As the eighteen-year-old population is decreasing nowadays, universities are making desperate efforts to recruit students. Each university is trying to create an atmosphere with a distinctive feature to survive, and many of them are setting up graduate schools and open colleges for adults in order to expand their scope of busines. Yet, this column is supposed to be focusing on how to take a walk, and I have no intension of writing about how to study. Of course, it is interesting to participate in such classes to satisfy your intellectual curiosity, and I don't deny such trend as I believe that the best time to study is when you want to study. But there are quite many other ways to enjoy universities without paying tuition.

First of all, there are lots of spaces with much atmosphere. By walking on a university campus, have you ever felt like if you had been transported through time or if you were in another country? The buildings of a university with a long history are mostly designed in Gothic style. I heard that when the university as an educational system was established at a time when everything was modelled after Europe, the powerful Gothic style was chosen as a proper design for a high educational institution. On taking a close look, you realize that the buildings are decorated with bricks with lines on them that look like drawn by a fork. These too were very popular in school architecture at that time, and were called scratch tiles. There is a chapel with stained glasses in a Christian university, and you'd be fascinated by the beautiful sunlight through the glass. Also, there are countless number of late buildings to mention that were been designed by famous architects.

There are also recreation areas. Benches are placed everywhere, trees are treated with care, and it is usually kept in much better condition than a second-rate park. It's where a lot of students gather during their breaks. IGoing to a suburban university with ample land, you'd find woods and hills on-campus that allow you to picnic everyday. Of course, you can't overlook the school dining hall as one of the recreation areas. While one dining hall is proud of its big and cheap menus and being unchanged for ages, another one is highlighting its trendy atmosphere in a cafeteria style in order to entice more female students. Considering that a school dining hall is a point which cannot be missed when a magazine for high school students features articles about rankings of universities, it is no exaggeration to say that school dining has become one of the standards when choosing a university.

If you hope to know more about a university, it is also a good idea to participate in a college tour. Some universities provide such programs only during a limited period such as in a form of open campus, but some other prepare a volunteer student as a guide to show you around the school throughout the year. You can get bits of knowledge such as a history of the school and an origin of a bronze statue, and you'll be able to boast of what you learned to your friends. Moreover, they sometimes provide a free lecture meeting, so you may be able to get a chance to enter a class room and listen to a famous professor giving a lecture.

There are many universities with art museums to exhibit all the art works they have collected for research and education. Charges vary depending on the size of the musuem, but there are quite many you can go in for free. Although many are closed on weekends and holidays, you should inquire them because they occasionally extend opening hours on Saturdays or are open on Sundays to make it more convenient for the general people to visit. As the e-environment of a university has been arranged and a substantial number of web sites has become available, I find it very useful that I can get a great deal of information now.

The other day I went to visit a theater museum in Waseda University. The building itself was already beautiful as it was modeled after the Fortune Theater, a theater of England in the sixteenth century, at the suggestion of Dr. Shoyo Tsubouchi who had handled a translation of Shakespeare drama. Inside of the building, the resources regarding the Japanese play, traditional entertainment, and Shakespeare were displayed, and a program exhibition is occasionally held as well. They are making efforts to make it an "enjoyable tour" by setting up a corner where you could actually wear a Noh mask, and an advertisement of Theater Festival by students.

Finally, if you want a souvenir, I recommend you to buy the university goods. You can find not only writing materials and college accessories but also many more other things such as a brattishing glass with a school insignia, steamed bean-jam bun, and cookies. These products are being used in a college student society. My favorite notebook right now is the one with a mark of Rikkyo University, but I also think that a small article with a cherry-blossom-mark of Gakushuin looks nice. I like college goods so much that I even found a person who was carrying a shopping bag with a picture of the Ohkuma auditorium of Waseda University drawn on it and asked her where she got it. The college goods are attractive because I feel that they are just like the collector's items.

To begin with, why don't you visit your old school as "the first school to visit" to see how it has changed or unchanged?