Nagoya

27Apr08

Some of the stuff in this post can easily be found on Wikipedia, but I thought I’d just tell a little bit about the city I will be in.  My school is located in Nagoya, Japan, which is the fourth largest city in Japan (after Tokyo, Osaka, and Yokohama).  There’s about 2.2 million people in the actual city of Nagoya, but the entire surrounding metropolitan area has about 8.7 million people.  Because I’ll be staying with a host family, there’s a pretty good chance I’ll be staying in one of the suburbs in the surrounding areas, however, my actual school is right in the middle of Nagoya.  I’ll know exactly where I’m staying within a couple months.  Nagoya is located right in the center of Japan — click on the picture below to see a larger map of where the city is.

Nagoya and the surrounding areas, like every city in Japan, is served by a pretty extensive subway/train system.  I’ll probably be on quite awhile each day to commute to and from school, as well as across the city.  Japan’s train/subway systems are some of the best in the world — they’re almost never late, they’re very convenient, and the time between each train at a station is usually less than 10 minutes, meaning you rarely have to wait long to get on the train.  Unless you live in rural or very suburban areas there’s no reason to own a car in most Japanese cities.  The university I’m staying at is about a 5 minute’s walk away from the nearest train station.

Speaking of my university, the name of it is Nanzan University (Nanzan Daigaku in Japanese).  It’s a private university of about 9000 students.  Interestingly, it’s a Jesuit university.  I say interestingly because only about 1% of the population in Japan is Christian.  I’m not particularly religious myself, but it will be interesting to see what its like.  Despite being right in the middle of a metropolitan city, the university is tucked in between hills, which gives it a very scenic, almost rural look.  Unlike most US universities, a lot of Japanese universities are walled off and you have to enter through a gate to get in (though anyone can still freely walk in, it’s not restricted or anything).  Below is a shot of one of Nanzan’s gate entrances (click for a bigger view).  I’ll post more about the university when I actually get there and learn more about it.

Anyway, that’s sort of my little introduction to where I’m going.  A lot of people kept asking what city I would be in and such, so now I can direct people here so they can see what its all about.  I’m sure I’ll have plenty more to say about it in the coming months…

Filed under: Japan, School, Study Abroad   |  1 Comment