backblog 2: kobe university

so apparently Kobe University - 神戸大学 (Kobe Daigaku) or　(神大 (Shin Dai) as it is so affectionately called in Japan) is one of the best universities in Japan. the reaction you get from the Japanese when you mention that you are an exchange student at Shindai is so overwhelming and flattering that I just let them think that I am super amazing/clever/awesome. (little do they know that brains had nothing to do with my acceptance at kobe...)

the japanese university system seems to be a lot different to the UQ style that i am so used to. for starters, you have to register for your classes by filling in a form. you work out your timetable by looking at a large A3 piece of recycled paper. there is no such thing as online sign-ons however there seems to be a Blackboard equivalent but i can't seem to access it.

Full time equivalent of 4 courses at UQ is 8 courses at Kobe University (or 15 class hours). Each course has one 1.5 hour class per week and a large chunk of your assessment is based on attendance. i'm part of the faculty of letters (文学部) so I have a nice six month break from anything law related (hooray!). im doing a course on english linguistics (class held in japanese), psychology (on memory), second language acquisition, american short stories (held in english - the lecturer doesn't even speak japanese), catcher in the rye seminar (we spend a whole semester reading one book and dissecting every little sentence), French culture studies (watched Paris Je T'aime the other day), Japanese writing composition class, Japanese Newspaper article reading class and a kanji class where we learn obscure words we will probably never use again (let alone write) for the rest of our lives. i go into uni four days a week.

as if it isn't hard enough feeling motivated to go to uni, the founders of kobe university decided to build it on a bloody mountain (Mt Rokko). sure the view from the top is great, but the steep hike is pretty tough for the unfit ones (i.e. me). thankfully my faculty and the international student/exchange student centre is at the bottom of the campus so i don't have to hike up the mountain too much. but i do feel a strange sense of satisfaction and accomplishment every day upon reaching the university...

view from the top -- kobe university exchange student centre i.e. our hangout

we had our student orientation about a week after we moved into our residences and it pretty much went like this: "if you do drug, you will DIE". this went on for about half an hour.

we later had an official welcome party with professional catering accompanied by the university officials. we got to enjoy delicious food and drink beer with our fellow exchange students, our tutors and uni officials. one of the officials joined a couple of us sitting outside having a smoking break and gave us a spiel about how awesome smoking is. ("smoking makes you happy!") he then bitched about how one of the universities was beating kobe in the university rankings and then he disappeared into the dark. [can anybody remember what he said about smoking better? i know it went on for a while...something involving the requirement of smokers ("the minorities") to stand up against the government...]

welcome party -- officials giving speeches before we began wining and dining

since then, there have been other miscellanious events organised by the university involving copious amounts of drinking and eating. all in all kobe uni appears to encourage smoking and drinking but "NO DRUG".

anyway, university is awesome.