Welcome to 2015!

Welcome to the start of the Fall 2015 group blog published by the Cities in Transition: In Search of Modern Japan class!

The courses that comprise Beloit College’s “Cities in Transition” program seek to provide students with a flexible, interdisciplinary framework to help them engage with the cities in which they are studying in contexts that extend beyond the formal setting of the classroom. The underlying premise of the program is that all urban areas are constantly undergoing transitions, and that these transitions can serve as a productive focal point of intellectual engagement on the part of students studying abroad. Faculty members in the Department of Modern Languages and Literatures offer Cities in Transition courses to Beloit students studying in China, Ecuador, Japan, and Russia. An in-country version of Cities in Transition is available to Beloit students studying in Senegal. In Search of Modern Japan is the only CIT course with a blog.

This fall three students (Sasha, Ari, and Marvelous) are studying at and posting from Akita International University in Akita, the capital city of Akita prefecture. Three students (Sarah, Ruobing, and Eliza) will post about their time at Kansai Gaidai University located with easy access to two of Japan's largest cities: Kyoto (population approx. 1.5 million) and Osaka (2.7 million).  And, two students (Reid Knight and Jonah) will be writing about their experiences at Rikkyo University in Tokyo.

Please join them on their journey, ask them questions, and help prod them on to new discoveries as they explore Japan.