Developing economic skills

Well, it's about time to talk about what I actually came to Japan for: my studies here at Waseda. Classes started some three weeks ago now, so I start to have an idea of what the several courses will be like.
Next to the obligatory Japanese language courses (of which I'll tell more later), we are supposed to choose some courses that are given in English. The long list of courses of which we could choose comprised a wide arrange of topics like Political Relations in South East Asia, Japanese Modern Litterature, Japanese Poetry (Haiku), The Modernization of Japan, Ancient Egyptian Civilization, Human Biology, Applied linguistics etc. etc.
The first week was a so called "add-and-drop week", during which everybody could follow as many courses as he/she liked, add other courses to his schedule and drop courses that he/she didn't like. This was a good system, because when you register for the courses at the beginning of the year there's just the syllabus with descriptions of the courses and evidently no detailed description of the teacher, while the quality of the courses is largely dependend on the quality of (the english proficiency) of the teacher. I initially registered for the courses Public Policy and Finance, African Developmental Politics and Economy, and Economic Development of Asia. Since I'm really interested in developmental politics/econmics (unfortunately, cash rules the world), I thought these courses would suit me perfectly. However, in the end I dropped two courses and added two new ones: Public Policy and Finance contained mostly public policy and not that much finance and the same goes for the African course. I hoped to get some more economics, because I can study politics and African development in Leiden aswell, while there's no economic department there. So instead I choose Public Economics and US-Japanese fiscal relations. The former actually mostly concerns public developmental economics (in general), so that's perfect for me. The Japanese teacher (Mr. Daimon) has been working as an advisor for the World Bank, assisting developmental countries with shaping their economy (though I don't know in what way exactly - the World Bank doesn't always seem to be giving the best advise) and teaching at other universities before coming to Waseda. Until now we've been reading about some basics of developmental economics, defining poverty, how to measure it etc. I think he'll come with some interesting theories, since Japan generally does have a diverging view on development compared to the Washington-concensus of the World Bank and the International Monetair Fund (they mostly propagate free-market economies without intervention of the state, open borders to allow foreign investors into the market, force local companies to compete with companies in other countries - which is of course impossible for developing countries - and focussing on exports - which doesn't work either because Europe and the US try to keep cheap agricultural- and textile products outside).
The Japanese alternative is also discussed in detail in the class Economic Development of Asia, tought by the Korean Mr. Park who studied in the US (I think in San Diego) and who's mostly specialised in the economic development of South Korea. However, in this class we talk about the Asian Tigers: South Korea, Taiwan, Hong Kong and Singapore (all of whom showed remarkable economic growth after WWII) and about Indonesia, Malaysia and of course China. Japan is only touched upon briefly since it developed already before WWII. Still, there are many similarities between the developmental models of these Asian countries, including Japan. At least, that's what we've been reading about until now, but in the end it probably appears that each country followed it's own specific policy. Nevertheless, the seeming similarities are an important counterweight for the Washington consensus: the Asian model is based upon state intervention to develop certain strategic industries (mostly starting with textile, than steel and chemicals and later moving to electronic equipment, cars and computers), protecting these industries from foreign competition and exporting only products that can be produced with a comparative advantage (for example abundant cheap labour supply) and thus at lower costs than in the west.
Well, you might notice that I really love this subject. Probably since I followed the notorious course Canon II in Leiden, tought by the possibly even more notorious Mr. Anil Khosla, about the economic system in Japan and the developmental state theory of Chalmers Johnson I've been wondering if there were any similarities with the Asian Tigers and if the model could be used for the development of other developing countries, for example in Africa. I hope to find out about that during this semester.
And then there's the course about US-Japanese fiscal relations. I was hesitating to take this course because I thought I knew already enough about Voluntary Export Restraints (from Japan to the US) and the manipulation of the exchange rate of the dollar and the yen (after the Nixon shock and the Plaza accord, you can probably look it up on the internet), but in the end I decided to add the course to my schedule anyway. The most important reason was the vigour of the teacher, Mrs. Ferber, a Hungarian woman who studied at the Business and Economics University in Budapest and who's done quite some research about the Japanese economic system. When she explained to me what the course would be about (I ran into her at the elevator), she assured me that 'nothing is what it seems, and even though most people act as if there's nothing wrong, the relations between US and Japan always involved power politics and hidden agenda's'. So I got curious. Until now she's mostly dealing with the Japanese economy of which I know most features by now, but at least that means it's not difficult for me - let's hope she will really come with some shocking revelations later on.
Next to all this economic talk I also took a course with the title 'Religions of East-Asia'. In the syllabus it was described as a course about buddhism being transferred from India to China, Korea and Japan, but it appeared that that was for the second semester. This semester it will mostly deal with pre-buddhist Indian religion (brahmanism), so half of the initial students dropped the course, leaving some 12 students who are still interested. It's really nice to listen to the stories of the teacher, Mr. Iwata, who has studied sanskrit and German, so he also explains links between the languages while dealing with sanskrit words. The German atmen for example (to breathe), comes from the sanskrit atman. This concept refers to the individual holy spirit that is seen as the vital aspect of life - and as a vital condition to live - just as breathing. The course is really about the philosophical ideas of the religion and not about what the ceremonies look like and what kind of holidays they have (like religion-classes at high school), so defenitely some good food for thought.
All the above are the english courses I'm taking. Next to those four I also have Japanese courses on tuesday, thursday and friday morning about grammar, vocabulary and kanji (chinese characters). I'm in level 5b of the 6 levels that they have here but I think I'm somewhere in the lower part of the class. Some students from the University for African and Asian Studies in London are really quite good, but it's a good motivation for me to try hard. It's also interesting to experience a way to learn Japanese different from the University of Leiden. Here they really make us learn every week (every class starts with a test), write essays in Japanese, watch a video and do a speech. To make myself study the language even more I also took the course Japanese Reading, which actually also comprises writing essays and giving speeches. It seems to be quite a lot, but it's all very interesting. I came here to learn Japanese, so I really want to make as much progress as possible, read, write and learn as many kanji as possible so that maybe some day I might actually read Japanese books and write Japanese essays without looking up most of the words in the dictionary.
As for the english courses: I can't study economics at Leiden, so I want to make the most of it here. Until now it seems to work out quite well. I can keep up with the courses and it's mostly what I expected or hoped it to be. But I'm still waiting for the teachers to get a bit more into detail and start dealing with the complicated reality of the world of economics. Things are never what they seem to be!