Japan

This is an advanced Japanese course for students who have completed Japanese VI or the equivalent of fourth year level at UC and is comparable to fifth year level of study. It prepares students to effectively participate in university classes taught in Japanese and to successfully participate in discussions and complete their assignments. Students acquire mastery of the language and are introduced to new kanji.

<Level VII>

Target Students: Those who have completed and mastered intermediate-level studies.

Course Goals: To master the 200 important intermediate sentence patterns and develop understanding and command of the 100 important advanced sentence patterns for further improvement of the four skills of reading, listening, speaking, and writing. To master the 10,000 basic words and 2,000 basic Chinese characters.

<General 1-5>

Goal: To develop a balanced, advanced level of proficiency in reading, listening, speaking, and writing.

Contents: Mastery of intermediate sentence patterns and introduction of 100 important advanced sentence patterns, using Doshisha University’s original textbook and support materials. For students to be able to use all the expressions in an appropriate manner, exercises will be of typical situations where each expression is used, without categorizing them into grammar or vocabulary issues. Vocabulary building with an emphasis on collocation. Improving the four skills of listening, speaking, reading, and writing through summarizing, reading, and listening comprehension of the materials; role-play using expressions learned in class, and composition exercises.

This course is for students who have mastered hiragana and katakana, approximately 150 kanji characters, and the first half of beginner-level grammar. It is designed to develop practical skills in the four skills of reading, writing, listening, and speaking Japanese. The class provides many exercises based on situations that students will encounter in their daily lives, aiming to enable students to communicate in Japanese outside of class immediately.

Upon completion of this course, students should be able to:
1. Improve their listening, by understanding simple conversations on topics related to daily life;
2. Improve their speaking, by communicating on everyday situations in Japanese and making short presentations in Japanese;
3. Improve their reading, by reading short texts in hiragana, katakana, and about 195 kanji characters, and
4. Improve their writing, by writing short passages using hiragana, katakana, and kanji characters.

This course is recommended for students who plan to study at Hitotsubashi University for one semester or more, and want to learn Japanese at a slow pace.

This course examines the traditional arts of humor between the 17th and 19th centuries. Selections were chosen based on the connection between images and words. These include pictures, gesaku (popular fiction written in the mid-18th century), and short novels. 

This class explores several important themes in the political development of East and Southeast Asia. The first part of the course focuses on political culture, concerning the so-called 'Asian values' debate; the second part explores aspects of political information selection, and the third part covers topics of political participation.

This course focuses on a statistical approach of Japanese history. Upon completion of the course, students will have improved their critical understanding of using statistical methods in historical analysis; information extraction from primary historical sources, as well as analysis of historical data with the use of a computer.

This course instructs on python programming from a digital humanities perspective. It begins with the basics using interactive notebooks that require no installation. First, the course covers the basics of programming such as data types, loops, and variables. Later it explores and solves language-based and digital humanities problems using new programming skills and natural language processing (NLP) tools. Python 3 will be used in this course.

This course is designed for students who have completed three years of university-level Japanese. The course aims to improve communication skills to and from intermediate to the advanced level. 

This course provides an understanding of Japanese society by discussing education from an interdisciplinary perspective. It begins with an overview of Japanese education and society, together with the basic approaches for data collection and analysis, and then goes on to discuss the Japanese education system, politics, and practices from both comparative and international perspectives. It ends by discussing recent controversies and issues in education in Japan. Although the emphasis of this course is on current education practices and issues, due consideration is given to the historical context. 

Until the recent past, science and food were a combination to be encountered mainly in the food industry. Today, things are changing and we are witnessing a great deal of emerging new scientific ideas about how we (humans) relate to food: neuroscientists trying to understand how our brain creates flavors; physicists attempting to manipulate textures; talented haute-cuisine chefs aiming at creating startling multi-sensorial experiences.

Despite the scientific complexities, cooking is a simple endeavor that can be carried out by anyone. You can open a recipe book, get the ingredients and follow the instructions: a method that is easy to follow, but certainly not the whole story towards culinary success.

Every time you follow a recipe and prepare your favorite food, you are, in effect, performing a scientific experiment. You put matter together, modify the initial structure (for example, texture, flavor, etc.) by means of physical and chemical processes, and evaluate (by eating) the result of the experiment, possibly trying to understand what modifications can improve the result. The "experiment" can be a success or a failure, but understanding the science can increase the chances of success. Viewed like this, the kitchen becomes a science laboratory and cooking an experimental science.

This course embarks on a study of food and science (physics in particular) that is both entertaining and useful. The course explores the new dimension that opens up when the two areas fuse and how this combination can be used to boost creativity as well as critical thinking.

Part 1 of the course (Spring semester) focuses on basic notions such as the properties of food molecules (proteins, fats, carbohydrates) and basic science processes. Part 2 of the course (Fall semester) focuses on more advanced application like gels, emulsions, foams, fermentation, and baking.