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Opening Ceremonies
Fri, 06/06/2008 - 19:56 — Joseph Conley
Today was the first day of official KIT business for the IJST program, so we had an opening ceremony where the president of KIT, Ken'ichi Ishikawa and other officials were present, as well as all the Japanese professors from our program. We were dressed up for it, and we must have looked really out of place on the KIT campus.
The president said a few words and told us about the things to come during the program, including some field trips. We introduced ourselves to the officials, and they introuced themselves to us, and that was mostly it.
Afterwards there was a short program orientation. The first thing the head of the program, Futado-Sensei mentioned was that we came in the wrong door to Building 1 that day, apparently there's an entrance only for professors. I guess the lady at the entrance didn't say anything because we're foreigners.
Then we had a short tour of the campus, including the buildings we're taking classes in and how to use the card readers with our "Flash Card" ID cards. They seem to work like RFID tags. There's also a 24/7 study room, and when we walked past it everyone inside stared at us. Probably never saw so many Americans in one place before, or at least not in suits and shirts and ties. There's also a library on campus that's many stories high, the tallest building on campus, it's in the photo above. It has a popular music listening place, a computer lab or two, and an all girls floor, which is a tradeoff I guess, since there's precious few women's bathrooms. There's also a few designated smoking areas around campus that are fully enclosed. There do seem to be a decent amount of people that smoke here.
The architecture of the campus is really neat, and dispite being made out of mostly concrete the buildings look really nice. The pictures I took don't show it off very well. The landscaping in the middle of campus and the reflection pools they have are really pretty.
After that, the Students for Global Exchange came back and told us about the bike rental program they offered. Basically, they encouraged graduating seniors to donate their bicycles to SGE so they could lend them to exchange students like ourselves. There was a one time fee of 500 yen or ~$5 for bike maintenance, and we can go and rent bikes for a little while whenever we want it seems. It's very nice of them.
Then after that we went for food at the "Sunkus" convenience store (pronounced sunks, like a mispronounced way to say 'thanks'), and then I studied a bit because we had a placement test for classes afterwards. I did pretty poorly on the conversation part, but I think I did OK maybe on the written test. I hope they place me in a somewhat difficult class, because I want to be challenged.
After that we went to what I think is a bread store on campus, but it has sweets and drinks as well. I bought what I thought was a muffin, but it had a sausage and maybe some egg inside, so I gave it to someone else to eat. I just drank the "cafe o latte" I bought that came in a carton.
Later, SGE threw a Welcome Party for us:
Welcome Party posters
The food SGE brought us
The president said a few words and told us about the things to come during the program, including some field trips. We introduced ourselves to the officials, and they introuced themselves to us, and that was mostly it.
Afterwards there was a short program orientation. The first thing the head of the program, Futado-Sensei mentioned was that we came in the wrong door to Building 1 that day, apparently there's an entrance only for professors. I guess the lady at the entrance didn't say anything because we're foreigners.
Then we had a short tour of the campus, including the buildings we're taking classes in and how to use the card readers with our "Flash Card" ID cards. They seem to work like RFID tags. There's also a 24/7 study room, and when we walked past it everyone inside stared at us. Probably never saw so many Americans in one place before, or at least not in suits and shirts and ties. There's also a library on campus that's many stories high, the tallest building on campus, it's in the photo above. It has a popular music listening place, a computer lab or two, and an all girls floor, which is a tradeoff I guess, since there's precious few women's bathrooms. There's also a few designated smoking areas around campus that are fully enclosed. There do seem to be a decent amount of people that smoke here.
The architecture of the campus is really neat, and dispite being made out of mostly concrete the buildings look really nice. The pictures I took don't show it off very well. The landscaping in the middle of campus and the reflection pools they have are really pretty.
After that, the Students for Global Exchange came back and told us about the bike rental program they offered. Basically, they encouraged graduating seniors to donate their bicycles to SGE so they could lend them to exchange students like ourselves. There was a one time fee of 500 yen or ~$5 for bike maintenance, and we can go and rent bikes for a little while whenever we want it seems. It's very nice of them.
Then after that we went for food at the "Sunkus" convenience store (pronounced sunks, like a mispronounced way to say 'thanks'), and then I studied a bit because we had a placement test for classes afterwards. I did pretty poorly on the conversation part, but I think I did OK maybe on the written test. I hope they place me in a somewhat difficult class, because I want to be challenged.
After that we went to what I think is a bread store on campus, but it has sweets and drinks as well. I bought what I thought was a muffin, but it had a sausage and maybe some egg inside, so I gave it to someone else to eat. I just drank the "cafe o latte" I bought that came in a carton.
Later, SGE threw a Welcome Party for us:
Welcome Party posters
The food SGE brought us
At the party, we met a lot of students that were excited to have us there, and some of them knew English better than some of us know Japanese. They brought us food too, including sushi, octopus, pizza, cookies, french fries. I didn't each much because I was so busy talking to everyone. I saw one student who I met at RIT because he was studying there, and he's doing grad school at KIT now. Afterwards, some of the SGE members wanted to go to Karaoke, but unfortunately the place nearby was closed. Some people still wanted to go and decided to walk to one far away, but I was too tired and hungry to go. Next time.