Fall

Wow, all the months of paperwork and interviews I had to go through to get selected and make it to Japan, and I was going to finally be starting classes at Waseda and meeting my future classmates. I was expecting them to be a pretty serious bunch. At the end of August, all the students from California State University got together for our orientation. We were staying at a hotel in Takadanobaba, near Waseda, for the whole four days. Takadanobaba is not a place that is in most Tokyo guidebooks, but as I was to discover, it was one of the best places in town to have a drink with friends.Opening Ceremony It only took about 15 minutes for me to discover how wrong I had been about my fellow CSUers. Let's start with the program director Dr Aso and his assistant Kazaoka-san. Their plan for the first night was a get to know each other dinner and then let us go to have a night on the town! There were a lot of other school programs at Waseda and I know that their directors were nowhere near as cool as ours were. As the year progressed, the other students also began to notice and CSU became known as the group to hang out with, especially among the Japanese students there. The second thing I noticed about our directors was that they had everything planned out already for the whole year. There was no emergency that could come up that they were not ready for. That was nice.

The first thing we had to do was our Japanese placement test. There were 13 levels of Japanese at Waseda, and I ended up in J3. I was a little disappointed, but when I got in the class, I found it was at about my level. The class was four days a week for 2 1/2 hours each, so we really got to build our skills quickly. That class was our most important one at Waseda, because of the subject matter, units, and the fact that we were with the same people the whole year. There were two teachers, Mizumoto Sensei and Swan Sensei. They were both excellent, and were to keep us busy with quizzes and homework the whole year. My classmates there were also very interesting. There was David from Oregon, the skater punk who loved coming to class late and causing trouble for the teachers, but was a nice guy at heart (at least he said so). Then was Ken from Occidental University near Pasadena who was a tall half-Japanese guy who was good at playing himself off as a good boy, so the teachers and nice girls loved him, but I knew better! Next was Whitney from CSU, who really was a good girl. She had the best grades in class the whole year, but never made it out to Roppongi (Tokyo's nightclub area), despite many invitations. Sue was a Chinese-American from Georgetown who grew up in Saudi Arabia. She was definitely a club kid, but I never got the chance to hang out with her. Another girl from CSU was Emily, a Vietnamese-American who was sooo funny, especially when she was trying to be serious. Lin was a Chinese-American from Cornell who could usually be found in the Kokusaibu (International Division) computer lab engaged in some kind of lewd conduct with her Japanese boyfriend. Finally, Mike was a half-Japanese guy from Occidental who was the joker of the class. His specialty was hiding under the teacher's desk and surprising her when she walked in, and calling people on their Keitai (cell-phone) when they were giving a class presentation. The chemistry of the class was such that even when we frustrated our teachers, which was often, they still loved us.

I also took several other classes that looked interesting to me, but unfortuneately, because of our language limitations we were only allowed to take Kokusaibu classes in English. The fact that Waseda took the trouble to set aside an International Division with classes taught primarily in English shows how serious they were about creating a great program, which they certainly did. Kokusaibu classes also had a good amount of Japanese students, so we got the chance to work with them. The first I chose was History of Modern Japan. I knew next to nothing about Japanese history, so I thought that would be useful. The teacher, Okamoto Sensei, was a very interesting person. He had studied in America for a year during the Gulf War, and came away with the impression that Americans were too over the top when it came to foreign intervention. At the same time, he was critical of Japan's past (for example he acknowledged that the Rape of Nanking actually occurred) and for that was called "un-Japanese" by nationalists there. Indeed, even now in Japan to criticize the Emperor and the expansionist policies of that time is to invite a landslide of insults and even violence from right-wing groups (Uyoku).

Wanting to learn as much as possible about as many different subjects as possible, I next chose Religions of East Asia. I knew that trying to learn about a culture without studying the religion was pointless, so I figured it would be a very valuable class, and it was. It is so easy to misunderstand the intentions of Japanese when judging them through Judeo-Christian values, that class really helped me to understand how even such basic concepts as good and evil and nature can be viewed differently. Being a basically agnostic person, I also was a lot more objective than some of the strong Christians who participated. Unfortuneately, that was an unspoken cultural barrier for a lot of my fellow exchange students.

There was one unique class offered by the Economics Department during this semester that piqued my interest called Economics of Industrial Structure. This was the only non-Kokusaibu class we were allowed to take, and was taught in Japanese and English. It organized us into project teams researching a specific area of the Japanese economy, and was a great chance to work with Japanese students and see how their groups functioned. The instructor, Nakamura Sensei, had taught in the US for several years and was one very sharp guy. The group I was in focused on the fast growing IT industry in Japan. There were two Americans including myself, one Dutch, and five Japanese in my team. Japanese workgroups govern by consensus, instead of the individual leadership style favored by Americans. Every imaginable detail and contingency is covered before taking any action. This technique has its pros and cons. If everything happens as planned, the final product will be excellent, but unforeseen events can really cause problems. It also takes much longer to come to a decision. For many Japanese, that is part of the charm of it. I have to admit that I enjoyed our "planning" meetings at the local yaki-niku (barbequed beef) restaurant where we accomplished more in the way of having fun and getting to know each other than any kind of planning. The high point of this class came at the end of the semester when we went out to Waseda's Honjo Seminar House for a weekend to give our final team presentations. The amount of knowledge I learned in such a short period about the Japanese economy and way of doing business was amazing, and I can only hope that Waseda will add more classes like this one for future students to benefit from.

Ok, enough about classes. Everyone knows that college is about more than just learning and making yourself a better person. It is also about good friends and good fun. Nowhere is this more true than Japan. Being a CSU student also had its benefits. Every month, Kazaoka San and Dr Aso would organize a group party at one of the local establishments. There is nothing quite like having your resident director forcing you to drink one of his infamous sake-whiskey-beer-godknowswhatelse kind of concoctions. Of course, being CSU, there were a lot of us who actually came to like that drink, Ben Yamada, Tim Sakurai, Yuji Kanazawa, please stand up. In addition to the CSU get togethers, there were Waseda organized trips, such as the one to Kiyosato. They were always interesting because a lot of Japanese students came along. After Fall term finals, we were to go on our Kansai (Western Japan) trip. It was the highlight of the year as far as trips went, and we were all excited to be going. First was a Shinkansen (bullet train) ride to Kyoto, where we would visit the temples and castles in the area for three days. Then, we would have a free day to see Osaka or Kobe before finally returning to Tokyo.

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