Wally's Yamasa Journal

The morning session left me with a good impression, making me feel more comfortable about the quality of education I was about to embark in. With myself and six other new students in attendance, an opening ceremony was held in a lecture theatre in Aoi Hall introducing Toh-san, the vice-president, administration coordinator (Jon Walden) and some of the teacher and staff who would be working with us. There were actually supposed to be nine new students that day though seven were present - two from China, and others from Taiwan, Russia, Switzerland, France, Australia, New Zealand, with myself from Canada.

As much as I intend to do some touring of the country during my three-month stay, today reminded me of why I was here. After the opening remarks and introductions, I was subjected to a written test and one-on-one interview over the next two-and-a-half hours to assess my current language skills and to determine a class placing.

Though we scattered around the area to pick up our lunches, me and the other new students got together in the Aoi Main Hall to eat and share notes about how the morning went. We tried to anyways. We all had mixed levels of Japanese language skills and some English so there was some difficulty but we did all communicate a bit of trepidation about how the morning tests went.

Lunch was followed by a campus orientation and an explanation of how to find our first class the next day. The other students were set free for the rest of the day. I was not to get off so easily.

Once done the orientation, I reported to the International Office where Miki, the office manager, promptly gave me a 300 page, 30x30 cm book on web page design to read. After about an hour of reading, Declan, the director of the office and my boss for my workstudy program, appeared after an apparently frustrating morning at the immigration office in Nagoya.

Since he was late in returning from Nagoya, there was a few slightly impatient customers outside the office waiting for him to open the campus "Furo" (bathhouse) bar. It was only opened in October but has already become fairly popular even though it's generally open on Thursday evenings and sometimes Fridays (kind of like the basement pub in the Commerce building back in my University of BC days).

Declan took me over to the bar to talk but was too busy to go over what he had planned for me for my workstudy program. While there, though, one of the teachers who administered my test that morning found me (good impression even though I'm not a drinker). Turns out the school didn't know which level to place me. They gave me a choice between placing me in a higher or lower level. Being a glutton for punishment, I chose higher at which point I was promptly given two text books and two chapters worth of homework to have done for class the next morning.

What this meant was that I had to finish my work for the day at the office, at 6:30, get back to the village, cook and eat dinner (udon again), then study for the rest of the evening. I didn't complete the homework until 1:30 in the morning. This is really beginning to feel like university again.

One thing's for sure: if the work keeps piling on like this, these journal entries are going to become a lot shorter and simpler.

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