A little announcement on a change of work place. With the 4 year contract spanning the period of the pandemic at Tokyo Denki University coming to a conclusion, I have been welcomed as a full time lecturer for the Department of Political Science at Kokushikan University.
People have been extremely welcoming and it is a pleasure to talk with other faculty members about their research or areas of shared interest. During the lunch break members of other faculties will stop by my office and introduce themselves. They may share some literature or let me know about colleagues who are studying topics related to contemporary cultural studies. It's still a bit overwhelming at the moment but very exciting.
For those who are not familiar with Kokushikan University, it is a fairly large sized academic institution with near 13,000 students at 3 campuses around the Tokyo area. I am at the Setagaya Campus which is near Umegaoka Station, a couple stops beyond Shimo-Kitazawa on the Odakyu line.
Here are some interesting factoids that I have discovered over the past couple months. Along with the Faculties of Political Science and Economics, Arts, Law and Engineering among others, research related to disaster relief is prominent. Kokushikan University is popular for students interested in working in the civil service at all governmental levels. It is the most popular university for people going on to be fire fighters in Japan, and number 2 in the country for those moving on to work for the national police force.
Sports are popular at Kokushikan and the university punches above its weight class in judo, kendo, karate and wrestling. In fact, it is ranked in the top 10 universities in Japan for Olympic medal recipients - both gold medal recipients at 5 and overall recipients at 10! There are lots of other sports teams and clubs, I do hope to catch the rugby team play a game at some point when I get a bit more settled.
Beyond that, I look forward to instructing my own seminar classes, and I will be on the board for editing some of the academic journals published by the university. The first thing on my mind at the moment is moving, however. I found out today that I have the go ahead with an apartment I've had my eye on, so I have a whirlwind couple of weeks in front of me.
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