Category: Learning

Let me preface by saying I have been on this island for less than ten days.

That being said, I think I am beginning to get a feel for Tokyo. The best way I know how to evaluate that is to go right ahead and make wild, uneducated generalizations about this huge city, having only seen perhaps as much as one hundredth of it.

It is clean. Yeah, yeah, yeah, we’ve all heard this. No, but really, Japan is clean. Upon entry in my apartment I was handed a friendly, non-threatening ten pages on garbage disposal here in the city. They tell me you have your bottles, plastic and otherwise, cardboard and larger, non-biodegradable items, and then you have food waste and burnables, paper and the like that can be safely burned for energy. There are two pick-ups weekly for each of the three categories.

I find myself taking pictures when I see graffiti and taking notice when I see trash on the street or gum in a urinal.

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Classes have begun. It’s a funny thing about studying abroad; classes are often a condition. A tough aspect of studying abroad is overcoming that vacation feeling you might have towards your travel and find balance enough to get a grade or too.

I am actually studying at Temple University-Japan, a satellite campus of my Philadelphia home university. Here in Tokyo, it is the largest and oldest American university in the city. In classes English is required. I suppose that’s good for me. (Nihongo sukoshi wakarimasu – I speak very little Japanese.)

Though most of the students are Japanese (with populations from nearby South Korea and China and other East Asian countries) and have been schooled in English for years, I am still left in awe at those around me who voice opinions in a second language, the type of political and philosophical thought that many native speakers struggle to reign in under their language control.

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