Special Surprise

Shiho and I got on the bus at the stop near her apartment, en route to Bunkyo University. It was packed. There was barely enough room for me to stand on the step leading to the main level of seating. So that's where I stood. Then, a voice said, "Dan?"

Sure enough, I had run right into Aya Sato, a Bunkyo student who studied at OSU for a term. She was a coversation partner with a friend of mine, so I was often in on the coversation group. What a shocker. "Bikuri sitta" we both declared. It means, "I was surprised." So we caught up on the ride to campus, where I would spend the day as a visitor, saying hi to former conversants and just looking around.

...

I always knew I was special. I was announced as a special guest for the three classes I sat in on at Bunkyo. In the first, a class focused on interpetation of English and Japanese, I participated. First, I gave a breif introduction about myself in English. Then, when I thought I was about to sit down, I was asked by the teacher to give the speech again, this time pausing after a sentence or two, so the teacher could call on a scared-to-death student to translate what I had said into "good" Japanese.

The campus of Bunkyo reminds me of a big city high school. A few brick buildings laid on a small patch of suburbian land, serviced by a bus terminal but no room for parking. It really was nice looking thouhg, but it is nothing like the giant campus of OSU.

Because Bunkyo does not have any exchange students from the states, I stood out a bit, and some stares came my way. Many students recognized me, because Bunkyo has a exchange program at OSU throught the English Language Institute, where I work in addition to the newspaper.