TURNING JAPANESE

(Not really, just a song title.) Well, I've survived my first full week back in Urbana-Champaign. 20 hours of Japanese later, I can successfully introduce myself to someone named Tanaka-san and talk about the major and class year of Alice Arisaka. (Economics senior, I believe.)

Weekdays are turning out to be very full: 2 hours of teaching ESL every morning 9-11 am at Parkland college on the west side of town, then driving to the east side to take my 4-hour intensive Japanese class on the campus of the University of Illinois from 1-5:00 pm. And after that, I can look forward to an evening of Japanese homework!

I was a bit shocked to find out auditing a U of I class cost only $15. Yes, the decimal point is correct! A real bargain for 80 classroom hours. The class started with almost 25 students, another shock. (I thought summer enrollment would be more like six.) But the relentless intensity has lost us a few less dedicated students, generic white Americans mostly. The rest are Asian background: Korean, Korean-American, Chinese, Chinese-American, one Thai and a Filipina. Only three of the "white-bread" American students have lasted to round two.

We have two teachers - only one a day, unfortunately for variety's sake. The best one is a young Korean woman (Kimu-sensei) who chatters effortlessly away in Japanese 99% of the time in a very convincing Japanese accent and keeps us from falling asleep - or committing hara-kiri - by the quick change of activities. The other teacher, a young blond anglo woman from Iowa (Des Moines), is competent enough in Japanese but appears not to have heard of break times. We get only one after two hours! And some department policy requires her to explain language questions in Japanese, so we're often not much wiser after the explanation than before it.

Meantime, I have been out socializing with a number of old friends (and getting older all the time - one just had his 40th birthday - and he was one of the "young" ones in my crowd back in the 90s). I have also been back at my old 60s-mellow baby-boomer church New Covenant two Sundays in a row now and even played piano for the service today.

It feels good to be back in a community of people I know again even if my weekday evenings are currently booked solid with Japanese.

KWANSEI GAKUIN U.

Good news. All approvals were finally obtained from my Japanese college, and I am now officially hired! Just in time to shut down the final King Fahd University background check before they made me a formal offer. (The interviewers had recommended me for an offer from the university admin, but they hadn't gotten to the point of actually making an offer yet. But it's always an ego boost to be wanted!)

Till next time, jaa mata / sayoonara!