Monday April 11, 2005 - Brain Drain
In the morning, I went up to the Coastal Engineering laboratory (a reasearch area within the department of Social Systems Engineering) which I was placed in. I wont be studying Coastal Engineering. I was just placed there so I can have a place to work. I will also be met the graduate students and the professors. Boy was there a HUGE communication barrier between us. With the grad students, it took approximately 5 minutes to translate one sentence of conversation. They was the most exausting conversations I've ever had. However, the professors had okay English, so I could communicate with them fine. I really need to work to improve my Japanese. My speech right now is filled with both langages jumping back and forth. But everyone was super nice. They are supposedly having a lab party next Monday as my "welcoming party". And I told them my birthday and they are celebrating that as well when the day comes. The Japanese sure know how to welcome someone
Today, Yokomatsu-sensei took us to three different classes. Japanese Culture I and II, and Japanese language I. These classes are intended for those advanced in Japanese, so all of us, with the exception of Ana, was completely lost. Afterward, I went home and passed out on my bed. I was so drained and tired. I didnt realize how poor my Japanese skills are until today. Basically in Japan there are three different types of Characters
Hiragana - which is used to represent Japanese characters phonetically
Katakana - used to represent English words that have no Japanese equivalent.. e.g. computer in japanese is konputa
Kanji - chinese characters
Kanji plays a HUGE and I say HUGE part of the Japanese language. Basically, even though I'm Chinese, my Kanji is really bad. The Chinese international exchange students have a definite advantage.
I went the Univeristy stationery store to go buy a binder. It turns out, there is no such thing as a three ring binder in Japan. So I had to buy plastic clear holders to carry hand-outs in. Thank goodness I brought some Hilroy notebooks from Canada.
Our engineering classes have not started yet. We still havent figured out our timetable yet
Tomorrow is the welcoming party for us put on by the department of Social Systems Engineering
Today, Yokomatsu-sensei took us to three different classes. Japanese Culture I and II, and Japanese language I. These classes are intended for those advanced in Japanese, so all of us, with the exception of Ana, was completely lost. Afterward, I went home and passed out on my bed. I was so drained and tired. I didnt realize how poor my Japanese skills are until today. Basically in Japan there are three different types of Characters
Hiragana - which is used to represent Japanese characters phonetically
Katakana - used to represent English words that have no Japanese equivalent.. e.g. computer in japanese is konputa
Kanji - chinese characters
Kanji plays a HUGE and I say HUGE part of the Japanese language. Basically, even though I'm Chinese, my Kanji is really bad. The Chinese international exchange students have a definite advantage.
I went the Univeristy stationery store to go buy a binder. It turns out, there is no such thing as a three ring binder in Japan. So I had to buy plastic clear holders to carry hand-outs in. Thank goodness I brought some Hilroy notebooks from Canada.
Our engineering classes have not started yet. We still havent figured out our timetable yet
Tomorrow is the welcoming party for us put on by the department of Social Systems Engineering
posted by Arthur Kong at 1:06 PM
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