What's Jappening?

Whether I wanted to or not, it was inevitable that in my time studying abroad here in Japan I would compare my home university (UCA) and my host university (NUA). So today I thought I'd take a little look at how the classes differ between the two unis. Obviously, I can't compare everyone's timetables and lessons so I'm just going to compare my timetable in UCA with my friend Kato's timetable here at NUA. The reason I'm not comparing it with my timetable here at NUA is that I only had to take five classes in order to get enough credits to pass the year back in England and I wouldn't be able to take a lot of the classes due to my pretty shaky Japanese. So here is Kato's timetable: By comparison, my timetable at UCA goes as follows: Monday       9.00-12.00 Illustration                       12.00-1.00 Lunch                       1.00-4.00 Illustration Tuesday       9.00-12.00 Illustration                       12.00-1.00 Lunch                    

Fresh off my door-sized print and inspired by my recent trip to the Nagoya City Science Museum (which kinda looks like that robot from The Incredibles), I decided to go a little outside my comfort zone by producing a three-colour print of a pattern (as opposed to any particular thing). I was still recovering from a pretty painful hand cramp and I was starting to worry about how I'd take all this work home, so I decided to go for a postcard-size print which, in hindsight, I think suits the design perfectly. Unsurprisingly, this print took no time at all to finish, and I made a total of eight, whimsical little prints that I am very pleased with. When I get back to England, I'd really like to go back to this design and reprint it with different colour combinations, it could make for an interesting series!

One thing I should probably tell you about NUA is that, in the middle of the campus, there is a large(ish) gallery space that has a weekly rotation of students' work. It's actually something I really love about this university and I honestly wish that UCA did this as well, because it's so awesome to look at everyone's work and support your friends and fellow students in the process. I think I'll suggest it when I get back to England... Anyway, at our orientation at the beginning of the semester, we were told that there was going to be an International Students Exhibition and that this would be a chance for us to show off the work we'd produced during the term. Admittedly, this exhibition took place about a month before the end of term, so not all of our work would be finished, but the hope was that we would have enough work between us to show off the power of the foreigner (or something like that). Having just missed out on exhibiting my work with the rest o