robbieinjapan.com

First thing to say is that I have a new domain name. You can now get to my blog by going to http://www.robbieinjapan.com/ — pretty cool, eh? I have Mikey to thank for that for purchasing the domain name and setting it up. Oh, it was also his birthday on the third, so happy birthday to him.

I’ve been getting a lot of helpful comments on my entries recently (such as you, Jimmy) so if you haven’t been already, you should check out the comments section by clicking on the comments link below each entry. If you have any questions, you can leave a comment under the entry, too and I’ll respond to it by posting a comment underneath it. Or, if you just want to say hi, feel free to leave a comment, too.

Also, something I forgot to mention in my last entry about umbrellas is that even when it’s not raining and it’s bright daylight outside, you will still see them. Many women use parasols (which is what I guess you start calling the same thing when it’s no longer raining outside) in order to not get a tan since having white skin is normally considered beautiful. There are a few exceptions to this rule in Japan mainly for a particular fashion style where the girls try to get as tan as possible and then either add a fake tan or lots of makeup (they end up looking an orangish color). It is an odd fashion style that’s been around for a while and I’ll talk more about it once I snag some pictures of them sometime.

Anyway, it’s raining again today, as it was yesterday. I’m beginning to get into the habit of grabbing an umbrella on my way out, right after I take my shoes out of my shoe box and put them on my feet by the door to the outside. Today was particularly windy as well and my umbrella kept turning inside out as I walked to and from dinner.

So today I didn’t have classes and spent the time sleeping in, cleaning my room, studying (since I have class tomorrow on Saturday). After tomorrow, I will have completed the second week of classes.

I attend Keio University but do their Japanese as a second language program which focuses on teaching foreigners Japanese. I also have the option of taking undergraduate and graduate courses in English but I chose not to do that this semester since most of their Economics courses didn’t seem too interesting to me and I would rather spend the time learning Japanese this first semester. I might take a course in English next semester. These English courses are normal undergraduate and graduate courses and I guess Japanese students who want to use their English take them. Also, if I get up to a high enough level in the Japanese program (I think level 3 or higher), I am allowed to take normal undergraduate classes which are in Japanese. I don’t think I’ll be doing this since my Japanese isn’t that good!

So for the Japanese program, there are four levels seperated by skill level. In each level, there are various sublevels. They look like this:

1F, 1G
2B, 2F, 2G
3B, 3F, 3G, 3H
4B, 4F

The lower the number, the less advanced the class is. The earlier the letter in the alphabet, the less advanced it is. Level 1 is if you don’t know Japanese at all or have only studied it a little before. Level 4 is if you’re at a fluent level. In fact, if it’s your first semester in the program, you’re not allowed to enter level 4. We all took a placement test and I placed into 2G.

My core classes are all 2G classes. These usually take place in the morning. There are five periods each day (except maybe Saturday, I think there may only be two or three periods, I’m not sure). Each period is an hour and a half. There is a 15 minute break between each period and after the second period, there is an hour break before the third period so that you can eat lunch.

My 2G classes are on Monday, Wednesday, Thursday and Saturday. Each day, it is for two periods in the morning. So that means 9:00 to 12:15. These 2G classes are Japanese language classes that teach us everything, meaning we read, write, speak, listen, etc. We are also required to take 5 periods worth of electives which usually occur during the afternoon.

These electives usually pertain to one particular aspect of Japanese. There are grammar classes, kanji (Japanese character) writing classes, reading newspaper classes, aural comprehension classes and so on. There are also various skill levels for each class, so you can take beginning aural comprehension or advanced aural comprehension. During the first week, we’re allowed to sit on as many elective classes as we want to see what they’re like. After the first week, we are required to register for classes and the second week marks the real beginning. Since I’ve just completed my second week of classes, I have already registered for my classes and gone through them.

For my electives, I’m taking newspaper reading, modern text reading and aural comprehension. I took the reading classes since I’ve always wanted to read newspapers and various texts in Japanese and I took the aural comprehension class because I need work in understanding spoken Japanese. I’m not sure why they call it “aural” here. I think they always used “oral” back in the United States.

