Hello one last time! It feels like PII has flown by. I didn’t realize how fast 8 weeks could feel like, but time just keeps moving forward. I made lots of friends that I hope to meet up with back in the states. This week, we met with some US Federal Government employees in the other Japanese studying program at Rifare (our building). They are the Mansfield Fellowship program, a program that any government employee can apply for to study Japanese for two months in Kanazawa, then they will go to Tokyo for ten months and work inside of the Japanese government on specific projects. There were all sorts of jobs represented, like Air Force Intelligence, Nuclear Secuirity, FEMA, FDA, NASA. Seemed like a cool program. And one important thing I came away from our discussion was that having Japanese as an additional skill can be very valuable. For example, there may be lots of people in your company that know your specific product, and there may be some that speak Japanese. But at the intersection of Japanese and your other skills you will probably be one of very few people who could do a job that requires both, and thus be very valuable. We had this meeting on Wednesday. Monday was a national holiday called Marine Day, I think it is in honor of the ocean. My host dad didn’t have work on Sunday, so together we went for a run, saw a really cool waterfall you can swim under, and went to a nearby onsen. Today we had our 期末試験 (kimatsushiken) (end of semester exam), so there is now no more work to be done for PII! I can’t really believe it. Tommorow we have our going away party and then on Saturday we will leave. I am teaching a seminar about the Philosophy of AI to japanese high school students in english starting on August 2nd in Komatsu, so inbetween now and then I can do whatever I want. My highschool best friend is coming to Japan and we have a really adventurous nine day Japan trip planned. I hope to vlog it, and there are lots of other videos that I have been taken, of but haven’t edited them because of being busy. Hopefully I’ll edit them when back to the states. [Simon from the future: I finally finished editing them! Here they are: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLS_axNeI0-1YGOu0fnJ6aPyolOOCwKmo4] I think they are a cool way to share my experiences with anyone who wants to get a taste of them. I still have to make the majority of my class, and I really don’t want to bring my laptop on the trip around Japan because it’s heavy, so I’m going to try to get everything ready today and tomorrow. I know an ounce of preparation is worth a pound of cure, so I want to be prepared for what I’m going to teach, even though I think the goal is improving English skills through an interesting topic. Also, it is a volunteer program and a one week long overnight camp in some schoolish building in the mountains, so I’m excited for that and the teaching experience opportunity it presents.
In closing, I do want to say that I’m extremely grateful, both for being given the opportunity to do this truly amazing summer language program and for the generous funding I received from Williams that payed for it. If I ever make a lot of money, I would love to give some to these fellowship funds (people in the future can hold me to this). Thank you.