Jul 27, 2010

Thursday mornings at Miyagi Gakuin University 11


On Thursday mornings, I only have a single class - Speaking, for the second year English majors. The class is in a small corner room with no other classrooms nearby, which is good because the students get very noisy sometimes. I told the students that I was going to take a picture for my blog, and you can see the reaction. The students on the right want to be in the picture, while those on the left are hiding. Back in the days of open reel tape recorders, this room was the place where they kept the tapes for the LL, which is next door and now a computer lab. The things on the wall that look like books are actually reels of tape. They are so old now that they would probably fall apart if you tried to use them, but they are on the university's books so they can not be thrown away. Most universities have many rooms full of such equipment, unusable but also undiscardable.
These are the controls for the room's environment - light switches, PA system control, on/off switches for fans that I do not believe are there, controls for the air conditioner, and two thermometers. The air conditioner is set to start working at 28 degrees (they have since lowered it to 26) and you can see that it is very close to that already, even though it was before 10 a.m. when I took the picture.
I finished class and had a cup of coffee in the teachers' room and then went back out to the bus stop. I was just in time to see a bus arrive at the stop on the other side of the road - the stop I had used a couple of hours earlier.
After the bus, I took the subway and then walked home from Yaotome station, arriving about 11:30 a.m. Between the station and my apartment I pass the store. It is rather strange. The main store, advertised on the blue sign, sells bottled water of various kinds. The window contains colorful bottles as samples and is quite pretty. The black sign is for a completely different kind of store, however. It sells balls of rice wrapped in paper thin slices of beef. The sign advertises it as a "B Class Gourmet Store". I should add that they only sell takeout.

No comments: