Japanese Universities

To be honest, recently I'm not so motivated to study subjects except English in this university. Most of my friends say like "I can at least graduate from university as long as I'm in class and I can get grades even if the scores are terrible." I used to have the same opinion, but I came to consider the reason why I came to university and how hard I studied to enter this university, and I felt I had to study harder. In addition, we have parents who pay tuition. We have to study hard not only for myself but also for them.

Scary Story

Hi. In this post, I'll write about an incident which happened to me last year. I went on a drive to Kagawa prefecture with my friend. On the way home, it was about 2:00 a.m., one of them suggested to go to Mt. Kabuto (I guess you know the mountain near KGU), which is known as a spiritual place. There is a extraordinarily huge rock in the middle of the road near the top of the mountain.
There is a story about this rock that some people tried to remove it out of the way, and most of them got injured or fell from the mountain during their attempt. After all, they couldn't even move the rock. After that, people started thinking like it was dangerous to touch or approach the rock. Nevertheless, some naughty children went there and got injured.
We were going there. On the way to the top of the moutain, all of us saw a bjg truck and some men in work clothes, they looked like they were smiling, even though it was about 2:00 a.m.. We passed them, but soon we found that we couldn't go anymore because the road was one-way traffic. So we turned back to the place where we saw men. However, there was no longer anyone. None of us heard any sound of truck pulling out although it was so quiet, and it took at most 40 seconds to turn back there. We felt something strange. We should have go back to our home, but we wanted to see the rock. We kept going. There was almost no lights on the road except headlights of our car. As we were going on, suddenly the engine of our car sounded strange, and then, we saw a huge rock from the windshield. We turned and hurried away from it. None of us got injued, but it was one of the scariest things I had experienced.

Cultural Differences

I think we Japanese people are more likely to face cultural differences when we go abroad than people in other countries do because of some unique custom or culture Japan has.


When I went to New Zealand, altough this might be trivial thing, I found a custom strange for me. I was in homestay while I was in NZ. On my first day there, after I went to the bathroom, I closed its door as most Japanese did. After a while, my host mother came to my room and said "Is there someone in the bathroom? I'm waiting for quite a long time because I thought someone was inside." "No.", I answered. Then my host mother a little angrily told me like "When no one is in the bathroom, make sure that you leave the door open. Otherwise people think there is someone inside." I was surprised when I heard that because we Japanese usually close the door after using bathroom maybe so that it doesn't look messy. Since then, I realized that people in most European and American countries did like the case in NZ.

Dou you have any experiences like this ??

My favorite subject

The subject I like the best, it might not has to be said, is English. However, when I was a junior high school student, I didn't like English at all, because I just wasn't good at it. I have some reasons why I came to like English. First of all, I've liked watching foreign movies and listening to foreign songs since I was in junior high, and I've wanted to understand the lines or lyrics of movies or songs I liked in English. Second, and this was affected by the fact that I've liked foreign movies and songs, I wanted to go abroad and communicate with people all over the world in English. Finally, as I wrote, I was not good at English at all even though I wanted to study English. When I was in the third grade at junior high, my teacher said to me like 'You should study English more, otherwise you can't enter high school !!'. I think you can guess how poor my ability in English was from his remark... I couldn't but studying. Once I started studying it hard, I realized that it was much more fun for me to study English than to study any other subjects. Since then, I've liked English the best of all subjects, and I'm in SIS and studying English now :-)

Summer 2011

Hi. Actually, this is not mainly about my summer but the last session. The biggest thing I had through the last session was studying abroad in Canada for 4 months. 4 months might be too short to study language, but I could have great experiences through this program. I had stayed in Kingston, Ontario and studied at Queen's University. Through this program, I could learn an important thing. First, I realized it was the most important to keep using English in order to improve it. I didn't have enough chance to speak English in daily life before going to Canada. Of course, however, I had needed to speak English after going there to talk to others who are from outside of my country and have different mother tongue. At first, it was difficult for me to say what I exactly wanted to in English, and I often experienced misunderstandings with others. However, I have to undergo that kind of hardship in learning not only English but every language. I was gradually getting accustomed to making myself understood in English as I use it in daily life. Studying in Canada was really helpful for me to realize that, and it was a great step to keep studying English in Japan. As I wrote, although I had some hardship during my staying in Canada, but I also enjoyed it and learned a lot of things. I appreciate all people who had supported me regarding the program. I'd like to go somewhere abroad to improve my English skill again.