April 16, 2003 - page 2

Indeed, my journey to school is quite taxing, and I arrive to school everyday sweating. At some points the incline is too steep to ride and I actually have to walk my bike up the mountain. While the trip to and from school is strenuous, I have plenty of “eye candy” to help keep my mind off the length of the trip. Some of these include: two 7-Eleven convenience stores, a junior high school, several pachinko parlors, and a Buddhist temple.

I attend Yamaguchi Prefectural University, a college similar in size to Centre. YPU is a former women’s college and as a result the percentage of females and males is skewed with an 80% female student body. I admit that I questioned

whether my YPU professors would even be able to compare to the extremely talented faculty of Centre College, but I’ve found all my professors are well versed in their particular fields. I cite two examples: my Zen Buddhism professor was a former monk who spent several years in a Kyoto temple learning the ways of Zen. He meditated, studied ancient texts, and carried out other monkish tasks daily, and my international relations professor is a former UN official in Bangkok and East Timor, a former Japanese diplomat in Israel, and was part of the UN’s force in Albania during the Cosovo Crises.

I eat lunch everyday at the cafeteria, and unfortunately so far I’ve been dined all alone. On the whole, the boys here have been unreceptive to me, while the girls either smile or giggle when they see me. You might be unaware that the Japanese tend to be a very passive and shy society. Japanese schools and parents emphasize working well with others, self-restraint, and being reticent, rather than emphasizing being outspoken or being an individual–two areas of importance in American culture/education. I hope to break down this shyness barrier and make some friends, but I’m sure it will take some time. My situation is, of course, different from