University selection - first post

On Thursday we spoke with representatives from 30 national universities from all over Japan. Although invitations were sent out to all 86 national universities nationwide, clearly not all of them bothered to come all the way to TUFS. Tokyo University was one such university - clearly because it's too far for them to commute from the other part of Tokyo to here, when even Hokkaido university sent one representative (and he was very passionate about his university). Why did invitations only go out to the national universities of Japan? Because in our program, we are only allowed to apply for entrance into a national level university. Makes sense - after all, our study is completely funded by the Japanese government.

First we listened to a 5 minute presentation from each university, which gave us a general overview of what courses they offered, how many students and teaching staff they have, the cost of living in that area, the university's unique characteristics, and so on. Most of them make almost desperate-sounding pleas for us to go study there. It sounds like they didn't receive much of an intake from previous years. Sheds some light on why Tokyo U didn't think it necessary to send anyone.

Next, the university representatives went to classrooms and set up stalls, and an hour long "personal consultation session" was held. In this time, we were allowed to visit any university's stall to ask questions individually (or in groups). However, there were at most three representatives from any given university so the more popular ones inevitably had long queues. The only downside to this part of the schedule, was that it was not enough time! To be honest though no matter how long they make this session there will always be someone who wanted to ask more questions, or visit more stalls, so understandably they had to make a realistic call on the time limit.

Many 'souvenirs' from the respective university stalls we visited

I had time to visit four universities' stalls: Chiba, Hitotsubashi, Yokohama, and Tsukuba. From just the course availability and relevant point of view, only Tsukuba remained a viable option for me as someone looking to study an education-related course. The others either required me to specify whether I was interested in primary/secondary/tertiary/special education, or simply didn't have an education department. Tsukuba, on the other hand, offers a more customisable set of subjects that don't appear to be limited to one specific educational category, such as educational philosophy, educational sociology, and curriculum design. Not only is Tsukuba's course design appealing, but also their accommodation choice. Most university dormitories in Japan either limit their occupants to one year of residency before forcing them to find their own, or is impractically far from uni (e.g. 30 minute train ride), or both. But Tsukuba, very peculiarly, not only has 4000 dormitory spots, but (maybe because of that fact) allows students to remain for the entirety of their degree. They made it clear, though, that that policy has merely remained such up until now, and is subject to change in future.

I want to find a university in Tokyo for next year, because I want to find a job teaching English while I study, and the city connecting Japan to the rest of the world undoubtedly offer the best incentives for doing so. That helps me narrow down my choices, and it leaves me with two other universities to check out before I can decide what order to submit my preferences in - Tokyo Gakugei University, and of course, Tokyo U. They didn't come on Thursday and didn't send any information packs either so I'll have to go to them.

Holiday in Okinawa

In publishing this post, my account of the summer holidays officially comes to an end. Most of why this post took so long, was because of the amount of photos I had to sort through to find the good ones to post here. For anyone who is interested in all 600 or so photos, you'll find them in my Flickr album.

My dad and I went holidaying on the main Island of Okinawa over a period of four days, August 12-15. The main island of Okinawa is fairly stretched out from north to south, kind of like this:

So in order to best explore the whole area, we rented three different hotels over three nights. We also rented three different cars. In hindsight, exploring Okinawa by car gives you immensely more freedom than relying on the public transport system. The airport on the main island is in the southwest corner, if you look carefully. The public transport system (consisting of a light rail system pictured below) only covers the bottom third of the island, so that makes it quite difficult to, for example, get to the aquarium about two-thirds of the way up the island.

Day 1: World heritage sites

The US army base is surprisingly close to the airport. Obviously we weren't allowed in, but it was cool to take photos around its vicinity. Hang around long enough, and you'll eventually be rewarded with a sight like this:

A massive downpour started as soon after we picked up our rental car. We were so glad it was right after we got the car.

We spent a good part of the first day visiting all the different world heritage sites in the bottom third of the island. The first thing that surprised me was how many world heritage sites there were. A lot of primitive castle structures characteristic of Okinawa had been well preserved, and been labelled cultural heritage. Taking a look around these castles, you quickly realise why they are so worth preserving.

This is a 360 degree panorama shot taken from one of the vantage points of one of the castles (I forget which)

The views from the vantage points are excellent, and they are valuable as both watchtowers to the inhabitants of these castles long ago, as well as to tourists today.

In between visiting world heritage sites, we made the most of having a car by driving on the many amazing bridges that connected some of the more significant smaller islands to the main one. Bridges like this:

On the other side of the bridge, some pretty nice beaches greeted us. Check out the water:

Surfer dad

You couldn't really surf here, but it's perfect for swimming. There were many beaches like this one, great for not only swimming but also jet boating, and something I found quite interesting, banana boating.

However, something I found quite peculiar was the existence of paid beaches:

As an adult, you had to pay 1500 yen (about $15) to enter this beach. It looked like an ordinary beach to me:

You can see a real life banana boat in the distance.

We ended up hopping back in the car and moving on fairly soon after finding that one.

