practical life
(aka Im supposed to learn something occasionally)
so as it is apparent by second week at Kyoto, we basically have two full days of work, or qazi work really because I have recently discovered that Linguistics is kinda a silly subject, and the a GIANT never ending weekend.
the weekend is the interesting part, but let me actually talk about the boring bits before I start in on this giant epic awesome saga that is the majority of all days.

so Linguistics as a study, is rather silly. its all about finding rules that are supposed to govern a language and it's writing system and allow us to create universal grammar. sounds great right? I love rules, and I love data so this should work out?

well a whole lot of what I ACTUALLY study is "avular fricatives" and "devoiced consonants" and how pronunciation works is the most BORING way possible. I read a whole chapter today on what sounds are viable or not in Japanese, which would have been interesting if I where an alien life form and had never heard the language before, but as a human, with ears who has been living here for a few weeks it is super BORING.

I am much more interested in studying the writing system, and the evolution/use of kanji characters in Japanese. Unfortunately this class is taught by our own Carleton professor (also in charge of the program) and his teaching style can really only be described as "Dad".
He likes to tell long rambling stories that never seem to have a punch line or pertain to what we are supposed to be learning about, and he always inquires first after how we are, what we ate for dinner, how we sleep ext before actually getting around to teaching. Normally I would love this teaching stlye, because almost half of the class is taken up with formal greetings, check ins, funny stories and general pleasant conversations, but this is actually the only interesting class I have and the other teachers do not teach this way.

But really I can't complain too much. the teachers are nice, I have very little homework and only three days of class per week. Also my fourth class, on Japanese culture and society is fantastic. Last week we read several chapters from the Tale of Genji (the national epic book written in the Heian era) and got to visit the place where the book was set as a 'field trip'.
The funny thing about the tale of Genji, is that everyone loves it. They love Genji and they love the writing and the story. But really the whole thing is terrible. Its a several thousand age novel that details the life of a womanizing court tramp who goes around raping women, harassing them, cheating his friends and generally just being a scalywag. However, because he is SO charming and beautiful, for some reason everyone still loves him, both in the book and in real life.
really the book did have some interesting parts, but the general purpose and character of it I did not agree with.

For this week we are watching and getting a lecture of Kurosawa's 'Throne of Blood', a really fantastic movie, so it should be great.

so yeah thats school life. Not much else to say about that. It seriously only takes up about 20% of my time, and thats mainly because I have to be in class periodically.
NOW ON TO FOOD.