Tokyo Visit Sept 2010 - ICU Photos

This post is probably most interesting for my former classmates at ICU that have not been back to Mitaka for a while and are feeling a little natsukashii (nostalgic). While I had intended to spend more time in the old 'hood where Carys, Cherine and I lived in the CCC house, time got away from me. It was not until my last full day in Tokyo that I made it to Mitaka. I was hoping to visit the little local vegetable stand where I used to shop on my way home from school where the elderly owner uses an abacus to calculate how much you bought, then for foreigners types out the numbers for you on a calculator! But I did not get there this time :-(.

I got on the bus in Kichijoji after taking Zare out for a thank you lunch at Monks Cafe. The nice thing about getting dropped off with this bus is the pretty walk into the campus. In the spring this walk is covered with bright white-pink cherry blossoms, but I think its pretty nice with the summer green too.














One of the things I first noticed on visiting the campus was this sign that I had never read before with the 'rules'. I never saw this before and was not authorized to take any of these pictures... so hopefully I won't be in trouble! (you can double click on the photo if you want to see it in a larger size to read the sign :-)


















Unlike many of the universities in Japan, International Christian University (ICU) has a spacious campus that reminds one of uni campuses in the US. There are quite a lot of trees, including some areas with bamboo. Like near the little hut where you can wait for the bus if it is raining. There is just something beautiful about bamboo trees clacking together in a strong breeze to me.


















As soon as I got onto the campus I was wondering, will I see anyone that I know? Amazingly, the first person I saw was Enoch-sensei, an English teacher at ICU that was a classmate with me in my summer Japanese class when I first arrived in Tokyo in July 2005. He was on his bike in a rush to get somewhere so we just exchanged a surprised hello, wow, hisashiburi (what a long time its been).

Colleagues who have stayed on at ICU for PhDs or working in Tokyo described to me that a new shokudo (cafeteria) was being constructed and in the mean time there had been a refugee camp like tent of cafeteria being used for the last year or so. Well, it seems the construction was worth the wait! Here is the new building! So much nicer and fancier than the place we used to eat when I was a student there.














And here is the view from the inside.














It felt strange to be back at the campus and yet at the same time felt like it could not have possibly been 3 years since I had been there. I visited with Professor Vosse, a German who has been a professor at ICU for many years, ran into Professor Chiba a very sweet Japanese professor of Peace Studies, and chatted with the Rackhams a Canadian couple that has been working/teaching at ICU I think for more than 20 years. My grandmother is from Nova Scotia as are they so I have a hunch I will see them there someday once they retire back to Canada.

My time in Mitaka was a very formative time in my life. It was a big transition after feeling at home working and living in San Francisco for more than 6 years. But it was an essential transition, an opportunity to get on what I felt was the 'right' track in terms of my work and study focus. To FINALLY get closer to having the knowledge and skills for the kind of job I wanted rather than the kind of job I could get or get stuck with. I am still not there yet, but surely Japan and the amazing people I met there enriched my life (and continue to) in many ways. I know I would be a different person today had I not lived those 2 years in Mitaka at the CCC house and all the memories and experiences that came along with it.