So far, so good. 29th October

We had an ARW class in PC room and I also had a tutorial with my teacher at the same time.
I spent all class time to prepare for next essay. My essay's topic is about UN.
There are many points which needs revise in UN, and I'm gonna point out those points and show resolution in my essay.
During my tutorial, I was taught how I should use figure or graph which is written in Japanese in my academic essay.
I think the situation which I need to use some figures from Japanese institution will come at least once, so I should remember my teacher's lecture.
Probably, I could make a better start than last time, so I'm gonna try to get A in my essay.

Below is  just for my memory.
・Thesis = topic, claim, 3 reasons.
・Thesis should be in the end of introduction paragraph.
・Full block style.
・push tab at the beginning of each paragraph.
・Zotero - MLA
・Font size - sentence is 12, title is 14.
・1.5 line spacing.
・1 line break between paragraphs.
・don't use question style.
・include book references at least once.
・cooperate with peer editors and pay "respect" to them.
・don't use "I", "my", "me" or something like subjective words.

After a storm. 28th October.

We discussed Blumenbach's race category which separate all human being into five varieties.
Five varieties aren't enough to categorize all human being.
Rather, I don't think we need to categorize human being, we need just nationalities as a statistical factor.
However, I can understand the motivation to categorize human being.
When I feel we Japanese are superior to Chinese or Korean, I don't want to be consider that Japanese and them are same, even if we are same Asian.
So, I guess Blumenbach had a opinion that his own racial group was superior to others.

I think such a white supremacy is still exist in Europe and U.S.

The U.S. Census show that clearly.
They have the category of race, but there are big category "White".
I think that is stupid the way of categorizing people in U.S., and  I guess the reason that such category still exist is American unconsciousness which American and White is superior to others.
In my opinion, Why can they think they are superior to others nevertheless they leave such a stupid category.
They are "optimist".
Probably, they can live with full of happiness with their way of thinking that they are "best".

ICU festival. (Personal post) 25th October.

We have ICU festival this weekend, and there are a lot of food shops and events around ICU.

I have belonged to Gekidan-niji which is skit performance club since this September,then I made my debut on the stage!!

Our program was the Wonderful Wizard of Oz, and it was for children like kindergartener or elementary school children.

When I stared to belong to that club, actually, I had felt some kind of embarrassment. 

That club'S skit is for children, so our act should be like childish to convey our feeling to children, not adults.

That was why, I hadn't liked practice and felt embarrassment.

However, as I practiced and concentrated on my act, such feeling was disappearing.

I was around friends who were seriously tying to express their feeling to children, and I thought their attitude toward skit was "cool".

Then, I came to think I wanna be good at skit more and more, and I can't be pulling their legs.

Finally, I played my role on the stage today, and I could see a lot of my friends who came and saw my performance.

Fortunately, we could do our performance with good atmosphere and many people's smile.

Then, I felt I was filled with happiness.

It was too much for me that there were so many people who said "that was very good performance, thank you." to me.

Oh...today's dream must be awesome.

A rain shower in middle autumn. 22nd October.

We watched music video on youtube a in the beginning of today's ARW class.
The contributor chose several good music video on youtube, then he/she cut and pasted them to make that music video.
Actually, he/she chose only music videos which were high quality, so actual music video was so good even respective players played different songs.
Then we watched similar but another video which had some good players and also bad players in the video, and that sounds weren't comfortable for my ears.
Our teacher use such movies as a example of references in academic essay.
We should use only high quality and reliable references, if we don't chose such good references, our essay lose reliance and sense of unity.
So we should find high quality and reliable references for our essay, but I wonder how I can judge the study, statistic, or number is whether reliable or not.
I think, in general, the references from authorized institutions such as UN, IMF, or some laboratory are "reliable".
However, these days, I came to think that such well-known institutions are influenced by some big countries such as U.S, Russia or some western countries and their intension.
I know, it's endless (or might be meaningless) discussion.
Also, I can try to choose "suitable" references  for ARW essay as a ICU student just according to what teachers said.
But, at the same time, I can't help thinking that what kind of information is actually reliable and free from authorities.

Rocky path to do what I wanna do. 21st October.

We received our Course Wide Test paper and our first ARW essay during today's our class.
CWT paper should be double-checked by two teachers, but if these two score are different more than 3 point, we can challenge, then our paper can be checked by another teacher.
When my teacher said that, I thought that was good idea to prevent favoritism.
I think in the small class such as ELA class, we have only 18 students in our class, the favoritism can happen anytime, because teachers are also, I know, human.
So, double checking by two teachers and the right to challenge against score under the some conditions are proper rule for student,

After receiving our essay, we had a small discussion about what made our essay score good or bad.
I felt that discussion was good for us because we could know others' good and but points, and I could be checked and pointed out my mistakes which I didn't notice before.
Actually, my partner and I couldn't have enough time to peer edit, but we concentrated on our peer editing for short term. That was a little bit fun for me, that reminded me of my high school days.
However, now in university, in ICU, we shouldn't do same mistakes more than twice, and we should  be more organized and do everything in planed way.
So, I'm gonna start writing next essay soon, and cooperate with partners from the beginning.

