What Language Should I Speak Again?: 龍谷大学 - Ryukoku University - The University of the Valley of Dragons. Badass.

So on Friday I had one of the most fun lessons I've had since I started my time here at Ryukoku. I haven't posted much about lessons yet, but we start everyday at 9am, and normally have two or three core lessons, followed by chosen modules, of which I am currently taking 3. You need 16 credits total, with core lessons totaling 12, meaning you have to take at least two extra modules, as they are two credits each. Everything is taught in Japanese, which is amazing for our Japanese, but sometimes it's really, really confusing!

Anyway, on with what I was saying... my lessons have started out at a pretty basic level, which is a bit disheartening, but part of me is glad because I'm not overloaded with difficult work from the get-go, and also because the course at UEA went so quickly, I feel like I don't actually KNOW most of it, and my base language should become a lot stronger this way. I don't know. I can only hope ^.^

So in this lesson, we were doing describing things, and the worksheet was on describing imaginary creatures, and then each of us took turns to describe fictional beasts/characters from our own cultures.

However, this is not the coolest bit. The coolest bit is, because I'm not really all that observant, or all that good at Japanese, I never really looked into the name of my university. It's Ryukoku University. Very Japanese sounding, I still have no idea why it's called that, but I do know what it means.

This was one of the pictures from our sheet

Because I'm not all that observant, it took me a while to click, but I was all like 'Hold on - that's the Ryu from Ryukoku!' and so yeah it turns out the first kanji in our University's name - 龍 - means dragon. Now the whole dragon mascots (which I am in love with) seem to make a little more sense. I don't know how slow I was on the uptake compared to the other foreign students, but I don't care, I think this is amazing!

The teacher then went on to tell us that 谷 (the -koku of Ryukoku) is the kanji for Valley. So if we want to be literal, 龍谷大学 means 'Dragon Valley University' in Japanese. And that is the most amazing name for a university ever. It's made me even happier that I am here!

These are the University's mascots. They are so cute that the first time I came face to face with ロンちゃん (Ron-chan, the pink one) I kind of giggled to the point of near hysteria. She was so cute. I want one. I wanted to hug her, but then I remembered that there's someone inside that suit, and I could easily make the biggest idiot of myself to a totally unknown person, and what's worse, is that they could be really cute. So I didn't. But seriously these mascots are so cute. I saw somebody carrying around a ロンくん (Ron-kun, the Green one) plush toy the other day and I seriously want to know where I can get one because I'm so in love with our mascots.

(The above just says 'Boy character Ron-kun, Girl character Ron-chan'. I thought it was a bit strange at first how they had the same name, but with a different honorific, but that would be normal if they are siblings since in Japan you often call somebody by their last name).

So yeah that's just another reason why my University is so much more fabulous than yours! ;)

Just in case you were interested, I couldn't think of any particularly 'English' creatures, so I chose the loch ness monster. Good thing Scotland are still part of the UK, right? After we wrote our descriptions, we were told to draw it quickly on the back of our paper, which I thought was cute. Whilst we were reading our descriptions, Kan sensei tried to draw our creature on the board.

I was too busy talking about Loch Ness monsters to get a picture of Kan-sensei's drawing, but this is the vampire drawing she done of Santana's description.