14 May 2006
THE CRACK, part 2
Doshisha is a private university that was founded by Niishima Jou, who actually GTFO of Japan in 1864, at the age of twenty-one, and made his way to the United States where he attended both Phillips Academy and Amherst College under the name Joseph Hardy Neeshima. In the process, Niishima became the first Japanese to recieve a college degree from a western institution. These experiences prompted Niishima to return to Japan in the wake the Meiji Restoration and found Doshisha University, a woman's college and the law school. Today, Amherst and Doshisha share close ties due to their historical ties, and are considered sister schools. The original campus of Doshisha is located on Imadegawa-dori, directly north of the Kyoto Imperial Palace. There is a second, larger campus, located south of Kyoto, but is only for undergraduate students so that is all that needs to be said about that.
My education this term consists of six classes: three Japanese language classes and three graduate level political science classes conducted in Japanese. All of my classes meet once a week for 90 minutes and up until now the homework has been less than I expected, although this is probably a good thing considering it is all in Japanese and is quite time consuming.
Kyoto was the capital of Japan from 794 to 1192 and then from 1333 until 1603 when Tokugawa Ieyasu fully supplanted the imperial family as supreme ruler of Japan and based himself in Edo - now known as Tokyo. The imperial family remained in Kyoto until the Meiji Restoration when they also moved to Tokyo. Someone on Wikipedia claims that there is still a debate as to whether Kyoto may still be the capital of Japan, but such debate is purely academic.
Today Kyoto has about 1.5 million people. The streets are arranged in a grid which makes getting lost embarrassing. The tallest building is the Kyoto Tower, a hideous structure that might have looked "modern" in a good sense for about 6 minutes in 1963 (unfortunately it was built in 1964). This is not a minority opinion either - most people claim that the views are so beautiful from the tower because being in the tower means you cannot see the tower. Japanese pragmatism at its best.
My education this term consists of six classes: three Japanese language classes and three graduate level political science classes conducted in Japanese. All of my classes meet once a week for 90 minutes and up until now the homework has been less than I expected, although this is probably a good thing considering it is all in Japanese and is quite time consuming.
Kyoto was the capital of Japan from 794 to 1192 and then from 1333 until 1603 when Tokugawa Ieyasu fully supplanted the imperial family as supreme ruler of Japan and based himself in Edo - now known as Tokyo. The imperial family remained in Kyoto until the Meiji Restoration when they also moved to Tokyo. Someone on Wikipedia claims that there is still a debate as to whether Kyoto may still be the capital of Japan, but such debate is purely academic.
Today Kyoto has about 1.5 million people. The streets are arranged in a grid which makes getting lost embarrassing. The tallest building is the Kyoto Tower, a hideous structure that might have looked "modern" in a good sense for about 6 minutes in 1963 (unfortunately it was built in 1964). This is not a minority opinion either - most people claim that the views are so beautiful from the tower because being in the tower means you cannot see the tower. Japanese pragmatism at its best.
