The first week in Japan was spent at Soken-dai for a program orientation and for two nights with a host family. Overall there are 99 participants in the Japan program. 66 are from the US and the rest come from France, Germany, Canada, and the UK. We are spread out over Japan, encompassing most major cities from Okinawa to Hokkaido.
Orientation consisted primarily of Japanese Language classes and cultural events. It is hard to learn Japanese with just a few days of 4.5 hours of class each day, but we learned some helpful phrases. Cultural events consisted of lectures, which mostly contained slides of budgets, and a nice concert using traditional japanese instruments. We also gave a poster presentation of our summer research (sans results), because no gathering of graduate students would be complete without a poster session for everyone to hit on each other.
Cultural Experience.
For two nights I stayed with my host family in Kamakura, the ancient samurai capital of Japan for 150 years.
Here I am with my host family the Sakurais. I felt tall for once. For most of the stay we toured the sites in Kamakura and ate Japanese food. The best was takoyaki, which are balls of dough with octopus in the center.
This is takoyaki being made. Notice the training chopsticks next to Ryunoska.
Delicious.
Sushi conveyor belt.
Great Budda (Daibutsu) in Kamakura.
The host family stay was a very enjoyable experience and the Sakurai family was extremely kind and generous.
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