Wow, it's been a while.
Since last time, Roy moved to Tokyo. We went out to play the other day, which was cool since I still miss home and all. (No one's called me Madee in months and months, I almost forgot people call me that.) We just went a bunch of random places, ate, and went to karaoke. I'm really not a good guide of Tokyo. Anyway, it was nice to see him, and it's cool that he'll be around for a while.
Besides that, I've mostly been preparing for school and such. Our first day was yesterday. Here's how my schedule looks.
1. Cultural Encounters in Literature
2. Issues in Chinese Women's History
3. Advanced Japanese 1
4. Philosophical Approaches to Buddhism
Those are all Tu/F classes, except Japanese, which is everyday except Wednesday. I might drop one of the 3 non-language classes if I like History and Theory of Architecture during 2nd period on M/Th. Having a complete day, 4 classes in a row, seems like it could really get to me. But then again, then I'd only have Japanese on M/Th and no class on Wednesday, so maybe it would even out.
I must say, the Philosophical Approaches to Buddhism class seems really intimidating. We're going to study the Benkenmitsunikyoron (弁顕蜜二教論) by Kukai in classical Chinese (but pronouncing everything in Japanese). We're going to be working on individual translations into English. (So, kanji studying finally has a purpose..haha.) By the end of the course we're supposed to have it memorized, and our oral test is to recite it. I don't know how I'm going to do that. It's hard to even get through the title smoothly if I'm not looking at the kanji. It seems really interesting, but also really intense. It's a 400 level course, which is the highest in the FLA (Faculty of Liberal Arts), so it probably won't be a walk in the park. Our teacher is a French guy, but I think he was trained at Koyasan. He can chant pretty well.
Cultural Encounters in Literature seems the easiest. It's my lowest numbered class, a 300 level. We'll see. We were going over this whole idea of 自分探しの旅 (a journey to find yourself), and it got me thinking about this whole being in Japan thing. Very strange ideas and all.
