BKC (Boy's Kingdom Campus)

I seriously hate having to change time zones. I fell asleep at 10:30 pm and woke up startled at 1:30 am. I woke Jill up asking her if it was 6:30 am already because it felt like I had overslept. She laughed at me and said no, it is 1:30 am. When we did finally wake up for the day, we caught another plane from Narito to Osaka. While on the flight, I noticed that when the flight attendants had to sit, they would bow towards the people, and then they would bow towards each other and then sit. It made me wonder why they did this? From there, we took a bus to BKC.

Garden by hotel

 At 3:20 pm, some of us met in the lobby to meet a professor to visit one of their labs here on the campus. When we arrived, we watched them measure the amount of E. coli in the water and work together as a team. This was interesting to watch because the students actually worked together. They would literally all hold the bottles and water together at the same time. This was different to me because in America, or at least at Illinois College, the students in lab usually break the work up. For example, one person will be measuring the contents, and other people will be writing down the information. Mind you, I couldn't completely understand the entire lab experiment because I don't read, write, or speak Japanese.

Information on board in lab

Students working together

Chalkboard information

After we observed the classrooms, we went back to the lobby of where we are staying and met with the rest of our group to have a tour of the campus. In my opinion, the classrooms were very intimidating. The walls were cemented and everything was so bare and big. It kind of reminded me of being inside a prison of some sort. I enjoyed the convenient store and the places to eat because there were so many different kinds of treats and items to look at. The vending machines were fun to look at because of the way they are displayed. I can’t quite explain it, but it’s not pictures that we’re looking at when selecting the item, we are looking at the actual item being purchased.

Pastry from convenient store

A hang out area with drinks to buy

Pastry from convenient store

After the tour, we were brought to dinner and that is where we met some students from the BKC campus that had gone to Illinois College and some students who were from Illinois College that were studying there this summer. It was a nice evening because I was able to see Risa, the student my roommate and I hosted back in February. After that, we all went back to the rooms, took a shower, and fell asleep by 10 pm.