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Many of you have probably seen this commercial, representing the gleeful frolic of parents preparing to send their children off to school again, and kids sad at the prospect of once again facing the perpetual, existential monotony known as public education.
For me, this is the complete opposite. I love school (and my mom hated when I went back, because that meant I got super busy and never saw her [or anyone else for that matter] ever again until the next break). And although the school system here has led to a much different starting time, I am indeed very excited to be back in school once again.
Here's a question I never quite understood the answer too: Why do you like not being in school? In school you see your friends EVERY DAY. Without even having to try to hunt them down or make plans! They just show up! (usually). Yea, I mean there's work too...but I'm happy to do work and have a social life every day than be bored.
As per usual procedure, I was really excited to be consistently seeing people again. There were a lot of friends here who I haven't seen in weeks (or months). Apart from the general merriment of social reunion, what's been particularly interesting is hearing all of the stories from what other people were doing while I was in Hakuba. From the sound of it, almost everybody had a moving experience in one way or another, and having a shiny new experience to share with everybody is refreshing.
But of course, there is indeed the whole "academic" aspect of school to be dealt with as well. After last term, I learned not to make the mistake of picking classes with a potentially-awesome syllabus, but instead asking people and choosing courses with verified-awesome teachers. And luckily for me, one such teacher is a mime. That's right, a mime. He's an adjunct professor who teaches on the side of performing professionally all over Japan, and this term he is teaching a class about the history and development of mime and pantomime (is there difference? I guess we'll find out!) At any rate, that class is going to be FANTASTIC. The only other non-Japanese class I'm taking is Web Programming, which so far has been pretty simple, but will become more interesting in the coming months.
So, one week into classes things are going well so far at Waseda. People are beginning to settle into their course schedules, and routines are being reestablished (on that note, blogs should be coming forth more reliably from now on, sorry about that!). And with that: onward we go!
