Whoops, no updates for a while due to a hectic first week at Tokai University, here’s how it went:

Monday & Tuesday
I didn’t actually go to school due to a lot of confusion (didn’t know I HAD class) and besides I had to go to the town hall in Hiratsuka AND the immigration office, so I didn’t really have much choice anyway. It’s not too bad though, as the first week is intended as an oppurtunity to try out the different subjects you can choose from, and thus the classes are shorter and usually consists of nothing more than a short introduction. Either way there were only a total of 2 classes I might be interested in, so I’ll make up for it next week by actually showing up. Choosing classes is all done online, and the website calculates credits AND generates your schedule, all pretty cool (if only I could read the Japanese descriptions of the various classes…).

Wednesday
My first actual (introductionary) classes. My presence seems to confuse the professors a great deal, and I’ve been asked as to whether I understand Japanese or not at least once every class. I guess it’s nice though, since figuring out what is going on does take a huge amount of concentration. In fact, to be quite honest I didn’t understand much of what the teacher was saying in the second class, mostly due to him mumbling to himself most of the time. Oh, and on the papers he passed out was written a notice that “this is a graduate school course, so no sleeping in class will be tolerated” (I wonder if you see that sort of thing in any other country). Doesn’t that translate to “my classes are horribly boring, but please don’t pass out”? Don’t think I’ll be taking his class after all, but I’ll decide everything next week.

Thursday
I tried out 4 classes on this day. As I mentioned, the descriptions of the various courses are quite hard to read for me, and even if I manage to translate them from Japanese, I’m not always sure what a particular subject is REALLY about. So for example in the 2nd class “Intelligent Systems”, I suddenly found myself in a class surrounded by giggling Japanese boys wanting to build robots. Well, the teacher seemed nice and was very easy to understand so I might take that class anyway, even though it’s not as such directly related to what I do.

Friday
I was going to take a class on “Image Processing” but as I arrived I was told the class would be moved to Thursday, which means I’ll probably have 5 classes (1 class = 1.5 hours) on that day! I was glad to see the class getting cancelled though, as I was struggling to finish the handwritten scholarship-application I had to finish before 4 o’clock. I managed to get all the documents handed in on time, and rushed to catch a train to Odawara where I worked until 10 o’clock.

Saturday
The classes I usually teach in Odawara on Saturday mornings got cancelled, so I only had one class in Yokohama and I went to see “I Robot” (disappointing) in the evening. Oh, I also bought a new pair of SD memorycards for my camera and phone, since the write protect-tab broke of BOTH the cards I have, leaving them forever incapable of storing data…