Top Down Management
In favor of catching people up to date, I'm just going to explain the PURE UNADULTERATED joys of being prepared to slave in a World's Fair. Circa one month in Japan.
What MU said last night is quite true, we 30 something students are currently living with 30 other regular JCMU students in a facility meant for 30. EXPO students, like myself, are a specially selected group of study abroad interns who will be taking a 2 month crash course in Japanese and the Worlds Fairs. We live 3 to a room in an 8 tatami room (read: small), a room with no closets, no dressers, no furniture save a place to store our futons, a low seiza style table (for kneeling at) and two chairs which we've converted to storage. We will live out of our suitcases for two months, in a place with no kitchen, built to house guests for a weekend stay. With no kitchen, the already high price of food has been exacerbated (I`m talking living off daily specials, inadequate amounts of fruits and vegetables, and ramen--the cheap american kind--and breaking the $500 mark this week). The professors have accomodated our classes as best they could having only weeks notification to prepare for them, and they've had to design a curriculum to embrace everyone from complete beginner to graduate level. They are totally unable to supply the credit hours they originally promised, and most students (including myself) aren`t going to earn enough credit hours to keep their scholarships without divine intervention. The management has used threat tactics on us to keep us from pressuring them about some of the some serious shortcomings of the program, and a few students have been nearly fired because they couldn`t compete in a class which ran far above their level (the level of japanese of which they were originally accepted into the program for).
...Indeed.
But hell, I really could care less at the moment, since I'm doing it in Japan! And on the plus side, there are somehow pockets of anomalies, little portals to the past, in which cars that still sport the "baby on board" sticker drive free!
Even better are the number of foods here that you encounter by happenstance, rare foods whose taste can only be described as "tastes like Japan"! I`ve already had the pleasure of partaking of various melon and acekoya (kind of a spicy apple-pear) sodas, shrimp popcorn, and umeboshi (amazingly disgusting sweet-sour plums). Equally fun is a Listerine looking strip breath freshener called "Black Black" that delivers your desired dose of caffeine and nicotine! There are various fruit milks, tea flavored sandwich spreads, and more delicious bread than you can shake a stick at--melon pan, strawberry pan, mocha carmel swirl, dark chocolate raspberry, mango and aloe sprinkled ...
It`s winter, and strawberry season is in full force, huzzah! For the low low price of 600 yen (just over 6 bucks now), you get a whole single handful of strawberries! Think that`s a bad deal? You won`t if you try one. The fruits are so sweet and perfect here, a group of us girls splurged on a honeydew melon and literally cried! That singular slice of melon is the best thing I`ve had since I`ve been here, nay, the best tasting thing ever, no question! Speaking of food, it`s most definitely itadakimasu (a thanks said before eating) time. Love ya all!
What MU said last night is quite true, we 30 something students are currently living with 30 other regular JCMU students in a facility meant for 30. EXPO students, like myself, are a specially selected group of study abroad interns who will be taking a 2 month crash course in Japanese and the Worlds Fairs. We live 3 to a room in an 8 tatami room (read: small), a room with no closets, no dressers, no furniture save a place to store our futons, a low seiza style table (for kneeling at) and two chairs which we've converted to storage. We will live out of our suitcases for two months, in a place with no kitchen, built to house guests for a weekend stay. With no kitchen, the already high price of food has been exacerbated (I`m talking living off daily specials, inadequate amounts of fruits and vegetables, and ramen--the cheap american kind--and breaking the $500 mark this week). The professors have accomodated our classes as best they could having only weeks notification to prepare for them, and they've had to design a curriculum to embrace everyone from complete beginner to graduate level. They are totally unable to supply the credit hours they originally promised, and most students (including myself) aren`t going to earn enough credit hours to keep their scholarships without divine intervention. The management has used threat tactics on us to keep us from pressuring them about some of the some serious shortcomings of the program, and a few students have been nearly fired because they couldn`t compete in a class which ran far above their level (the level of japanese of which they were originally accepted into the program for).
...Indeed.
But hell, I really could care less at the moment, since I'm doing it in Japan! And on the plus side, there are somehow pockets of anomalies, little portals to the past, in which cars that still sport the "baby on board" sticker drive free!
Even better are the number of foods here that you encounter by happenstance, rare foods whose taste can only be described as "tastes like Japan"! I`ve already had the pleasure of partaking of various melon and acekoya (kind of a spicy apple-pear) sodas, shrimp popcorn, and umeboshi (amazingly disgusting sweet-sour plums). Equally fun is a Listerine looking strip breath freshener called "Black Black" that delivers your desired dose of caffeine and nicotine! There are various fruit milks, tea flavored sandwich spreads, and more delicious bread than you can shake a stick at--melon pan, strawberry pan, mocha carmel swirl, dark chocolate raspberry, mango and aloe sprinkled ...
It`s winter, and strawberry season is in full force, huzzah! For the low low price of 600 yen (just over 6 bucks now), you get a whole single handful of strawberries! Think that`s a bad deal? You won`t if you try one. The fruits are so sweet and perfect here, a group of us girls splurged on a honeydew melon and literally cried! That singular slice of melon is the best thing I`ve had since I`ve been here, nay, the best tasting thing ever, no question! Speaking of food, it`s most definitely itadakimasu (a thanks said before eating) time. Love ya all!