Gaijin Cards and having an identity in Japan

(This is outside of the International Exchange Center).

Today after school, Beth, Keleih, and I went and got our Gaijin Cards effectively ending the annoying habit of having to carry my passport around with me. This marks the point of when we can finally truly start living in Japan as citizens. Beth and Keleih want to get Keitai (cell phones) soon as possible, but considering that I am still without the Hakuoh scholarship for another week.

Classes are finally picking up speed and in one of them, the culture class is getting to be too much. I can't understand really much in the class and I find myself getting really sleepy because my brain is trying to comprehend everything at once and I become tired. But even then, I talked to Kyuu (one of the Taiwanese) and even though she has been here since last September, she also has trouble with the class and has to translate and look up a lot of the stuff in the handouts. But, I still wish I could understand more in the class.....maybe I have to give it up. Beth and Keleih already came to the solution because Adachi wasn't trying to make sure everyone had an equal footing in the class. Expecting us to understand everything well in the first few weeks is nearly impossible. Also, expecting us to do research in the library would be impossible because most of the books we could use for research were in Japanese. I am talking about books where you would have to pass the second or first level of the Japanese Language Proficiency Test to understand, but even then you might have trouble still comprehending it. Not sure exactly what to do though....do I drop it....or do I not?