background of lots of reading in Japanese for their coursework. So I worry sometimes that I'm kind of behind in that sense. So, that's my goal for 4th term! ;-)
Oh, and I made the mistake of telling Ari-sensei that I didn't really have any plans over break--which got me stuck with a whole mess of homework that I'm now expected to do over break. Joy! *note sarcasm*
I should've taken a page out of Molly's book. When Otake-sensei asked if she had any plans over break, Molly was like "Yes, I have a friend coming. The whole time. Lots of traveling. No time for homework. Sorry. Two weeks. Whole time. Yup."
Wish I'd done that! >_<
I have to say, I am completely on board for this whole no afternoon class thing. Monday, when I went to leave school at 12:30 in the afternoon, I felt like I was doing something wrong, and kept half-expecting one of the sensei to come chasing after me to bring me back.
;-P
I'm suddenly finding myself with all this free time on my hands that I don't exactly know what to do with. The homework load has noticeably lightened. And I know part of that is due to this being the last week before break, and that it will be increased later once the project work gets going, but for now...I'm enjoying life. ^_^
Also, the weather lately has been gorgeous, and only slightly chilly, so I've been in *such* a good mood.
the what: 3rd term, IUC, project work
since I talked about how we went to the library for a project work research orientation I spose I should also mention a little bit about what I've decided to do my project on.
I felt a lot better about it after talking to Ari-sensei last week. I was thinking the project had to be actually researching something, you know, like "the economic policies of the Taisho era" or something like that. but it turns out that, according to Ari-sensei, the majority of students just come in with something along the lines of "I want to read this book in Japanese." and then find something sort of similar to present about at the end.
so! my topic's not entirely hammered out yet, but I've decided to do something about translation. if possible, I would love to be able to write about, I guess you could call it "theories of subtitle translation"...? some of the issues would be common to regular translation, but what I really want to examine for example (in the case of Japanese to English), is the balance between conveying Japanese culture and making things understandable to someone coming from an American cultural background. How best to translate certain expressions, pop culture references, things like that. do you translate them literally and let the viewer fend for themselves? add some sort of explanatory note? change the reference into one from American culture that has a similar meaning?
Questions like that are really interesting to me.
Oh, and-- wonderful news about my advisor, too! I had just assumed that the project advisor would be the same as our regular advisor (i.e. Ari-sensei for me). but then the other day Otake-sensei came up to me before class asking about when we should schedule my weekly project work meeting, and I got really confused, until I realized that my project advisor wouldn't necessarily be Ari-sensei. and then I got kind of worried that it might be Otake-sensei. which wouldn't be bad, it's not as if I dislike her--it's just that I've had very little interaction with her, and she's known to be one of the stricter sensei at IUC.
but then the other day they posted the assignments, and I have Senda-sensei! YAAAAYYY!!!!
everybody is really jealous of me! ^_^ (especially Jason, who has "Kawasaki-sensei" as an advisor--someone that none of us have ever heard of, or have any recollection of ever seeing. lol)
so, all in all, i'm getting really excited about this whole project thing!
;-D
As promised, here's the short movie we made in Business Japanese, "A Day in the Life of a New Employee". Hope everyone enjoys the embarrassment as much as we did making it. ;-P
Sarah: Outa (Japan Commerce Co, Sales Dept.) / Receptionist / Suzuki-san
Katy: New Employee
Misa: Itou (Sun Commerce, Sales Dept.)
Sean: Tanaka-san / Nomura-san / Receptionist
Staff
Director: Ari-sensei
Scene 2: Telephoning Japan Commerce Co.
Scene 3: At the receptionist for Japan Commerce
Scene 4: In the reception room
Scene 5: Exchanging business cards, Take 2 (take 1 was better...)
Scene 6: Ending the business meeting
Scene 7: Leaving the company
Scene 8: At the receptionist
Credits!
the what: 3rd term, business japanese, class, IUC, japan culture, japanese, videos
Rather frustrating, actually. We've been having a lot of snow lately. Well, in a manner of speaking. For example, last night it snowed--lightly, granted, but continuously--for several hours straight. Which was all well and good, it was very pretty to watch while I was freezing my butt off in the dojo at kyudo last night. But the weather lately has been stuck in that bimyou territory where it's cold enough to snow, but still above freezing, so none of it sticks. Which, all in all, makes me feel kind of cheated.
Like I said, I was watching the snow from kyudo last night. Which meant I got home pretty late, and stayed up even later finishing that stupid essay for lit class. zzzz........
So now I'm pretty tired. Oh, and speaking of the essay, remember how I was complaining about the fact that the teachers decided to leave the length "up to us"? Well, it turns out the other lit class actually got a page range! Why them and not us? *pouts* But according to Ben, they were told 1-2 pages, and mine came in at about a page and a half, so that makes me feel somewhat better. I'd been afraid that it was a little short. I totally sent it right off as soon as it was finished last night, tho, I was so tired. I didn't even proofread it. *gulp* (almost like being back in college again...)
