For God, for Doshisha, and Native Land!

Yes, it is indeed another double helping of blogs, but I want to get my initial happenings out of the way as I’m busting with other things to talk about from transportation to funky purchases I’ve made to soccer madness. But Friday 22nd saw my very reason for coming to Japan take centre stage as it was our initial orientation and welcoming ceremony. And ceremonious was certainly the word.

We take our seats in Divinity Hall, in an upstairs chapel replete with stained-glass windows and hymn books, a grand organ and a crown of thorns. I had underestimated the Christian influence of the university’s founder, Joseph Hardy Neesima, which had been maintained since its establishment in 1875. We sing Doshisha anthems (from which the title of this blog comes from) along with a choir and several important officials give us talks on what the university means to all who study there. It’s all extremely po-faced, but our subsequent meetings with the foreign student department are cheerier affairs (especially the head of Japanese teaching, who reveals a penchant for karaoke), even if we do have our placement tests to determine which level we study at.

Unfortunately, the first written test is the kind I abhor – fill in the gaps. It sounds easy, but I’d rather have an essay question, as I just cannot operate my mind in such a fashion; filling in Japanese sentences with one of four options just doesn’t seem right, as I hate being a slave to multiple choice. I hand in my paper despondently and head to the canteen for lunch, which has a large selection of dishes, though it doesn’t ever seem to change.

The afternoon is filled with a lengthy orientation lecture, where we get a ‘goodie-bag’ filled with endless documents to fill in and deadlines to meet. Its an overwhelming package, but at least we now have our student cards, computer ID and password and Doshisha College Song CD featuring anthems, chants and pop songs to inspire us in the morning before classes begin (it is recommended we learn at least the two key songs for special events and that).

It’s then interview time, and after a 2 hour wait in which we get to know our fellow students better, Parn, myself and three others are called in – and it is not what we expected. We are all sat in a line facing what seems to be all the teaching staff (ten of them at least), scrutinising our entry forms and papers. The questions aren’t the self-introduction style we expected, and while I think I do alright to respond to them, there was one about if anyone inspired you to study Japanese, but I got the wrong end of the stick and just went off-topic about my hobbies…which is a pain because I could have easily answered the question if I’d fully understood it. At least they seemed impressed about the textbooks we had studied at SOAS, so I pray they take into account my previous credentials when they make their decision.

Monday morning comes and we head back to Doshisha for our 成績発表 (seiseki happyou – announcement of results, usually screamed at the end of an arcade game). And I’m in group 5A, with Parn and Baptiste and it’s the level I was hoping for, which is a considerable relief. We will repeat a few chapters from our New Approach textbooks at the start, but the course advances from there over the course of the year.

Classes don’t start until Monday 2nd October, but the rest of the week has so far been admin and further procedures. We had a tour of the library on Tuesday, which has a more higgledy-piggledy layout compared to SOAS’, but there’s plenty more on offer, and the corridors turn up some nice treasures (very serene reading and study areas, contrasting group study rooms that look more like interrogation chambers, an AV centre stocked with videos, DVDs, tapes, laserdiscs and TV’s showing BBC World, which is covering the Borat US premiere while we’re looking around). We also have a rather fruitless afternoon, in which Kenta returns to help us with life in Japan, but we’ve pretty much done everything already, and as he studies at the other Kyotanabe campus, not the Imadegawa one, most places are new to him as well. And Wednesday was another medical check-up, solely consisting of yet another chest x-ray…I don’t know why they’re so concerned with a little bit of tuberculosis with the amount of smoking going on.

Well that’s pretty much up-to-date now. I’ve left a few bits and pieces out which I’ll write about later in more general terms. And I’ve just got a new mobile phone which deserves a whole post to itself, but it does mean blog-worthy pictures are within my grasp (still set on getting a proper camera for proper photography as well).

Until then, here’s my favourite engrish quote of the week, found on a carton of Hokkaido milk – all dairy products seem to come from Hokkaido, as it’s the big agricultural centre:

“We send to you the delicious milk extracted from the fine good dairy cow which grew up in beautiful Nature.”

It’s not poor spelling that makes these funny, rather word choice and wondering why these semi-inspirational proverbs and slogans are found in such mundane places, let alone why they exist in the first place. Ah well!