Blogging in Japan

Here in Japan blogging is much more difficult for me, since I only have access to Internet at school and at the World Center, a multistory arcade across the street from Saty, a grocery/department store. I'll have to describe it in another post - I think my mother was horrified at my description of the combination pachinko parlor/pool hall/Internet cafe. Fortunately the students have Internet access in their apartments, which they did not have in China. (I had it only because the building's lower floor had been renovated; the upper floors, where the students lived, had not.) As far as I know Japanese universities are all commuter schools and do not provide dormitory space, so students either commute from home to a local school or find an apartment and commute from there. Our students are commuting from different areas of Kyoto, although I am in a house about a fifteen minute walk and a fifteen minute bus ride from Kameoka Station, the same bus that everyone picks up when their trains arrive from Kyoto. The first level Japanese textbook, which includes some cultural information, notes that college students in Japan commute between one and two hours each way to their schools. Also according to the text, only two percent of Japanese high school students drop out. There are some other interesting stats that I'll have to look up about what percentage of students go to college, including the very different percentages of men and women who go to four-year colleges and the fact that college loans don't exist. We have heard very different information depending on the source about what percentage of family income is spent on education.