Introduction

Introduction

What is this blog?
This summer I am doing a nine-week internship teaching English at Tokyo City University, through June, July and early August.  Here I will record experiences, insights, links, mistakes, photos and anything else that I deem interesting enough to publish on the internet. 
 
Who am I?
My name is Owen Chapman.  At the time of writing, I am entering my third year at Pomona College in Southern California.  I am working on a major in computer science and a minor in biology, and intend (again, at time of writing) to apply to graduate school in computational biology.  I took a year of Japanese at Pomona my freshman year, and attended a motley assortment of classes - Intermediate Kanji (quarter credit), Intermediate Conversation (quarter credit), and Intermediate Japanese 051B (no credit, audit) - last semester to prepare me for this summer experience.  
I would describe my current language ability as barely proficient; I can carry out casual conversation, but my vocabulary limits my understanding of odd grammatical constructions, more interesting conversations, and people who speak at a normal conversational speed.  I can read around 500 (edit: sorry, Nakagoshi-sensei!) kanji, and can write perhaps half of that.
 
What am I doing here?
My relationship with things Japanese began three years ago, when I participated in a three-week school trip to Japan with my high school's Japanese program.  Of the students on the trip, I and one other guy were the only students never to have taken a Japanese class before.  In retrospect, I didn't prepare very thoroughly for the experience, and my command of the language was unenviable at best when the trip began.  We spent a week touring Tokyo, a few days each in Kyoto and Gifu, and a week homestaying in Gifu.  My homestay family in Gifu were wonderfully hospitable to me, but only my host sister spoke English.  Communication at home and at school was difficult, but I nevertheless had a great time during the entire length of my stay.
I took a year of Japanese in my freshman year of college, which was difficult.  The following year, I was fortunate to receive this teaching internship.  In preparation, I took a couple quarter-credit language classes and sat in on the intermediate-level class.  People here keep asking me why I'm interested in Japan, and every time my answer changes.  It's something hard to pin down, especially in my third language, but I like the culture, the people, the busy cities, and the food.  Also, I think I'm just stubborn, and refused to give up on what has been my most difficult academic pursuit in college so far.  Whatever the reason, I'm now back.
tl;dr I'm stubborn and Japanese is hard, but Japan is a cool place.