Today in class was pretty sad, too. In lit this morning I was barely functioning, and to top it all off, everybody was out (sick or... just out) so our normally 6 person class was reduced to just me and Misa. Eek. Well, Amy L showed up for about half an hour--she came in late, and then went home during the mid-morning break (why come at all then......?). But that hardly counts. And of course, during afternoon class I was in the throes of depression due to UNC's miserable loss to Duke. I was frantically checking the score during breaks, then parked myself in front of the computer during lunch, refreshing the Yahoo sports scores page every 2 minutes until the game was over.
....I guess Senda-sensei will be happy.
but i realized that i haven't updated a blog posting lately (a real one, anyway) and that needs to be done!
absolutely nothing to do with the fact that i'm drawing a complete blank on what to write my speech about... nothing at all. nope. (too much protesting?)
also am realizing that recent posts have been horribly lacking in photos, too. whoops. haven't really done anything photo-worthy lately, so...sorry. i'll try to remedy that soon, and take some pics of, well, something.
on to the past week--on the bungaku front, we finished up our first short story. now the homework is that we're all supposed to write our own critical essay about the story (which we'll be doing for all of them from now on). and the length is "up to us." i HATE it when they do that! i mean, "up to you"--what does that mean?! does that mean 1-2 pages? 3-4? gah! whatever. i do actually have things to say about this story, so that's something i suppose.
pop culture class is also still fun. we're in our movie unit now. we got to watch "Shall We Dance"--the amazing Japanese version (DVD of which i own), as well as the embarrassing Richard Gere + J-Lo American remake--and compare the two. that was friday, then today we discussed Miyazaki's "Spirited Away," one of my FAVORITE movies. so even though i'd seen it a million times before, i rewatched it over the weekend as "homework." hehe. god, i love this class.
friday afternoon, we also had a screening of "Battle Royale," cause we'll be discussing that in a few days. it's a super famous movie, and i'd always heard of it as one of those must-see films. and it was, cinematically speaking, very good, i thought. but, it was seriously the most disturbing movie i've seen in recent memory, if not ever. it's based on a book that caused a huge controversy (as did the movie). the premise of the story is that Japan has gone to the dogs, so they decide to pass the "battle royale act," which means they randomly select one class of 9th-graders, send them to a deserted island for 3 days, and make them kill each other off until there's only one left standing. (as incentive, if there's more than one person left alive at the end of the 3 days, then everybody dies)
....you can see where the controversy comes in. like i said, it was a really interesting movie from the perspective of social commentary, and sort of getting inside the kids' heads, seeing what makes people kill each other, and how they all deal with the stress and everything. but, when it was all over, we all felt pretty shell-shocked.
i find myself torn between wanting to see the movie again, with subtitles---and *never* wanting to see the movie again.
let's see, what else...oh yeah, business japanese is going pretty well too. i only have it once a week (fri mornings), which makes it kind of a nice, low-prep class. i.e. we do useful things *in* class, and there's lots of conversation practice and things that i think are helpful, but there's not a whole lot of outside-class work. which is really a good thing, because nobody really has the time to do much prep for such a relatively minor class, on top of everything else. and i think the teachers realize that. altho maybe it's a different story in the other fri morning classes (i.e. reading, speaking, writing classes respectively). but i'm happy with my situation.
ok, wow, this post got long. so i guess i'll wrap up now.
oh! but, it snowed yesterday!! ^_^ a sunday, so as far as potential vacation days goes, it was a waste of perfectly good snow as far as i'm concerned. but it was certainly pretty while it lasted.
eek, almost 10pm. ok, i spose i'll suck it up now, and go and try to write my speech. that's seriously the hardest part of all this--trying to figure out *what* to write about. after a while, you run out of topics...
ok, bye for real now. and i promise to try and include some pictures next time!
soooooo tired!
so, it wasn't even a real week (had monday off) but i'm still pretty tired. it's tough getting back into the swing of classes and things after being on break for so long (i say "so long," but it flew by)
like i said in the last post, it seems like this term is going to be a pretty heavy workload, but i am also really excited about all my classes. i have to get back into the whole college-like "not having the same classes every day" mindset, tho. lol. it's actually kind of hard, after having the same schedule every day, for so long. and since we didn't have a full week, i still haven't quite got a handle on the scheduling, and how i should pace myself. which probably explains part of why i'm so tired. anyway, here's for some particulars on the classes!
IJ
the standard grammar class like we were having every morning before. we're even using a continuation of the textbook from before, so there's not much to report there. though it's nice to be back in Ari-sensei's class again. i keep getting flashbacks to first term, which is kind of nice b/c then it reminds me how far i've come since then.
