Category: Katie in Kyoto

This past week has been another slow one. Classes have been fairly easy so far, but we already have a break coming up for Golden Week, which will be a busier week for me. Since not much happened this week, I thought I would share a little about how I’m feeling now that I’ve been living in Kyoto for over a month.

Overall, I think I’ve adjusted pretty well. I’ve gotten a schedule down — balancing groceries shopping, homework, and finding time to hang out with friends or explore on my own. I’m still working on managing my budget better, especially with all the free time before classes started and now another week off for the holiday. After Golden Week, though, there won’t be any more big breaks for a while so that will help me spend less.

Of course, I still get homesick sometimes. I miss certain foods, my family, and my friends back home. Living on my own can feel lonely at times too. It doesn’t help that I haven’t made many new friends yet. I know I need to be more social if I want to meet people, but I haven’t really asked anyone to hang out yet, so it’s not too surprising. Still, I’ve started talking to a few people from my classes and someone from my dorm, so I’m making small steps.

Even with the moments of feeling homesick and lonely, I’m proud of how much I’ve adapted to the point that Kyoto feels a little like home now. I have places I like to visit occasionally, favorite restaurants I like to go to, and sports on campus where I like to do homework at.

Sometimes on the weekend I will also spend a day explore somewhere new. Like this weekend I visited three different shrines that were each about 20-30 minutes away from each other. Getting out of the room and spending a couple of hours outside really does helps to improve my mood, and I don’t need to spend a lot of money to do so which is a plus.

Looking ahead, I’m hoping to be a little more social. Even just asking someone to grab lunch or study together would be a big step for me. I know making new friendships take time, so I’m trying to be patient with myself.

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Before classes started, I took a short trip to Osaka with some friends. We explored a lot of places like Osaka Castle, Namba Yasaka Jinja, Dotonbori, Shinsekai, and more. One of my friends found out about the Eco Pass, which is part of the Osaka Metro system. It made traveling cheaper and even gave us discounts at certain spots—definitely a good find!

While Osaka was a lot of fun, I actually want to talk more about registering for classes and how the first week of school has been going.

To be honest, registering for classes was more confusing than I expected. However, I also feel like I made it more confusing than it should have been. I needed to take seven classes, and finding a schedule where they didn’t overlap was harder than I thought. Since some classes are held at the Imadegawa campus and others at the Kyotanabe campus (which is over an hour away from each other), I had to make sure I didn’t end up with only ten minutes to get from one to the other. I tried to group most of my classes at the same campus each day to make things easier for myself.

There was also an issue with one of the classes I registered for during the advance registration period. It ended up conflicting with another class I really wanted to take. I was worried about not getting enough credits, so I signed up for that first one without double-checking. At DU, dropping a class is as easy as clicking a button, but here it wasn’t that simple. I couldn’t just drop the class online, so I emailed an advisor at Doshisha, who pointed me in the right direction. They told me to register for the class I wanted, then head to campus to fill out a form to drop the other class.

Once I finally had all seven classes, I needed to watch these videos called DO (Doshisha Opening), since this week was technically the first week of classes. Most of the videos were just introductions to the course, but a few included some assignments that I needed to complete before our first face-to-face class. Some professors explained the assignments directly in the video, which were easy to follow, so I just completed them on separate sheets of paper.

One of my classes, however, used a system called e-class (kind of like Canvas, but different). All of my courses are technically on e-class, but so far only one has actually uploaded any materials there. Knowing how to use it was a little confusing at first, especially when I couldn’t access the assignment, but after some trial and error, I think I’m finally getting the hang of it.

Next week will be my first week of in-person classes. I’m both excited and a bit nervous to finally meet my classmates and get started!

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