Guzen Media Japan: October 2007

One of our listeners, Liane, came to Japan on a study abroad program last year and she has been nice enough to share her experience with us. I will be posting her stories over the next several weeks. I hope you will enjoy them. If you have any questions and want to see some pictures you can visit Liane's website.

Liane wrote

Hello to everyone. I’m here to share my experience studying abroad in Hikone, Japan fall semester of ‘06. I will do my best to accurately portray my experiences in what detail I can still remember and/or look up, but please remember that I will just be recounting my experience with my school’s program along with a little bit of advice based on those experiences. You should and will have your own unique experiences with applying, getting ready, and being in Japan that you’ll be able to share when you come back as well. That being said, this first article will be an introduction about me, my background, and my school.

I grew up in America, always living in New England, though I did move within the area a couple of times. I never lived in a place with any Japanese influence so believe it or not, my interest in Japan started with a free poster for Pokemon from Walmart when the first games were just becoming popular in the US. That’s right, I like anime, but since that beginning, I’ve grown to like the Japanese language and culture separate from anime as well.

Looking for a college, it was very important to me that there was a Japanese language program as well as a study abroad program that would allow me to actually go to Japan. I ended up in a private college in up-state New York that had a very small, but very good language program and just one option for studying abroad in Japan. I wasn’t able to start learning Japanese until second semester freshman year because my school didn’t offer the 101 class until then to ensure that first years could be adjusted to regular school life before starting a course that met every single school day instead of every other day.

My Japanese class in America started off with maybe 15-20 people, but after only a few semesters dwindled down to 6 and all the way down to 3 by the semester before I left for Japan. We had two instructors, one American male, and one native Japanese female. Monday, Wednesday, and Friday were drill classes where we would meet with the Japanese instructor and speak 100% Japanese the entire period, going over memorized conversations and vocabulary. It was also in the contract of our Japanese instructor that she could not speak any English to us in or outside of class and she was good at keeping that, so it was big news if any of us managed to catch her talking to someone else unaware of our presence until it was too late. Tuesday and Thursday we met with the American instructor and learned grammar, culture, and could ask questions in English on what we had covered in drill class. If you hadn’t guessed, we focused especially on spoken Japanese and not nearly as much on written Japanese. My instructors also made certain that we were ready to move on before we did, so we would not forget the material we had already learned and to prevent stupid grammatical mistakes in the future. If you ask me, I like this approach better because this way you can ask anyone in Japan for help or how to read something, but if you could only read and not speak very well, it might be hard to close the culture gap in finding your way around. Also, in case anyone is interested, the textbooks we used are called Japanese the Spoken Language (JSL) and Japanese the Written Language (JWL) by Eleanor Jorden and Mari Noda (you can google it or search on Amazon) of which we finished the first volume and a few chapters of the second before I left for Japan.

I majored in Computer Science and minored in Music with another minor in Asian Studies as an after-thought (hey, I had enough credits) so although I really wanted to learn Japanese and go to Japan, until my senior year when I decided to double minor, none of this was going toward my degree. Now that we’re acquainted , I think you all know enough about me to get a feeling of where I am coming from with my following stories.

Next Time: The Application Process!

The second Monday in October is a national holiday in Japan called taiiku no hi. It was established in 1966 to commemorate the 1964 Tokyo Olympics. It's a day to promote physical and mental health.

The 1964 Tokyo Olympics was a very important event for Tokyo and all of Japan. It was a chance to show the world that it had completely rebuilt itself into a peaceful and modern country that was headed toward an unprecedented prosperity and on the way to becoming a leading nation in the world.

Some interesting trivia
Tokyo was chosen to host the 1940 Olympics, but was cancelled due to war.
It was the first time the Olympics were held in Asia.
It was held in October because of Japan's rainy and very hot summers.
Volleyball and Judo made their debut.
Computers were used for the first time to keep statistics.
Satellite coverage was used for the first time to broadcast overseas.
The time keeping system was the most accurate to date.
South Africa was banned by the IOC because of it's apartheid system.

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