Rental car on the first day

Day 2: Snorkelling + scuba diving

On our way to the key event of the day, we passed by the traditional Ryukyu village. "Ryukyu" is the former name of Okinawa, and inside we got to see some characteristic Okinawan things.

Photo of two dragons and one wannabe dragon. Oh, and in the background is the word's longest dragon made of rope.

Shamisen, a three-stringed predecessor of the guitar and a traditional Okinawan instrument.

A god of the Okinawans, believed to bring good luck or something

Iconic Okinawan dance

Something I found quite intriguing was this pit viper museum (pit viper is called "habu" in Japanese).

 

Inside, there were both live vipers and model vipers on display. There was also a live mongoose in a cage opposite a caged habu. And most fascinating of all, habu wine. 35% alcohol content.

This is one chilled out pig.

Even roadwork in Okinawa is tourist-friendly.

And now for the feature event of the day: snorkelling and scuba diving! It was a first time experience for both dad and I, and I for one was looking forward to trying it out for a really long time.

I was extremely surprised at how fearless the fish were around people! We swam right past them and they just kept on doing their thing. When we gave them bait, I was able to stroke one of the fish's backs. It’s an experience I highly recommend to anyone who is daring enough to give it a try.

Okinawa Drift.

Day 3: Aquarium

Rental car number two.

On our way to the aquarium, we visited the Okinawa Pineapple Park. Initially we thought it was like a kids amusement park, but we were gladly soon proven wrong.

It was actually a park full of everything related to pineapples. We were taken on a tour on a toy car around the pineapple farm, given ripe pineapples to eat, watched people cutting up pineapples in the factory, saw the pineapple wine cellar, and of course bought a few pineapple souvenirs. It was a surprisingly fun experience.

How growing baby pineapples look like.

And now the showcase event of the day… Chura Aquarium! It was unbelievably massive. It wasn't just a big fish tank sort of aquarium, there was also a petting pool, dolphin show, dugong enclosure and the main aquarium feature, whale shark feeding.

This picture demonstrates just how large whale sharks are.

Dad imitating a whale shark

One day wouldn't be enough to explore the whole place. The aquarium is definitely one reason to visit Okinawa again.

Some more military planes flying overhead.

Even Doraemon likes to holiday in Okinawa.

Day 4: Everything else

When we were planning our Okinawa trip, we had some doubts whether this small island had enough to keep us occupied for four days. Even some of dad's work colleagues (who hadn’t been to Okinawa, mind you) were surprised that we were going for so long. By the fourth day, we were convinced that the answer was yes. Actually, the answer should be "not enough"!

While cruising around parts of the island we hadn't explored yet, we came across this ferry bound for some nearby island. We decided why not, so we went and had a look. The island's name was Kudaka Island, and apparently this island is home to a pretty high status god as regarded by all the Okinawan people.


On the map, the red mark somewhere around the middle of the island indicates where the god resides, and is prohibited to the public. I really wanted to go and see what was there, but due to limitations on when the ferry back to the main island would come, I didn't have time. Maybe someday.

We next visited the memorial peace park. This place was erected in memory of the war-scarred history of Okinawa.

All 48 prefectures of Japan contributed financially to the construction of this memorial park, and all 48 prefectures have a small patch of land within the memorial park with sculptures that are characteristic of each prefecture.

There was a fairly extensive war memorial museum, which I quickly perused in our limited timeframe. Though it was rushed, I was still moved by the written, illustrated and video records of the battles and wars that had occurred on Okinawan soil. This small land has certainly had its fair share of strife and conflicts. I read the transcripts of interviews conducted with survivors of the wartime, translated into English. Family members witnessed family members being blown in half by shells and their shockwaves.

We used up our remaining time in Okinawa by driving to the southernmost tip of the island. The views were worth it. There were quite a few people surfing and body boarding in the waves there too. This place is going on the to do list for the next Okinawa trip for sure.

An Okinawan hermit crab.

Final thoughts

Some advice from a tourist who's been to Okinawa. As long as you have a car to get around, you could spend a week in there and still have things to do. We had to cut items out of our itinerary because we ran out of time. I wish we had room to go swimming at those beaches! People also say Okinawa is too hot to come visit during the summer. I don't know if this year was an exception or not in terms of weather, but I didn't find it that different to Tokyo in the same time period, give or take a few degrees Celsius. In which case, I'd much rather spend it in Okinawa instead.

The traffic on the roads was very reasonable. Though all the holiday packages and rental cars were booked out for the period we were in Okinawa, meaning it was a peak period of tourism, the roads were very reasonable. I would even go so far as to recommend not taking the motorway that is theoretically designed to make traversing the island faster, since it often gets congested. Instead, drive along the coastline instead! We didn't have any problems with traffic 95% of the time and even when we did, there was a great view to enjoy while we waited.

Last but not least, I found the people in Okinawa to be surprisingly friendly. With all these great points, it's easy to see why it's such a popular tourist destination. Can't recommend this place highly enough. Defs coming back when I have the chance.