A lot has happened the past few days, so let me catch you up.
Thursday was our first day at IUC. It wasn't a full day, since we only had a two-hour placement test in the morning and then the afternoon free. That was just as well, since a couple of the people in our program arrived at 2 a.m. on the day of the test. Apparently their flight had been horribly delayed, and thus they literally came straight from the airport to the center. Ouch. Additionally, a lot of people had flown in the day before and hadn't gotten over jetlag. I guess I made the right decision in doing my visiting before classes started!
Anyway, as much as I despise placement tests, this one wasn't as terrible as I was expecting! Although apparently my interview was ridiculously hard compared to most other people's. My classmates got asked questions like "What do you study?" and "Please introduce yourself," and I got "What are the features of Japanese New Religions?" and "What makes certain religions 'Sect Shinto'?" Uh, lemme just summarize 50 years of academic debates for you... Otherwise, the test wasn't awful--even the listening section, which involved differentiating accents (something I can actually do!).
After the placement test, I went to Daiso with a couple of other students from the program to pick up necessities like toothpaste* and laundry detergent and hangers. I also got a "cooking set" from the apartment front desk, which basically means a pan, a pot, a hot plate, and some various cooking utensils and plates. I now have the world's tiniest kitchen. I'm still trying to figure out how to do rice--one of my senpai** at Harvard recommended buying the microwaveable rice packets from the grocery store (she says they taste like normal rice), but they kind of sketch me out and I'm not sure I've quite reached that level of desperation. I may just wind up eating a lot of noodles this summer.
Friday we received our class assignments and had orientation, which included a long segment on what to do if there's an earthquake/tsunami/typhoon/fire/other natural disaster. I'm in a class of 8, and 6 of my classmates are men, which is kind of unusual as far as Japanese classes go. (I'm used to either a male-female 50/50 split or predominantly female Japanese language classes. Not sure why they usually wind up like that.) The majority of my classmates are studying business, law, or international relations, which means that I am, as usual, the weird one out. OH WELL. Our homework load seems...weirdly heavy, but we'll see if it decreases as the weeks go on.*** Two of our textbooks (for kanji and for keigo****) are books I've used before, which means that those sections will probably wind up being review.
We had a "welcome party" in the afternoon, where I met a bunch of the other students, including a guy who is a graduate from my program (and is now at University of Texas) and studies Japanese folk religion. I think there are a total of 4 people studying religion (plus 1 studying Japanese Buddhist art history), although I'm the only person doing Shinto, as usual. Still, it was cool to talk to other people and hear about their research projects.
Today has mostly been a stay-at-home-and-do-homework day (partially because of the weather and partially because I'm feeling under the weather*****), so not much to report on there. I'm going to make delicious food for dinner and watch my news broadcast and do some more reading, probably, because I live an exciting life like that. (Well, that and get increasingly hysterical emails from my friends about the Hannibal finale. I haven't even seen the show, but apparently people just have a lot of feelings about it.)
*Japanese toothpaste is...not the greatest, but I unfortunately underestimated how much toothpaste I would go through while away from Boston. OH WELL. The stuff I got this time is way better than that...other stuff...I got in Kyoto.
**Students ahead of me in the program. The opposite of this is "kouhai." Someone in the second year of the program would be my senpai and I would be their kouhai.
***To give you an idea, our homework load for this week is: 2 lessons in our keigo textbook, 4 essays to read (each roughly 10 pages long), 5 20-minute news broadcasts to watch, 1 10-minute presentation on aforementioned news broadcasts, 1 2-minute presentation on "whatever we want," 4 vocabulary quizzes, and however many kanji tests we can get through this week.
****Honorific and humble speech. Basically, the bane of everyone's existence. And, yes, "everyone" includes Japanese people.
*****YOU SEE WHAT I DID THERE?
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