I also looked through the Larson's article 13th edition.
That has more pictures and small columns than the older one which is in ELA reader. Actually, I prefer to read paper style book when I read Japanese book, but I thought when I was reading English article or book, it take a lot of time to consult dictionary whenever I find the word or phrase which I didn't know.
Moreover, it is obvious that such electrical device to read is easy to change content which the device has. So, such device will help us to read newspaper or weekly journals in English for learning academic English. Now, actually I'm subscribing TIME but sometimes I feel uncomfortable to consult dictionary when I meet the article which is hard to understand for me. So, if I can afford to buy iPad or Kindle reader, I wanna buy them to read English articles and books.




During today's lunch time, we had a briefing session about oversea program in next summer. I didn't decide yet which program I attend, but I'm thinking attend service learning or UC summer sessions. If I decide to attend service learning, I don't have to be aware of my GPA score. But if I decide to attend UC summer sessions, I have to get GPA more than 3.0 and get TOEFL iBT score more than 79 points. In the latter situation, it must be tough for me, and I know we can't improve our GPA in a day, so I should be more aware of my grade of every classes. Oh...there are a lot of problems against whatever I want to do

TGIF. 17th October.

During today's our class, we discussed Gould's article.
The title is "the geometer of race".
Most of us couldn't do 3B research properly, background information, biography, and bias.
That show how lazy we were.
Then, we read from first paragraph to three paragraph and summarize them.
This approach seems same as our RCA class approach, and I think we could focus on the article, though we sometimes were criticized by our teacher,
I could read the article and think about the contents more deeply than when I do that in my room.
I feel I have been learning how I should prepare and study in these days, and it will help me when I become exchange student 2 years later.

Actually, we had had 6 ELA teachers exclude our current ARW teacher, and all of them didn't prohibit using iPhone during classes, even though they did their class by the way which is called "old style" by our current ARW teacher.

I know, why our ARW teacher got angry and was disappointed.
Our laziness caused that obviously.
So, we learned we should do anything according to what teacher wants us to do.
That's all, nobody gets angry against people who do anything according to his/her direction.


After class I went to Kichijozi to go to live house with my friend from high school.
The band which played on stage was so strange, because all members were pastors.
Also, most of the audiences were adult they seems to be more than 40's.
I have never experienced such live, but it was so fun and interesting for me.

A lesson. 15th October.

We had a ARW class in PC room and we learned how to use Zotero in our essay again.
When we write essay in English, we have to write references in English as well.
However, some of us chose our essay theme from Japanese issues, and sometimes there is a few articles or journals about Japanese issues in English.
we are looking for articles which would support our essay in Japanese, even in that case, we should write references in English.
So, we have to write the article title in Romaji and translate by ourselves.

Actually, sometimes I feel difficulties about searching articles or journals in English.
We Japanese used to see Japanese word and we can find only important point in long sentences when that article is written in Japanese.
When I search articles for my essay, it takes a lot of time to find articles which I actually need.
Of course, I can search easy question in English like " how many people speak English in the world".
However when I wanna search article for academic essay, it would be more difficult and complex question.
So I tend to put Japanese in the space for searching.

And also, my essay theme is "Rakuten's challenge to make standard English as official language", so it's difficult to find article about my essay theme written in English.
Sometimes, I wonder when I try to write essay about Japanese issue, why do I have to write my essay in English? My essay won't publish around world.
I know, I have to prepare to be international student and publish my opinion to the world.
In this case, should I choose essay theme related with international issues? Even if I wanna write and research about Japanese tinny issue


Probably, all of us could learn a lesson which we have to do our job systematically. We should be college student. We should corporate with partners.
We have no excuse for our laziness.

Something interesting. 14th October.

We watched some "fun" video clip in our ARW class.
One of them was about the Japanese way of eating sushi, but it wasn't true for Japanese.
That movie was actually a little bit fun for me as a Japanese who could tell that video was false and comedy.
However, I thought if the foreigner who have never been to Japan and didn't know how actually to eat sushi watch that video, they might misunderstand or think "is Japanese crazy?".
That video was about sushi, so it won't make big matter.
BUT, I'm afraid. IF someone tries to  make a video which  show bad and false impression about Japanese to foreigner,  foreigner might get a false understanding about Japanese.
In the internet, it's too difficult to correct all video that based on false fact.

We never try to do cruel thing against whale, but some foreign advertisement show some disgusting action which never be done by Japanese.

I think there are a lot of such kind of advertisements around world.
People should be careful and shouldn't accept without enough evidence.

Holiday but we had a class. 13th september.

We had a class even today was holiday.
However, today's class was a little bit different from usual.
What is favorite color, what is favorite animal, what is favorite water, how do you feel about white room, and describe myself.
Favorite color represents what I want to be, favorite represents my ideal lover, favorite water represents an ideal love, white room represents an after-death world.
I thought that psychological test is accurate about 70%.

I wanna be cool and profound guy.

