The last day of Autumn Term. 11th November.

Finally, we finished out last class in autumn term!!
Time flies, but many interesting and unforgettable things happened in thins term.
I could experience and learn a lot of important things thorough all classes, my friends, my club activities, and so on.
I want to say thank you everyone.

Anyway, we watched TED talks during our last ARW class.
The topic were education and creativity.
Actually, the most impressive phrase for me in class was not TED speaker's words but our teacher's words.

He said "teachers can encourage students but they can't do everything, only students themselves can take action by themselves. If you don't try to learn from teachers or others, you can't learn anything.".

That's true.
It's totally depend on individuals whether they do something or not.
Others include teachers, parents, and friends can only assist us or encourage us.
If we don't take actions, nothing will happen.

So, we have all responsibility for what we do.
Everything is our own choice.
Ultimately, we don't have any excuses for our own actions.

Our teachers taught many things to us in this term, it's depend on us what we learn from them.
We can forget what they taught to us, and also we can make the most of what we learned.

I'm gotta try harder.

New encounter in class. 7th November.

we discussed about our topic essay with peer editors at the beginning of today's ARW class. "What is our assumption" was our main focus of the discussion. One of my peer editor, Atsushi's essay topic is racism in Japan, mainly focus on hate-speech in Japan. I thought that he had an assumption that hate-speech is totally wrong, because he never mention in his essay about the cause of hate-speech in Japan. He just mentioned that hate-speaker is always wrong, and hate-speech should be regulated by law.

After, that discussion, we had another discussion, rather small presentation about our own essay.

Actually, I could hear many interesting story and analysis from other's presentations. One of my friend's essay topic is Cannibalism between human being. She said that human had eaten human a long time ago, and law

So, I thought that it is human instinct to eat human, because human being had eaten human being when there was no law or nobody who criticize him/her.

Then, under the assumption that human being has an instinct to eat human being, I wonder that why some western people dislike to eat whale, nevertheless, they have been eating pork, beef, or chicken, and also they have the instinct to eat even human being. 

Another friend's essay topic is about euthanasia. It is so controversial topic not only in Japan but also around the world.

His stance on euthanasia is positive, so he claimed that Japan should introduce it.

He showed us to some evidence that euthanasia will bring some merit to Japan and some examples which some countries already introduced it.

I didn't know that thing, so his presentation was meaningful for me.

Then, I searched about euthanasia after class.

I could get new knowledge from my friends, and some new point of views to controversial topics. 

We could collaborate and stimulus each other, today's class was interested.

Marshmallow day. 5th November.

We did the marshmallow challenge in our ARW class, that challenge was that we try to build tall architectural structure by 2o spaghetti, 1m rope and packaging tape with 4 or 5 group members with in 18 minutes.
When we tried that challenge first, our record was 0m, because we spent most of our time to think structure.
Then, we put marshmallow on the top go building, our building collapsed.
The research show that kindergarteners usually had better record than adults.
The reason why they could do that challenge well is that they do "try and error" many time from the beginning of 18 minutes.
In our real life, most of the situations that we try to solve or do well are same as the marshmallow challenge.
We have time limit in every situations.
Kindergarteners tried to build without thinking, then they correct wrong point one by one.
I thought we should do everything according to some plan, but we shouldn't spent a lot of time to think plan without any real action.

Actually, I'm thinking to start my own business in any way before graduating from ICU.
So, today's class taught me that I should act and don't be afraid of errors.
If I fail something new, I can learn from mistakes and can try again like kindergardeners.
I am still young.

It's already November. 4th November.

Time flies, it's already November.
In today's our class, we discuss about immigration into Japan and bias against foreigners in Japan.
Our teacher said that Japan have to accept immigrants as a work force because of lack of Japanese work force.
I agree with that, but  Japanese government should act carefully.
I found Canadian government web site and there was statistic which was published by United Nations Office an Drugs and Crime.
That statistic show that Japan's homicides rate is lowest one within 17 countries include U.S. and U.K.

I don't want immigrants to make Japan unsafe and uncomfortable place for citizens of Japan as U.S. and Canada.
In the Canada case, a lot of Chinese came to Canada because Canadian immigration policy was tolerant.
As a result, many China town was built and such place looks like slam for Canadian people.
When I studied in Canada, I saw the situation many times that people who speak Chinese yell at shop clark and bought up one item without any consideration for others.

Japan mainly needs cheaper work force than Japanese higher educated work force.
It means a lot of immigrants who were not higher educated, who can't speak Japanese at all, and in worst case, who don't even try to gain a deeper understanding for Japan.

Japan needs immigrants, but it's totally wrong to make Japan playground for foreigners which they can do whatever they want to do selfishly.

In my opinion, I can't accept immigrants into Japan with full of happiness.

Halloween. 31st October.

Today, we had an ARW class about race.
(some people include me attended the class with costume.)
First, we took off our shoes and separated into 3 groups by foot shapes.
One group was considered as superior to other group by the foot shape by our teacher, and we made disgusting and shameful name for other group.
Then, we were separated into 2 group by ears shape.
One group was considered as more intelligent than other group by our teacher.
Same thing have been happening around the world, our teacher said.
Some people have been saying "they are inferior to us, because they are black".

After that, we discussed about whether there is "race" or not.
I think there is race, but there is no connection between race and one's ability.
It's over generalization.
However, as history shows, race has been connected with one's ability like black and white.
Some people ask, for example, when Japanese woman get married with American man and have children, what is the race of that children.
I can answer the question, they are American-Japanese.
Then, if American-Japanese people get married with Italian people and have children, they are American-Japanese-Italian.
So, in that situation, we might say it's meaningless, if there are 1million people, there should be 1million races.
I agree, that's right, but that claim doesn't prove " there is no race".
I think there is race as a category, and it's not that problem.
The problem with race is that the assumption which race is connected with one's ability without rational reason.