This afternoon all us Stanford Center kids went to a nearby restaurant for our first fancy shmancy meal - called the Bing Friendly Luncheon. Thank goodness we didn't have a Bing Aggravated Luncheon. The Bings are multi-gazillionaire doners who fund everything Stanford - from buildings to scholarships to all of Stanford's overseas programs. Thanks to their generosity, we are treated to various meals and excursions free of charge.
The restaurant's name is "Kangan," but it must not have any meaning in Japanese because my host family had no idea what it meant. The restaurant serves gourmet 100% vegetarian dishes (tofu and fruit are also used). The food was very good, but not super filling. Luckily there were lots of different courses. There was a fried course and a pickes course and a soup course, and of course dessert. My table was also joined by Tanaka Sensei, a very friendly and funny female Japanese teacher from the center that I hadn't met as of yet. We had nice conversation at my table.
After the luncheon I took a cab to Kyoto University. From this friday on, my friend Kevin and I will be auditing a film class at Kyodai. I went to a class meeting today. The classroom was jammed packed with no fewer than 80 or so students. Every seat was taken. I sat next to two Japanese girls - I talked to the one next to me before class started - she was nice. The guys Kevin sat next to made this really weird face and talked amongst themselves when he asked if he coud sit next to them. I also noticed some other internatl students in the class.
The Japanese always find it necessary to crank up the heat indoors. Consequently, the room felt like a tropical rainforest. I was sweating and it wasn't too pleasant. Most of the Japanese students played with their cell phones during the lecture - it didn't seem like any of them used laptops.
The lecture was hit and miss. Because the prof shows movie clips, you can obviously get a lot from watching. There were points where I understood the explanations of the different film techniques and other points where I was completely lost. I tried to look up vocab but they kept blacking out the lights in order to show the clips.
It was very hard to hear the lecture from my seat near the back. Next time I'll have to arrive SUPER early. I arrived 10 minutes early and nearly every seat was taken. Also, the professor wrote pretty small and in weird curved arcs on the blackboard so I often couldn't even read what it was he writing.
All in all I think this will be a good experience. They don't seem to have smaller seminar style classes nearly as much as they do at American universities. Both Kevin and I wanted to introduce outselves to the professor but couldn't because he came 10 minutes late to his own class. As I said, most of the kids didn't seem to be paying that much attention to the lecture. I really got the feeling that I could audit any darn lecture I please because there is no way for the professor to know who is in the class or not.
After class I went with Kevin to his Movie Making Club (also at Kyodai). The kids were nice and it was very good practice to speak in Japanese to them. About 10 kids (including Kevin) are planning to make short films. Each prospective director gave a short presentation. Maybe I'll compose some music for one of the films if I feel so inclined - that would be fun.
B.E.W.
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