Senior Woes

Today was the first day of class and as such it has just dawned upon me that I am a senior. It doesn't seem like 4 years ago I was a beginning senior in high school. Time really does fly with wings.

I only had one class today, alogrithms, which was in the morning. After that I attended an intro session to my physical education class. Swimming starts on Wednesday!

First and foremost I finally declared my Japanese Major and switched my computer science to a B.A. It really is the only way for me to graduate on time. Along the way I had to talk to my adviser Podgurski and asked about what kind of thesis is required. He said that there are 2 options. I can complete it in the fall with a 3-credit, lecture based course in which has a very large group project. The other option is to do an independent project worth 6 credits in the springtime. I am fairly certain that the first option will be much easier on my part, but I need to drop another class and/or overload. For the Japanese end of things, Hagiwara Sensei needs me to declare some sort of research project/topic very soon (within the next two weeks.) I don't even know where to begin to look. My original thought was to look at localization within Japanese game companies like Nintendo and Sony. Research why some games come over and some don't. Another thought was to look at the original Japanese and English translation of a particular game and see what kind of things were lost/changed/improved with the dialogue and story. The latter is more of a compare and contrast thing which doesn't work too well for a senior thesis. Today I came up with the topic of Buddhism (because I loved the classes I took at Waseda) but again I have no idea where to go off of that. Blarg.

It's the first day and I already have too much on my plate to think about.

So I decided to go have some fun. I attended almost all of the 101 and 201 Japanese classes in order to promote Kaiwa club. It was great to see all the sensei's again. I also saw Debbie in order to get a $60 refund for the BBQ that we had with the Waseda students. Hiro and Michelle also happened to be there looking for something t do. Michelle mentioned tennis and we were off. The problem was finding rackets. By the time Clair called saying that she could play with us, it was almost 6 o'clock and time for the actual tennis team to use the courts. We'll try again another day.

Dinner was at a noodles place down the street. Tasty.

Joe and Yuki met up with us and decided to hang out at my place with Smash Bros. As always, once set up in a dorm room, it is a magnet for other geeks to gather around. Brilliant. I had a great time studying my Japanese (and helping Claire!) too. My kanji writing ability has went down the drain... Heisig here I come!