Getting My Edjumacation

I am almost done with my first full week of classes and I absolutely love all of them. I have never been this excited about actually going to class -- but it's a good thing I'm so enthusiastic about it here since there is so much else to do in Tokyo. On Wednesday I had Japanese and then an afternoon walking tour of the Yotsuya area, which was absolutely amazing. My tour guide was a really cute Japanese lady and, after the now-routine "Why did you come!? Aren't you worried!?!!?" introductions, gave us lots of interesting information about the area within walking distance of our campus. We started out by the university playing fields, which are in what used to be the moat surrounding the castle grounds, and ended up at the Imperial Palace, which I had actually already visited last time I was in Tokyo with my family in 2008. Tokyo is absolutely beautiful and it is so interesting to see the modern buildings juxtaposed with the zen gardens and sakura trees. It was a great (free) tour and I really enjoyed exploring the area around the university more (which I hadn't done that much yet).

Nijubashi Bridge on the Imperial Palace grounds in April 2011 (left) and July 2008 (right) -- notice any similarities?

After rushing back to campus from the tour end point, Wednesday night I had my first NGO Management seminar -- I'm gonna let the others finish, but I think this is going to be my favorite class *of all time*. The professor is the CEO of Second Harvest Japan, and he is a very charismatic speaker who is really knows his stuff. We had a great class yesterday talking about the differences between NGOs and NPOs, and also got into what makes a "bad" NGO. We talked about the issue of capacity and how too much money coming in too quickly can actually hurt an organization if they don't have the resources to handle it, as the excess funds could lead to waste, corruption, etc.  I could write a whole blog post about the class but I'll try to check myself here. DidImentionI'mreallyexcitedaboutthisclass.

The only downside about the class is that it is from 5-8:15pm on Wednesday nights, so after eating dinner I didn't get home until around 10pm. But, I had pretty much finished my homework so I was still able to get a good night's sleep before waking up on Thursday -- which was a great day. The train commute was not bad at all (I barely broke a sweat on the train) and then Japanese was semi-interesting (I'm still relearning things I know) and I was really productive between classes. For anyone who is interested/stalking me/obsessed with blogs, I'm keeping another blog for my anthropology class on the earthquake. We were all required to post about our experience with the earthquake on 3.11, and then we read our other classmates's posts about it -- so I got several firsthand accounts of Japanese students' experiences, which was really interesting. I am really excited about that class as well -- I mentioned that on Tuesday a group from Japan Action for Refugees came to give us a notice about an information session, which I went to this afternoon. The session was rather long -- I actually arrived kind of late because I wasn't given the exact location for the meeting, and after I walked in with a few other American-looking people they decided to present information in both Japanese and English (thankfully). I am really excited about this opportunity and, if all goes as planned, will be going up to northern Japan (still far away from the reactor) during the first week of May to do relief work. We will be working on getting the school in the area open again and then clearing debris from houses. It will definitely be exhausting both physically and emotionally but I am so thankful that I will get an opportunity to help.

After the information session I headed back to the dorm with several students and we got dinner at one of our regular places before heading home for the night. I had a very relaxing night: I finally put my suitcases under the bed, rearranged everything on my shelves, and caught up on pictures (and blogging). I finally feel settled in to my room (my bed is actually the most comfortable thing ever) and rested physically even after a long week of class. There was actually just a medium-sized aftershock while I was typing this post. I'm pretty used to them by now, but it still makes my heart race every time the slight swaying turns into definitely noticeable shaking. Not to freak my parents out or anything. I can't believe I've been here for almost two weeks -- it feels like I just got here, but also like I've been here forever. But, there is still so much to do and so little time! I think I am finally going to do karaoke tomorrow night -- can't wait!