June 9th

I have not been doing blog posts for such a long time.
Recently I have been too lazy..how can I be more like a hard working student??

Today we discussed about each essay topics. I was trying to attack other people's essay topics and so on, but I found it hard because I did not come up with any good ideas, and I do not have enough confidence about my speaking skills. I think I have problems even when I am discussing something in Japanese, so when doing it in English, I do not know what to say. When comparing myself and other students in class, I get depressed and wonder why I am in program C so I have been trying to get a good solution to this problem. The second problem I have in discussion is that I do not really have opinions. In order to be able to have opinions I guess I must have interests broadly..but it is hard.

And also people in my group today gave me really good ideas, so thank you guys. It will be a great help for me to write my essay, so I appreciate that much.

About two weeks left until summer holidays so I am really looking forward to it.

On May 28th

We did sentenceworks and it is very useful. I just used it if there are any mistakes in my essay for tomorrow. And we had guests from Ritsumeikan university.
I am happy to come to ICU though we have lots of homework. That is because I think we can learn what we would not learn in other univerties.
During this weekend, I needed to do fieldwork for anthropology, so I think if I have one more day to rest, it would be very nice. But anyway, summer holiday is coming soon. Probably three weeks left, so I am really looking forward to it.

On May 26th

Today we had a guest teacher, who is Rab's friend. We covered interesting stuff of American commercials during election campaign. It is about both of Obama and Mccain. One is the position from Mccain and another is from Obama. Also, what media shows to us and what it does not show(background story) is really interesting. For example, in the commercial about Mccain, it was said that he cannot even use computers and send emails in such a technologically advanced society. In reality, though, he cannot use his fingers to type because during vietnam war, he was captured and torture was undertaken. It is too horrible to say that even though it is for winning.
Besides, commercials are really tricky..It is using sad music, harsh voices, those who are weak when talking about other candicate's faults, which must give negative feeling to people. It can also be said in other way around. I think in every schools students need to learn these kind of things so that they can question and pose a moment for thinking for themselves...the goverment shall not let it though.

On May 26th

It would be much much easier if I am demanded to prove I am the worst student in this class.

In class, we have been practicing to write in a formal way. In writing essays, it is necessary to convince people, and therefore we should use academic and formal words in order to make you seem smart. I would keep in mind that we should also be balanced. That is because people think the writer looks things from only one point of view when they rarely take another point of view or contrast opinions.

On 24th of May

We discussed about how everyone's essay topics and saw whether there were any assumptions. And then we practiced having speeches in front of people. I think in my essay I am going to talk about how different perception could be when reading on the Internet or on the book. For the past several years it has been very popular to read things on the Internet ( like Keitai syousetsu) but I do not really like these kind of things because it is kind of hard to read. Last essay I submitted was no good, so I want to make my next essay good.



I have two essays which have to be done until the end of this months. One is for anthoropology and another one is for christianity. I have to do some fieldwork for my anthoropology one but I have just finished reading materials so have no idea what I am going to research. But I think I will try to be on time.

On 18th of May

Rab surprised us a lot yesterday. We came late to class because we had a swim before ELP, and he seemed mad..so I got nervous and felt awkward. But he was actually pretending to be mad, so i was so relieved that he wasn't. I do not want to be scared of!!
It is necessary to be sensitive to nonverbal communication signs. Otherwise we could get into trouble. When going to different countries, we need to learn what kind of nonverbal comminication there are.

On psychology test, my result was pretty embrassing. Especially I drew a big house on the center of paper.....everyone in my group pointed it out and had a laugh.

I have no class tommorow so I am so happy!!!But tommorow for this weekend camp, I need to go to Hitotsubashi university to practice dance. We are going to dance in front of really lots of people. I think it is 250 people there. Boys are going to wear girls' school uniforms so it will be funny to look at.

On May 17th

Today we learned about changing informal grammer to academic writing style. When I was taking writing class in my high school, I often thought that my writing lacks something. Now I know what made my essay seem so long. I was using several words to describe things when one word could be replaced.

Today's psychological test was really funny. I enjoyed it a lot. My favorite animal is dog, and why I like it was that it is obedient. It was actually how I want my boyfriend to be.....if I was a male, I would not want to go out with a girl who wants a male to be obedient....
By the way, I thought this psychological test was believable when I described pink to be feminine, bright, peaceful, and warm. It is really ideal of myself, and how I want to be.
If I try this to my family or friends, these results would be interesting too.

To be honest, I was not excited about going to retreat at all, but it was fun. Normally, I have only few chance to talk to student in program A and B, so I was glad to be able to get to know those people.

After school, I practiced dance of "Hare Hare Yukai" with several students for this weekend camp. It is a song of a cartoon. We are going to dance this for a number of weekend camp, and audience will be large, so we will practice it tommorow, too.

Nisbett chapter 6

I read about the experiment of whether categorizing objects or regarding things as a whole, and I thought that I would apply to the case of Chinese.
It may be not related to these kind of stuff but I sometimes think that Japanese way of thinking is kind of similar to Koreans when I watch Korean TV shows. I cannot explain what makes me feel familar to Korean people.

