5 October 2011
Kyoto University is a big bustling place, now alive with flocks and flocks of students, all cuter than we have ever imagined people could be.
I have now met my two classes, each for the first time. How did it go? Don't ask me. The first session was me telling them who I was, and them starting to tell me who they are. I am speaking English (what else?), and they seem to be listening. I have told them again and again that it's my responsibility to make myself understood to them; not theirs to struggle unduly to understand me. A few of the students speak English quite well, and I think most all of them understand it much better than they speak it. I'll keep trying to make it O.K. for them to ask for a translation, or to ask me to slow down or say it again. Both classes are quite big; 14 students in each, which is many more people than I'm used to having in clinical seminars. Some of them are just beginning to work with their first cases, and others have up to three years of experience. Fortunately the material is so familiar to me that I feel right at home with it even after having been away from teaching for three years.
B. and I had our first intensive hiragana class this afternoon. Over a period of three hours we were drilled on making and recognizing the 40 odd hiragana characters (see above). It seems pretty hopeless. Even after we learn them, we then have to learn 40 odd katakana characters, and even then we won't be able to read the simplest Japanese text. We could, however, write any Japanese words we wanted to, phonetically.
It feels like we're really underway now. I'll tell you more about our daily lives in the city in the next post.
Love to everybody,
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