Amherst College Global Education Blog
Blog honesty moment: I’m writing this post instead of working on my art history paper. The paper that I’ve barely started. The paper that’s due in, approximately 36 hours. Now at Amherst, I’d be gnawing my elbow off with worry about that paper. But here abroad? It’s not bothering me too much. I know I’ll get it done. It probably won’t
Read more
Back after two weeks! For this week’s blog I thought I would make a video showing what a day studying abroad in Japan might be like. This was on a Friday, so I just had Japanese class and then the rest of my day to venture around. Please turn on the subtitles and enjoy! Bear with my translations…I tried to
Read more
Can We Talk about Race? “What is the percentage of blacks in the United States?” I definitely did not anticipate some of my classmates’ answers to this question in my class on race and ethnicity in the Americas in Chile. Thirty percent! Fifty percent! (What?) My reaction was immediately to jump in and assert that the black population was actually only
Read more
I am taken by surprise with just how many festivals and celebrations I’ve encountered in Japan, especially in Kyoto. You’re sure to find a couple a month, even sometimes a couple on the same day, and it’s not too uncommon to randomly get caught in the middle of one while walking down a street. The great part is, many of
Read more
Tadaima! I’m back! As I mentioned in my last post, I spent the last week traveling down to Okinawa, then up to Tokyo before returning on an overnight bus to Kyoto, arriving girigiri into Monday morning classes. It was nice having some time off before spiraling into these last few weeks of the semester, and luckily my program funds these
Read more
This past weekend I traveled to Amsterdam, my first trip out of the Iberian Peninsula this semester! I flew there by myself, and spent two days exploring the city on my own before meeting up with another friend for the rest of the trip. Amsterdam is famous for being a liberal city, full of new opportunities, and that certainly proved
Read more
Hey guys! This week I’ll be writing a bit about forms of art I’ve encountered so far during my time in Japan. It’s forced me to reflect on gigabytes of pictures and a 6 page bucketlist I’m still working through, so bear with me! My general impression of art in Japan, be it through music/entertainment/performance or more traditional forms such
Read more
Hello readers! My name’s Omar and I am currently studying abroad with the Associated Kyoto Program (AKP) at Doshisha University in Japan. I decided that I would be coming to Japan by the Fall of my first year, but I wasn’t completely sure of when, for how long, or which part of the country I wanted to come to. My
Read more
Amherst’s Japanese department has an annual winter Curry party at Tawa-sensei’s home along with a sushi party in the spring, which I always made sure to take advantage of. Besides that, my experiences with Japanese food before coming here were limited. NYC restaurants can be pretty expensive for one, but finding one that is actually authentic has its own challenges.
Read more
I started learning Japanese for several reasons but one of my biggest motivations was a desire to learn more about a people that I had few interactions with. Language facilitates cultural exchange, especially in using it to communicate nuances that are otherwise lost in translation. You can learn a lot through language, but there are many things that can only
Read more