As said in page 150, parents have different ways of thinking and how they talk to thier children is different between Western and Eastern culture. Nurture gives so much effects to people. Some people seem to be able to get used to different culture and be more like local people.

P 159, the author is saying that "the differences in linguistic structure between languages are reflected in people's habitual thinking process." I recently studied that it can be said in other way too. I mean that languages gives influences to people's thinking processes. I was wondering why people seem different when they talk other languages, so it was a surprise but I can agree with this idea. In English, people talk frankly and point is easy to understand. In Japanese, in contrast, people talk in more ambiguous way. If people are fluent in many languages, they may find many different aspects of themselves so it would be funny.

Nisbett chapter 4

I am really dissapointed right now because my comment about chapter 4 was not on the post though I did this before writing about chapter 5. But anyway I will finish this up quickly.

Because now if we go to other big cities, they look alike, people tend to forget there are several differences. If we have basic ideas about people's way of thinking and their cultures are, it would help us a lot to understand them better and faster.

Chapter 4 is as same content as other chapters. The autor is saying that Asians pay more attention to context, and Westeners focus on the object. I think it is interesting that on conducting experiments on Asian Americans, they are in the midway. They are infulenced by both of thinking so they might be the most flexible and are able to understand both of them.

Since I have been trying t0 do "critical thinking" what I think I got is everything could be wrong. (though I do not really think I can remember that all the time.)

If I question why students have to be critical about things, is it good critical thinking????
I do not know what I was questioning...it is confusing to think about this.

Nisbett chapter 5

I read this chapter on my way home in a very crowded train yesterday.

When condicting experiments on children in Indian culture and American culture did not show differences in explaining behavior. It is true that murture give lots of influences to children because when we are small we like to watch what others are doing and copy them. Children are really flexible.

While reading page 127, I remembered about my history class in elemetary school.
We are always asked questions and everyone's reply was like,
" I thought it was really hard for him to do this. If I was him, ...."
Everyone was talking about empathy. It was my case so I do not know it applies to many elementary school.

While trying to do "critical thinking" what I think I get is I cannot be so sure about things any more...(though I do not really think I can be critical all the time.)

May 11th disscussions about what assumptions are

This one is for the day before yesterday. When I get home it is late because when I have class in period 5 or 6 I come home at around nine. I should be thinking about moving around Mitaka because it takes very long time to come to ICU everyday. Anyway that was just an excuse for always suspending things like this...This month is going to be very busy because it seems like I have to write two essays for two classes by end of this month. I have to make sure what I was supposed to write about. Before I came to ICU, I was very motivated and thought that I would be a very hard-working student here, but recently I have been wondering what I was thinking then. To keep high motives for things are very difficult.

By the way, yesterday we discussed about several examples of assumptions. As I said in a previous comment, because of the lack of enough knowledge and we have basic ideas about how things are, it is hard to detect assumptions.

In the future, when we get older and get a job, we would work with those who might be from other parts of Asia or Europe or Africa or something. If we know differences and could accept them, it would be much better than not knowing at all. It can be simple but also can be difficult to understand another cultures and different people.

Monday's class

I think it is hard to detect assumptions especially when we think it is normal to act like that or think that way. We need to be trained where there are assumptions many times, too. However when someone has more knowledge about other countries and their cultures and so on, it would be much easier for them to find out what assumptions are. I guess Rab can detect assumptions much easier than us because he has much more basic information about people living in this world.
Before I came to ICU, I have never thought about this kind of assumptions. In my previous idea, biased ideas or thoughts are normally easy to find out because it seems obvious...but in reality it is hard to notice because my ideas are biased too. I only know about the world just surrounding myself, and just a bit about a whole world.
Also if you look things from many different sides, any assumptions would be much easier to find out.

Nisbet chapter3

When I read the second page of this chapter3(P48, line10 to 22) I quiestioned to what is written there. It says, "People think individuals should not be singled out for special treatment because of their attributes or connections to important people." He is talking about Europeans and American people here but I heard that in Britain and America, people have class and they are not so willing to hang around with people in different class. Besides, in England, which university people can go depends on which family they are from. I mean, people from good pedigree are only regarded to have a right to go to the smartest universities. (I think Rab has once talked about it.)Doesn't it mean a special treatment?
I do not especially have contrary opinion about any other part of this chapter. I can mostly agree with this author. However I want to add just one point to his opinion. He insists that in Asia, they think older people should be respected, and also a manager should be older than subordinates. It applies to most of Japanese people. Of course, I do not think people in higher positions should be always older.(I think it just may be kind of awkward to have a younger manager..) If I can add one more thing to this fact, people in Asia respect olders because they normally have more experimences than younger people. They should use honorific words(Keigo in Japanese) to olders in order to show their respects even though they are in close relationships. This might be my personal opinion, but in relationships with other people, the basic thing is to have respects to others always and be polite. Probably I think in this way because I have grown up in a high context society which value harmony with other people. If I grew up in a low context society, I must be very different from what I am. People are all very flexible and can always get influences from others.
One more thing I want to mention is that the author says that Westerners like to say things exaggerately. People in America tend to talk about their daily life more unique than it really is. (I can not find which page he was talking about this.) Also as said in page 74, a certain style of rhetoric style is new and uncommon to Asian students. While my exchange to NZ, I was always feeling this because I found "Excellent" or "Fantastic" or "Fabulous" a lot in daily conversation. It must be very fuuny if I use these kind of words to reply to someone else.