Anyway, my newspaper reading class is one period in the afternoon on Mondays. My modern text reading class is two periods in the afternoon on Tuesdays and my aural comprehension class is two periods in the afternoon on Wednesdays. So the two days where I have absolutely no classes are Fridays and Sundays. It is a bit annoying that they have classes on Saturdays since that messes up the weekend.

This week, I wanted to open a bank account. Well, I had to since Keio University wants us to have a Japanese bank account in order to pay for our housing. I had to wait until Thursday to open the account though, since the banks here seem to close around 3pm and I have class in the afternoon Mondays through Wednesdays.

So I went to the bank yesterday after my classes at Keio and eating lunch. The bank was fairly big. It’s called Sumitomo Mitsui Bank I believe. It’s the green one. The three major banks here can be identified by their associating colors. There’s green, blue and red I think. This is actually the only bank that will allow me to open an account. The other banks require that one has lived in Japan for at least 6 months before they will make an account. Actually, although my bank will let me make an account, it will not be a normal account until after 6 months have passed. Until then, I have a special “ryuugakusei” account I think which is for foreign students. One of the annoying parts about this is that everytime money is sent or deposited into my account, the bank will call me and ask me to authorize it. Once my account becomes a “normal” account, this will no longer happen.

So anyway, I went in and went up to a lady standing there by the ticket giving machine where you take a number and said “koza wo tsukuritain desu ga” (I want to open a bank account) and she bowed deeply and said “arigatou gozaimasu” (thank you very much). She asked me if I had a “gakusho” (student ID card) so I took out my wallet and pulled out my Keio University student card and said “kore de ii desu ka” (will this do?) She looked down and read the top line that said “Keio University” and as I’m beginning to see is common, was visibly impressed. She gave me a form to fill out and handed me a number.

When my number was called, I went to the counter with my form and talked to the person there and set up my account. I don’t think anyone at this bank speaks English. My friend who had gone to open his account the week before doesn’t speak Japanese as well as I do and when he was there, the original person he was trying to speak with got too fed up with trying to communicate with him in Japanese so another person came and tried explaining by making huge, ridiculous gestures which he said was pretty amusing.

In any case, we only communicated in Japanese while I was going through the process of opening my account as she explained the different rules and things I would have to do. I can see how not knowing any Japanese would make things particularly difficult.

Also, on the form where it asked me my birthday, I couldn’t fill it out since it asked me to put down the year of my birth in terms of the Japanese system which is based on when the emperor is put into power and dies. I didn’t know what my year of birth was in this system so I had to ask the woman and she did some calculations before telling me “61″. So apparently I was born in the year “61″. Although curiously enough, months and days are done exactly the same way as most of the rest of the world. It’s only the year system that is different. I just looked up the Japanese emperor system and see now that I was born in year 61 of Showa (the emperor’s posthumous name since once an emperor dies, he is given a new name which will be used for the dating system I believe).

Another problem that I ran into was on my form. Everything was fine except for where I was supposed to write my name, I wrote “KUNZ, ROBERTSON B”. Unfortunately, they said afterwards that this would not do. I had to write it as “KUNZ ROBERTSON B”, so they made me recopy my entire form on to a new one without the offending comma. So remember, in Japan, don’t use commas. Ever.

I had to put some money into the account in order to get it started. There were 9 boxes into which I could put numbers to tell them how much my initial deposit would be so I wrote “1″ and gave them 1 yen (less than a penny). So now I officially have less than a penny to my name in Japan. 

In a week or two, I’ll have to go back to the bank to pick up my ATM card. This will allow me to withdrawal money from any of my banks’ ATMs. I know that at Keio University’s campus, they have these three booths which are ATMs for the three major banks so perhaps I’ll withdrawal money from there since I know there are no ATMS from my bank around the area where I live.

So far, I’ve been using my American bank’s ATM card to withdrawal money from the post office’s ATM. This is perhaps not a good idea since my friends recently told me that if you do this, the surcharge is $10 for each withdrawal. I’m not sure why the charge is so high but it will be avoided once I get my Japanese bank ATM card and transfer more than a penny to it.

It’s Friday and so I have to study now since I have class tomorrow morning. And even though it will be Saturday tomorrow, the morning trains will still be crowded. This is life in Japan.

This entry was posted on Friday, October 6th, 2006 at 6:09 am and is filed under Japan. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.