Class

I've now had the opportunity to experience all of my classes here at Nanzan University. I will make a brief comment on each of them.

IJ300 (Intensive Japanese) - This is currently a very easy course, it promises to get harder by the end of the quarter, I believe it will, but it's currently pretty simple but fun. The homework usually consists of a few pages in a workbook, kanji practice, and an occasional short writing assignment.

Japanese Writing IIs - This is, so far, pretty fun. The teacher is really nice, though I was truly afraid of her for the first class. She looks very intense but is super laid back and funny. The first ten minutes of class are for writing. We are given a topic and we write on it for ten minutes then turn it in. After that, the past two classes we've just gone over 200 kanji we "should know" though it was pretty difficult for everyone in the class.

Japanese Religions II - There is no textbook for the class, we only write two papers and the teahcer (an Indian Priest) told us he's bad at English so he can't tell if the papers are bad anyway. Being the only Jew in the class is a little weird. Judaism is the only religion the teacher seems to know nothing about so he consults me on everything.

Sumie - Chinese Black Ink Painting. This is not calligraphy. The teacher (Ritsuo Sugiyama) is apparently a pretty famous dude, he has an entire book of his work published that we are using as a textbook. (http://www.world-egg.com/sumie/hanainxe.html here are samples from the textbook). In the one class we had, he showed us how to disperse the ink, showed us one stroke and then said "Paint what ever you want". I painted a banana, an apple, and a kiwi. I don't think he liked it, but he probably liked it better than one students painting of Nebraska (A large outline of the state, essentially a box, with a cow in the middle, a line drawn for where the interstate goes and "Nebraska" written across the top).