Chaper 3 was long but it was the most interesting part.

Friday's class

On Friday at ELP, we watched a video about demonstrations against WTO policy in Seattle and how media changes facts of what actually occurred there. It was really hard to believe because America is often said to be like "a country of freedom", but in reality what WTO and police were doing was oppressing the weak violently. My heart ached for it a lot..but at the same time I felt kind of ashamed of myself too. People in this demo seemed to be very powerful and believed that they could change the situations, and even though they were subjected to police violence, they looked like satisfying with having been there. Probably that is because everyone in there had same hope which gave strong unity to people. As told in class, Japanese seems contrast to these people. They are uninterested in what is happening outside and also inside of Japan. That may be because unless something is directly related to their lives, they think they are not their business. Or I could say they tend to think they cannot change things if they get actions....I am Japanese, and I think I can be these sort of people, but I have no idea why Japanese way of thinking is like this.
I have been searching about Futenma issue because currently it is a main topic of Japan, and it seems that people in Okinawa and a few educated people in mainland protest that Futenma base should be at least outside of Okinawa, but many many people in mainland do not get action to protest against this issue. It is true that people in Okinawa has been suffered for this 65years because of American air bases. However in one video I watched, one guy said that people in Okinawa profit from American bases..perhaps some of aspects of these bases can be profitable for some people...but Japanese media says 70% of people in Okinawa are against this issue. I do not think I can get true information from Japanese media because I am in mainland and it must be quite different from contents of news in Okinawa. How can I get true information in Japan though we are now able to know things in overseas from freedocumentaries?
I now think that I knew only a few things about the world I live in. It is really shame that we Japanese people are not interested in the weak who are subjected to violence, and those who are suffered from wars and diseases in developing countries...I will get efforts to know about it and in the future want to change these situations.

chapter2 Nisbett

The author says that one of facters of why Greeks developed individuality is they had more chances to encounter outsiders and different ideas. I think it is true. Take Japan. We are often said to be shy and are not really good at expressing ideas because of few opportunities to meet people having different backgrounds. Also it means nurture gives us lots of effects.
The second thing I want to mention is that it is wrong to say Chinese people lack curiosity. That is because the author has not enough reasons about this, so it may be his prejudice. He mentions modern China lack curiosity too, but now China has been developing a lot. I mean that this world is so global so if they do not have interests in overseas, it must limit development.

Nisbet chapter1

I do not think that I got this contents very well, but I want to question this author one thing.
He is saying that we can teach people the new way of thinking. Does it say it is better to think either in Western way or in Asian way? Which does he think better?
It is often said that Westeners value individuals and Asians value harmony. I think this is true because I've just felt it through interaction with people from Western countries. However it does not always correct. For example if we define Asians and Westeners, it would cause prejudice in ourselves even though some of cultures or countries do not fit to these ideas. In short it is important for us to see this idea as one part of many other ideas.

How to be confident about giving speech

what we did today was making Zotero accounts in a computer room. it is necessary to be creative and individualistic but I am not so sure if I can do that. I think I should be more careful about what others are doing in a class because my brain is lazy and doesn't work well.. Actually I don't really like using computer and stuff because it confuses me, but if I were really good at using it, it would be very interesting and fun. I hope that I will love using computers when I graduate ICU.
Also Rab explained to us how we can be confident and relaxed about speaking in front of people. Just think those who are in front of you and looking at you are not wearing cloths. It is called mind trick. I think it is funny but useful too because I have tried it already and successfully I could be more realaxed.
Besides you have got to be looking at people in a ramdom order while standing giving speeches, says Rab. That is because it is important to make connections between you and listeners. It should not be one way communication. It may be very easy for people who love giving speeches to large number of people, and definetely I am not this kind of person. But recently I have really wanted to be like confident about saying what I think, so this ELP class gives a great chance for me to improve myself.

I was so embarrassed to make this movie because I hadn't done it before.. but I guess it is a good practice for me to improve my speaking skills.
I learned that in writing essays we are supposed to have more than three reasons to support our opinions.
Also we need to

These songs help us to learn that it is important to get up the quality. We need quantity too but the most important thing is to have different types of things in essays in a simple way.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tjY3UvQ2n98
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tjY3UvQ2n98

In ELP

We dissussed Meiland in yesterday's class.
We read the same material but everyone had different feedbacks about Meiland, so I thought it was quite interesting to listen to what others thought.
Some people's comments were very imaginative and it made me laugh.
It is very hard to explain my own opinions to others because Im not good at speaking English at all..but hopefully I will improve it a lot!
Now I need to start reading today's homework.