ICU, unlike most Japanese universities, is divided into trimesters starting in September and going until the middle of June with the month of March off.  Before the holiday vacation, we had two weeks of classes which was just about enough to get a taste of what's to come.  This term I'm taking Japanese II, Anthropology of Social Problems, Social Stratification and Computing for Researchers.  I'm still teaching English at another university though thankfully, that contract is up at the end of January.  I'm also still TA'ing for a linguistics class and working with the the Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs through a Virtual Foreign Service Internship.  Though the schedule is busy, I'm really enjoying the life of teaching, studying and research. I have absolutely no idea how anyone manages this with a family, however, as the demands to be successful in academia are rigorous and oftentimes seem impossible even as a married person without kids.

Christmas Eve lunch in between teaching English classes at Meisei University

In Japanese, our class size dropped from ten students in JI to eight students now in JII.  It's the same students that we were with last trimester and by now we're a tightly knit community.  JII is a big jump from JI and the class moves much faster.  We have a different instructor who is excellent (did her PhD at OSU in the department of Asian languages) but is extremely difficult.  This class involves much more long readings, in-class short essay writing, projects and speeches.  In addition to our four hours of class every Monday, Wednesday and Friday, we also get one individual 20 minute appointment once a week one-on-one with the professor which is extremely valuable and very helpful.  I also have a weekly meeting with the same tutor I had last term. The professor consistently tells me that I need to work on my kanji recognition and production.  "Pay attention to balance, spacing, angle and flow" she tells me.  I feel like explaining it to her that if I could manage any one of those characteristics in any part of my life, much less all of them together, then perhaps my kanji would churn out gracefully.  That, or, I need hours more practice.

Loving the warm weather and taking advantage of it by sunning on the roof

So far my favorite class is Anthropology of Social Problems.  The professor is Japanese but did her doctorate at Penn and is married to an American.  This gives her a very unique and interesting perspective about what it means to be Japanese and some of the cultural differences that the Americans in the class are navigating.  Some of the things we've talked about so far are gender roles in Japan and Japanese family dynamics - it's been fascinating!  In the second 90 minutes of the class period she focuses on survey and questionnaire writing which is something that we'll get to try out on our own and then present on our own pilot study.

A close second favorite is Social Stratification that focuses on inequality in communities through themes such as poverty, gender and race.  The professor is from Michigan, incidentally, and is very easy for me to relate to.  He often uses examples from Michigan communities (Calvinism and Dutch culture to name two) and I find myself thinking "yes, of course!" as he describes how certain ideologies shape our lifestyle and upbringing.  He specializes in the Japanese "untouchable" classes and tries to give examples on Japan whenever he can.

Sean is cooking up a storm this break and I'm loving it! He made a day-after-Christmas Thanksgiving feast though the only turkey we could find was turkey spam

My least favorite class is Computing for Researchers.  I took the class along with another fellow because we both want to know how to use the open-source program called "R" to do some statistical analyses on our quantitative research data.  Though the class was described as open to beginners, it's way over my head as I have zero programming knowledge.  Instead of explaining how to use some basic language to give commands, the professor enjoys making us copy and paste elaborate coding sequences into the main screen to show off "What R can really do."  That being said, I just purchased the book "R for Everyone" and am hoping it can help me limp through the rest of the term on my own and at least learn the basics.

I am loving and cherishing every minutes of winter break (thus the increased blogging) and have a list a mile long of things I need and want to do.  It feels peaceful here not only because classes aren't in session and no one is around but also because I have the space and time to think about a new semester, a new year and a new start.  I hope that you have time to reflect about the old and the new as well.  Thanks for reading!

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