UH West Oahu Orientation ( July3-JUly 7)

To be frank, I joined this summer history course: HIST496K for all the wrong reasons. I wanted to come as a guest, but there wasn't anyone going on the trip that could have that connection with me. So that plan was discarded immediately. The fact that I didn't need this history credit to begin with was really bearing down on me. But I realize that if I don't pass this course with a satisfactory grade it would bring down my GPA even more. A bad decision was made when I signed up for this course. One thing you should know about me is that when I lack motivation I can't get anything done. Threats are meaningless at that point.

So, you can have an inkling of how I felt when I first stepped into the UH West Oahu lecture room that I wasn't really up for anything, however I was very excited, anxious, and nervous to go on a trip to Japan for the first time in my life. If anyone recalled the little story tale about the "Little Red Hen", where the other animals refused to help the hen in making the bread, but offered to eat the bread when it gets done. Well, my friends one of those lazy and ungrateful animals fits my character of wanting to go to Japan to have fun, but yet not do work for it.

I was really perturbed when I found out that we not only had one reading for the course but three readings in total which seems like quite the workload. Strolling lolitas, dedicated otakus, and kawaii-culture- galore was ages and an ocean away it seems as we were stowed in day after day being lectured in that cramped-space at UH West Oahu.

Through that week of prolonged hour of lectures we, as a class were assigned three readings:
Reid, T. R. Confucius Lives Next Door. New York: Vintage. 1999.
Morton, W. Scott. Japan: Its History and Culture. 4th Ed. New York: McGraw-Hill, 2004.
Insight City Guide: Tokyo. Insight Guides, 2005.
and its respective work, but it was not brutally emphasized in the classes at all. Actually, most of the time was spent going over what I what deem as "Survival Japanese". Of which includes the key words and phrases to find your way around, how to scavenge for food, and how to make daily tourist-purchases. We even went into detail on how to survive the Tokyo subway trains for the first-timers.


It also became somewhat like a classroom movie theater were we watched bits and pieces of documentaries on the places that we were to visit in Tokyo. For example, the Tsukuji fish market and Roppongi Hills. For the longer films we grew attached to the Japanese movie, Kamikaze Girls and instant fans of Hard Gay comedy gags. For me Kamikaze Girls was the best of the lectures because it gave me the country-side view of Japan including the cultural and society's norms, lifestyle, and social views of two young Japanese women from different backgrounds all rolled-up into a hip movie that I plan to own some day.

In conclusion, the UH West Oahu orientations for the Tokyo trip was not at all what I expected. We did not immerse ourselves in the studies-aspect of it, although we were expected to do this knowledge seeking on our own. Survival was the prevalent theme of our lessons.