cambodians speak french

I had an extremely long and witty post written up about my adventure last weekend, but this blogging softwar won't let me cut and paste from Word. I am going to try to figure a way around it soon, because I am not about to retype a 2000 word entry.

Took my new camera out for a spin around Tokyo today. I have lots of cool pictures, and I will post a bunch tomorrow. Hopefully it will work out better than the last photo post, which I know came out shitty.

Tomorrow I will also be able to post about my trip to the Women's University, which I am taking with my class. I can guarentee lots of fun stories, and I will be sure to take a bunch of pictures to share with my online pals!

I hung out with Elijah and Ian tonite. Ian is from Lodon, and was in Japan visiting. 5 years ago he taught English here with Elijah and hasn't been back since then. If I ever get to post the story about last weekend, there is more in there about him.

I'll let you guess which one of the two guys to the left is from England and which one is from Virginia.

After a quick drink we all walked to Yoyogi from Shinjuku, a healthy distance, to go to a small Cambodian restaraunt. This was my first time eating Cambodian, and it was the spiciest food I've ever eaten. There were only 3 choices on the menu, and each choice was a series of courses everyone shares. Our meal consisted of 6 or 7 courses that were continually brought out over the course of 2 hours. They included spicy beef salads, spicy shrimp balls, spicy shrimp soup, spicy eggs based fried rice, etc. The word of the day is spicy.

Afterwards we walked back to Shinjuku and I headed home early. I have to get up early for the women's university visit and I didnt feel like staying at a manga kissa and only getting a few hours of sleep.

For the rest of the post I'll briefly describe how my school works.

I go to KCP International School. It's located in Shinjuku Gyoenmae in Shinjuku, Tokyo, Japan. Tokyo is not only a city, but a prefecture, similar to a state in the United States.

There are about 900 students at the school. 50% are Korean, 30% are Chinese and about 20% are from other countries, such as the states, canada, jamaica, mexico, etc. In my own class there are 3 Americans, 11 Koreans and 8 Chinese, so I am definately in the minority there. The classes themselves are taught only in Japanese, with no intermediary language such as English. I attend the afternoon session which goes from 1:30 to 4:45 monday to friday. There is a 15 minute break at 3:00, which most students use to smoke ( I don't smoke.)

There are 8 levels of Japanese study in the program. At level 6 you should be able to attend a Japanese college, so if you can manage to make it through all 8 levels you will be fluent in Japanese and able to live and work here fluidly.

The fun thing about this program is since everyone is all pretty novice at Japanese, you communicate with your classmates at about a fifth grade level. Doing this every day, day in day out, eventually has you thinking like a fifth grader, and assuming all your classmates have the intelligence of fifth graders, as well. It makes for a very raucus classroom environment, and classes are often rip roaring fun!

I would recommend the program highly for anyone interested in Japanese study.

I am going to the Gundam museum sunday!
~karl arthur