Administration is my Bane

I wanted to do an update every month or so explaining what has been going on here in Japan. The month of April can be summed up with one word: Administration. It's been so hard to get into classes this semester because of all the little things that I have to do. First it was all the paperwork for the school for class registration and class selection. Basically this means that I went to all the classes the first week just to figure out what I wanted to take. This was followed by interviews and paperwork for scholarship applications. I didn’t get anything since most believe that since I’m from outside of Asia, I have a lot of money. The Canadian government and the Japanese government offers very little in the name of assistance to schooling in Japan. The next order was the application and interview for the duel masters program. 

I’ve been looking forward to this part for a long time. Unfortunately, my first choice for Granada, Spain fell through because I complained that the program was not in English and the guy who was there right now was complaining that it was too hard. I would have loved to go to Spain to study it would have been such a great experience. I quickly needed to find an alternative and I found Lancaster University in the UK. Upon further inspection I realised that this was probably a better choice. I’m not sure if I’m justifying after the fact but it looks like it will be exactly what I need for my research. Once I learned that I was accepted into the program for my university, next came the application to the host university, Lancaster. More documentation.

This semester is also when graduates have to present where their current research is going. Thus, I had to prepare an essay and presentation for the graduate professors to explain what I’m working on. I posed my essay last month on this blog. The preparation and execution for both was not that bad just time consuming.

With my application for Lancaster finally being sent out and the rest of the admin documentation behind me I feel like I can finally return to the work for my classes and my research. 

Most of May has been filled with both. I’ve decided to work a lot less this semester so that I can get as much of my thesis finished as possible so if I’m accepted in Lancaster I won’t have an enormous work load on my plate. This week I’ve been working on a presentation for my Japan and the West class depicting the relationship between Europe and Japan in the 18^th century. The work can be hard since the texts are old and strangely written. 

Socially, there have been some parties in the last few weeks. Last weekend we went to the river since it was a hot night and had a little drinking party. It was really great to relax and catch up. Its been really hot this month and the rainy season decided to start two weeks earlier so this last week has been pretty unpleasant.