Actually I love bath which is warm, comfortable, relaxing and enjoyable.
This represents an ideal love.

After that, we draw some pictures.
According to this psychological test, I'm a person who think I'm center of the earth.

Usually, I don't believe such kind of test
It was fun to believe as a joke.

Best performance ever!!! 8th October.

Today, our ARW class was in Mac room.
Then, we learned some new useful tool in the web such as youtube education, iTunes U, and so on.
I didn't know that we could watch academic video for free by youtube and iTunes.
Even Harvard University's lecture which is one of highest level lecture in the world is available in iTunes U.

Google plus is also useful for find some new information or connect others.
I belonged to jazz community in Google plus.
So when someone who is in that community post new good jazz song on the community, I can know that song even I totally didn't know about that song.

Sometimes, we can get some useful information from Twitter.
However I think we should be careful of the information from someone's tweet, because there are a lot of wrong information based on bias or insufficient evidence in the internet.




We had a skit performance as a ICU dorm festival event.
I was a kind of main character in my dorm Global House's skit "ICU cats".
Our script was traditionally written by students who are in second grade.
One of our senior whose name is Konno Satomi, she was leader of our skit.
All of us who performed skit absented from practice at least once, but she attended all practices and reconsider the script many times.
She also thought about our costumes and dance.
I was main character in our skit, however it was Satomi who actual main character and indispensable person.
Our performance in the stage was the best one ever, and we could finish our skit with everyone's smiles.
After skit performance, we went to restaurant with costumes which we wore in the skit.
Those experiences are unforgettable for me.

Autumn is coming. 7th October.

Yesterday, all class were cancelled because of terrible typhoon.

After that typhoon, the temperature decreased and we could feel "autumn".

In today's ARW class, we thought about selective judgement. 

There was big bag produced for military, and we were divided into two group, one group had to point out that bag's good points, the other had to do bad points.

It was interesting for me because we could say different thing to same thing.

For example, the bag has so many pouches, then we could say this is so useful to keep staffs in them, and we could complain that that is useless for ordinary people and that makes the price expensive as well.

That was in class activity, so we could find easily these prejudiced opinions.

However, it is hard to find such biased recommendations or opinions in our daily life.

So we should be careful of what is the fact and what is biased opinion.

Under the good weather in autumn, my unit mate and I took some unit picture in front of ICU church and Bakayama, and in our unit.

Actually, all of pictures which we took were great, so I'm gonna put one of my favorite photo on this blog post.

ICU dorm festival is started!! 1st October.

It is already October!!
These days, most of ICU students include my friends and me look tired.
ICU has ICU festival in the end of this month, so it may be one reason of that.
Anyway, we learned one of most useful tool in the internet in our ARW class, Zotero.
Zotero will help us by so useful function.
We can write citation in our essay by just using Zotero website and most kind of the way to citation are equipped with that.
If we know Zotero, we don't have to be annoyed with the number of the way to citation and references.
So the author can focus on contents of the essay, not trivial thing such as citation.
I'm gonna use Zotero in my essay from now on.


ICU dorm festival was started from today!!
The Bakayama ice(愛す) Janken was hold during today's lunch time at Bakayama.
I participated in that event as a Global House resident.
Fortunately or unfortunately, my friend who lives in 2nd men's dormitory won the Janken competition and he got the right to declare his love to someone in front of public at Bakayama.
I had thought he said "I love ICU" or " I love 2nd men's dormitory" or something like that, but surprisingly, he declared his true love to Juri Tada who lives in 2nd women's dorm.

Then, this was just rumor but this said she dumped him....I don't know it's true or not.

Time flies like an arrow. 30th September.

Today is 30th September, the last day of September.
A month has passed since end of summer break.
Did I improve my English skill?
Did I learn something new?
Did I enjoy my first month of autumn term?

I can say "Yes, I did" with confidence.
Probably, today's discussion about our perception of adult and child can be some evidence for my answer to those questions.
During our discussion, one of our group member said that "in my perception, people who can earn money and live by themselves are "adult"."

Then, some questions came up with my head.

For example, Japanese student whose age is 16, who could start up their own business such as IT business and has a lot of money that enough to live by himself is adult?
He can't drink beer, smoke, vote, nor get marriage in Japan.

How about an aged person who already retired his career and totally depends on his son and daughter and social welfare to live?
According to his perception of adult, he is not adult because he can't earn money and live by himself.

In my perception, it's depends on environment around people.
I'm 19 years old.
When I was in Canada, there were not my real parents, and Canadian treated over 18 people as an "adult".
So I should be adult, I should do everything by myself in Canada.
However when I am in Japan, I can rely on my parents, Japanese treats under 20 people as an "child".
So I can be child and can behave as a child in Japan.

Anyway, each of our discussion members had interesting their own perception of adult, and it was so interesting for me.
We could discuss better than last term.


After all classes, my friends in my dramatic company and I saw the drama of Gekidan Ko-kasha.
It was pretty good drama, and there were a lot of good point that we should learn from them.
I was hooked on their drama from the beginning of the drama to the end.