Bungaku (Literature)
a lot of work! and it's headed up by Otake-sensei (my first time having her) who has the reputation for being one of the strictest sensei at IUC, so that had me a little worried. but she seems nice, at least. we're going to be reading a variety of short stories by different japanese authors, along with some kind of criticism/scholarly article about each story/author we cover. this week was Endo Shusaku's "Kageboshi." i liked the story and Shusaku's writing style a lot, and language-wise, i had a much easier time with it than i was afraid i would. but i'm still a pretty slow reader when it comes to Japanese, and at 30+ pp, this one took a *long* time. i started it over break, then on Wed afternoon went over to tully's to read the second half or so. ......3 hours later i finally finished it. when i was done, i still had taishyu bunka reading to do for the next day, and i tried to start that, but it was just absolutely useless. after 3 hours of nonstop shusaku, my brain had turned into complete mush. i started at the page for a while, trying to decide if those little symbols swimming around were actually words or not, then packed it in and went home, where i proceeded to be utterly useless for the rest of the day. so i think the moral there is that i'm gonna have to pace myself a little better.
Taishyu Bunka (Pop Culture)
FUN!! i'm super excited about this class. right now we're doing a unit on CM (that's japanese for "commercials." i'm serious) and that's really neat. we get to watch videos like "2007 CM, Best 10" and then talk about what they were CM for, what we thought was interesting about the way each product was portrayed, things like that. the next unit is manga, and then there'll be a unit on movies--we get to watch Spirited Away, Shall We Dance, Battle Royale...i'm really excited about that. and the readings should be really interesting too. though, as in bungaku, it definitely seems like this term they're upping the level of the articles and things we're given to read. it's much more the kind of journal articles and things like what i would use for a Yale paper, but in japanese.
Business Nihongo
Ari-sensei again! only have this class once a week, on friday mornings. they split us up into 2 sections--i'm in the "not particularly interested in business/econ" group.^^ which means that the class will mostly focus on keigo (polite japanese) and the kinds of conversations you'd encounter working in a japanese company. like, this morning we went over the 自己紹介, the self-introduction that you have to do on your first day, as well as the 1-minute 自己PR spiel, which is something that gets asked a lot in job interviews in japan--basically "tell us in 1 minute why we should hire you" kind of thing. so that's really great, especially since i plan to start looking for jobs in japan for after IUC (something else i need to do...)
i guess that's it for now. i'm going to go bum around for a bit and then head to bed i think.
new video! (sorry, didn't realize the other one had gone away. like i said, sometimes they get taken off of youtube)
Alice Nine, "Ruri no Ame" (Sapphire Rain)
i'm only halfway into this group, musically-speaking. the lead singer has a really distinct voice, which...i have to decide if i really love or not. but i think this is an absolutely *gorgeous* video, which is why i'm posting it ^_^
so, i know it's only just been the first day of classes, but i'm beginning to suspect that whole spiel they fed us about "2nd term is the hardest, 3rd term will be much easier" was nothing more than a clever ruse to fool us into がんばって-ing and making it through those last few weeks before break.
Lies!
...I better go finish my homework now.
以上！
the what: 3rd term, class, IUC, randomness
This week we also found out about the plan for 3rd term, which starts up in January, after the break.
Up til now, we've been having simple morning class (grammar-focused) and afternoon class (newspaper articles, videos, current events discussion), the same every day. But apparently during 3rd and 4th term at IUC, you get to choose from a variety of elective-type classes, so the curriculum becomes more tailored to students' particular interests. So this week we got the information about the different options, and picked our top choices. There are three groups of courses plus another set of optional after-school courses that you can opt in to.
Group A (pick 1):
政治・経済 Business/Economics
美術史 Art History
文学 Literature
文化人類学 Anthropology
法律 Law
歴史学 History/Historiography
Group B (pick 1):
Reading
Listening
Speaking
Business Japanese
Group III (pick 1): [no, I don't know why it's III and not C, it just is]
現代史 Modern History
大衆文化 Popular Culture
ビジネス・社会 Business/Society
Optional Classes:
書道 Calligraphy (Shodo)
古筆 Old-style Writing
文語文法専門 Classical Japanese
ビジネス Business
So, the ones I picked were Literature (A), Business Japanese (B), and Popular Culture (III). In the optional classes, I'm continuing on with shodo, which I've been taking this semester at IUC, too (I've mentioned that, right?). I also checked the box for the optional business course, because it might be interesting; I was a little worried about whether it would be over my head, but Ari-sensei said I can just go to the first lecture and see what I think, so I figure I might as well give it a shot. I didn't really have any trouble deciding the other stuff--since I'm not in any way grad school bound, anything I do in relation to Japan after IUC would definitely be work-related, so Business Japanese was a no-brainer. And since 1) I'm interested in publishing, and 2) my reading skills could use some work--the Literature course is definitely the best thing for me out of A-group (altho the Anthropology also sounded neat).
The way the schedule will work, we'll have A-group M/Th mornings; B-group F morning; and III-group in the afternoon (except Wed when we have afternoons off, like now). Tu/W mornings, we'll be continuing on with IJ, which is the grammar textbook we're using in our current morning class, so I guess that will be pretty much the same type of deal as now.
It sounds like a lot of work on paper, but as I've mentioned before, it's supposedly easier than 2nd term, so... We'll see. I'm looking forward to the change of pace.