The structure of the intensive Japanese classes here at JCMU is such that we go over a new chapter in the textbook (it has 12 chapters) every week, and at the end of the week, we have a test. Well, today is the first test. Luckily, it mostly covers things that I had [...]

Guess I should have known, coming to Japan, that I shouldn’t try to stand out or make waves. Our kitchen situation has been the topic of some goings-on here at JCMU. Within the past two days we’ve had two different groups of people come in and look at it, with the Japanese group [...]

Some strange things I’ve noticed so far in my first week here:
-There are vending machines for drinks almost every block, but I’ve yet to see any vending machines selling food….
-About three times a day a car with a loudspeaker on top of it drives by JCMU and blares out political messages for the upcoming election. [...]

For the past two days it has been raining hard without stop, but today the rain stopped and the weather become quite pleasant. All through Japanese class I was able to look out the window and see beautiful Lake Biwa and the mountains that surround the other site. 4 hours later, however, the [...]

Day 2:
First full day in Japan. Woke up around 7:45am, first thing of the day was a breakfast to kinda introduce ourselves and to explain the (insanely complex) garbage system. This consists of sorting garbage into the correct bags and taking them out at the correct time [...]

Well my flight went well and so did everything else, and now I am sitting in my new kitchen typing away on my laptop. Its currently 12:11am, which means that I’ve been awake for…..about 28 hours now. I’m not feeling very tired, but I’m going to try and get some sleep in a [...]