First Week of Classes

The summer and the heat is finally ending here in Tokyo. I wanted to take a picture while the campus is still green. I will post more shots as the seasons change. I hear that ICU is a great place to watch　四季（しき - shiki）or the four seasons change. I can't wait to see leaves fall!

This picture is of the entrance drive to ICU, so it also how I went to my first class on Monday morning and returned home yesterday evening. I made it through my first week of graduate school with nary a scratch! In honesty, the first week of class isn't very difficult since it is just a lot of self-introductions and listening to the professor explain about him or herself, their academic area of interest and study, and the course work of the class. Fortunately, all of my professors seem very smart (I guess all professors do!) and have, at least to me, great areas of interest. One of my professors, from my course on Ideas on Peace, has even written extensively about the pacifist Japanese constitution, so it will be interesting to listen to him and read his works on the issue.

In addition to the initially great impressions of the faculty, I think my classmates will provide very good classroom dynamics for discussions. We all really do come from very diverse backgrounds - both from an academic and work experience standpoint. One of my classmates has been working in Pakistan on nuclear non-proliferation and already has two master's degrees! Another, from South Africa, has been doing UN mediation work. I may have a lot to catch-up to! I do have one advantage against my classmates, in that all of the course readings (except for Japanese class) will be in English. Although everyone comes from a place where English is not their first language, their English is great (much better than my Japanese will be for a while). But in some of the courses we will be reading some dense works, such as Kant, Ghandi, Arendt and essays from academic journals. I know that these will be difficult for me to digest, so I can only imagine what it would be like in a language that is not my primary.

One thing that I have already noticed is that I will be the lone American voice in most of my classes. Yesterday in my class on Ideas of Peace, we were discussing the theory of just war and Iraq. Of course, everyone had an opinion and was of the opinion that America's invasion was unjust, but everyone looked to me to try to explain how we (or at least the majority of), the American people could be sold on the war. It was a little unnerving being ask to speak for a cacophony of voices in our country surrounding the issue, but I gave it my best shot. I have a feeling that there will be many more instances of incidents like this, so I guess I should sharpen my diplomatic answers!

This weekend I will take it easy and dive into my first class readings for next week - it will mostly be me, my readings, and a coffee shop for the next two days. And if I get a lot of work done, I just may reward myself with an hour or two at karaoke. It's a great way to practice my Japanese reading and writing (if I pick songs to sing in Japanese, of course)!

JRG