Test to Test

Test week comes to an end tomorrow, but the studies will continue to be in full-swing. The Japanese language proficiency test is laying in wait at the beginning of next month, ready to dry my eyes, drain my brain, steal my heart, and take up four hours of my Sunday afternoon. Luckily, we have a few days off this week for the anniversary of our school's founding. While I intend to partake in a few school festivities with my Jo Niijima mustache, and upon completing all assigned homework, I plan on devoting a significant amount of time to vocabulary and advanced grammar. There should also be time for some long awaited visits to Mt. Hiei, Daitokuji, and Kitano Tenmangu. Sharpen the pencils and heat up the coffee, it's game time.

Free Books

The first floor of the School of Commerce was lined with about three dozen cardboard boxes, all filled with books that seemed to have fulfilled their roles in the curriculum, but did not garner enough demand to be re-sold and re-used. Or maybe there's a faculty member who is simply a nice person and likes to give people free books. Posted signs saying "Free books, take as many as you like." would suggest one or the other, but based on the selection, I would guess it was the former.
There were countless handbooks to accounting, four inches thick, and even analyses of past markets, global and domestic. Making our way swiftly through the boxes before our Japanese literature class upstairs, my friend from Taiwan picked up a book on English conversation, the curly fry in a basket of regular fries. I stuffed my bag with two books, one on the history of the American television between 1925-1941, and the other on advertising in Japan in the 1980's.

With mornings and nights regularly below 50 degrees Fahrenheit, I now have plenty of excuses to stay in, drink hot tea, study, and of course get a lot of extra-curricular reading done. There is also a lot of gathering, cooking, and baking to be done. We're still waiting for hints of the first snow this season, with simultaneous feelings of excitement and fear. Will the snow be as beautiful without a warm car to drive around in? Or will it be even more calming now that I don't have to drive around in it?

Walking to School

Last Sunday I joined a club at my school called the "Walking to School Project". My school has a main campus in the city, as well as a campus out in the countryside, a fair 35 kilometers (21.7 miles) away. I rode an early morning train out there, got a little lost along the way, but made it with time to spare before our 9 a.m. departure time. Just over a hundred of us walked single file, two by two, or three by three, slowly making our way from the fields and highways of the countryside to our main campus in the city. We walked for a few hours at a time, took some breaks, had lunch in a park, and played some games along the way. We made it to our destination at around 7 p.m., with 100 plates of curry and rice waiting for us in the dining hall. Walking that far really made the curry taste better, but the next two or three days were a struggle: getting up from my futon, climbing the stairs to class, and especially walking around after having sat for an hour or two. But it was worth it, and would be a lot of fun to do again. Here are some photos: