The Chat Lounge Report #2

Chat Lounge Report #2
Partner : Alex
Date : ?

On that day, I was so hungry because of skipping the lunch, and then Alex was too. We began to talk about Japanese and American foods without notice. I have never been to foreign country so that I'm not sure what kind of foods in America is popular for daily meals (=breakfast, lunch, and dinner). According to Alex, it is common for American breakfast to eat toasts, salads, fruits, and sausages with scramble eggs. Especially, coffee is indispensible for American people to begin a day smoothly. (In fact, some of movies I have seen ever have one scene which people drink coffee in the morning at least.) Alex said he could work well if he didn't drink it in the morning too. In my case, drinking coffee regularly isn't my habit so that I don't know how important it is. (When I told him my idea, he seemed to feel strange.)

Recently, it is said that Japanese foods' habits has been similar to American. 50 years ago, after WWW2, Japan was colonized by American because we lost WWW2. And then the American climates changed Japanese ones. For example, those are clothes, household appliances, transportations, and products. Japanese people who used to wear Kimono tried to wear western clothes, and stated to use electronic devices such as TVs. (This industrial revolution in Japan has developed our life conveniently. It happened remarkably from around 1960 to 2000.) At that time, it was sure that Japanese were very interested in new things from foreign country. Therefore our scientific technology can have improved until today. Those effects from historical facts have occurred the change of Japan. It affects our daily lives, for example, it's eating a slice of toast and drinking a cup of coffee in the morning as breakfasts as well as American.

Just talking foods, there are many things we don't know why. However, I realized I ought to talk about foods when I am full. Why not? Because foods' topic made me and Alex very hungry.

The Chat Lounge Report #1

Chat Lounge Report #1
Partner : David
Date : November 27

I have two of my friends who have been to MN as exchange students now, and one of them, who is the 3rd year student in Bunkyo University. Before she had gone to America, she used to come to chat lounge to talk with native speakers regularly. Therefore she'd like to have a chatting with us in Japan through Skype. I wanted to know what her staying in different country as a foreigner to study abroad, and how hard the life in MN is.

As you know, it's said that studying abroad is not easy thing for us who has learned language. There are some reason I think so. First, everything of foreign country is new so we may feel culture-shocks. If it's difficult to adapt yourself to new life in overseas, we can feel stress about it. Second, we have to do housework by ourself. Its means we have to do everthing we need such as houseworks. Students who have never had experiences to do this, it will be hard for them. The most difficult things staying in non-native county should be language. That's why students go to study abroad in most of cases, but it becomes an obstacle for us even though we have confidence to speak in non-mother toungue. I mean speaking English fluenly isn't enough to make conversations smooth. American jokes are one of the good examples. Some of American jokes request to know historical facts to make an ironical remark about them in jokes. You can get the meaning even if you can understand grammatically. Actually, we need to understand society and history of country. I think that to know background is helpful when studying languages. A chat lounge partner, whose name is David, he taught me the similar ideas when I asked the difficulty of American jokes.

Finally, I could know that her staying has been great and hear about studying abroad. (This means I could know how hard studying abroad but it's really good for learners.) Nowadays I have being thought going abroad to study like my friends. On the other hands, I can't determind it because I'm worried if I won't let my stay in foreign country fruitful.

"He who gives to the poor, lends to the Lord."

If you don't have an umbrella when catching the sudden rain, what will you do to prevent yourself from the rain? Looking for an broken umbrella which somebody left on the street, or perchasing a new one by 300yen? If you don't have heavy rain, you try to pitch yourself into the rain?

In my case of yesterday, I didn't have my umbrella when I was on the way to go home. (Because I just thought it wouldn't be rainy till I arriveed at home.) Therefor there was no help without getting wet with rain, so I put one sheet of A4 paper on my head as an umbrella and started walking. During my journey to Nezu station, a man I don't know approached behind me. Actually, I didn't have any idea why he came closer but I continued to walk with wondering why. Unfotunately, I dropped my A4 paper backward because it was too wet with rain to grasp them, then I and a man caught each eyes. After two or three seconds, he spoke to me "Are you alright? I have two umbrella. So...here you are, please use it. It is too cold to walk without it." I was surprised at the unpredictable thing, I had never had such as benefits from unknown person on the street. (Absolutely, my face became :0) Finally, he left his umbrella and me on the roadside.

Coincidentally, I just learned this word "He who gives to the poor, lends to the Lord." in the class.

What Dish is real Cuisine in Tokyo?

I have never eaten genuine(real) Italian, Spanish, American, Chinese foods in the restaurants in Tokyo. I can have seen/tried similar ones like the places which we can eat delicious foods easily, e.g. 100yen Sushi and fastfoods restaurants. (It doesn't mean cheap dishes are third-classes) When I imagine our how to connect foods in recently, I felt We have changed our food style with being affected by foods' trend. Just 50 years ago, Japanese people used to eat rice, vegetables, and fish. Most of the Japanese dishes are good for health in the nutrition. In contrast, in the period including our generation, really like instants, frozen food, and deli. According to the investigation about food behavior in Japan, it shows our food style really are different from previous one. When we walk along the street, it is very much easy to find fastfood restaurants and convenience stores within 5 minute.

(I totally didin't talk about this article...)finally, I'd like to say the best cuisine for me is home-made dishes by my mother!

News and information from the article : "Tokyo 'world's best place to eat'"
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/asia-pacific/8364051.stm

The Giant Jellyfish Become a Giant Problem

Have you ever been touched any venomous(poison) tentacle(feeler) of jellyfish in the sea? This article will give us some serious facts about them.

I guess everyone knows that global warming is one of the representive issues in the world now. And it has caused a lot of environmental problems and pollutions for nature and wildlives. We could used to have the number of animals and plants, which are regard as endanger species in recent. On the other hand, some species which are harmful to native ones and human beings have bred increasingly. This jellyfish is also that one. They usually don't invate the place because of the sustanable cosystem as well as the others, but according to the damages occued by people, it has changed so that we have faced to the crisis of species. I just watched "The Inconvenient Fact" during reading class, and then I thought these problems could be more serious than present even if all over the world made an effort to save us.

I'm only able to say "As you sow, so you reap." That's why we have responsibility to do action to save the all. If we don't do anything, we including all species will be dead.

News and information from the article "Giant jellyfish swarm north in warming world"
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/33959849/ns/world_news-world_environment/

5 Objectives for Study

Good evening from midnight in Tokyo; it's about 2 a.m. now, but I'm blogging to change recent myself who can't have kept my high motivation. I talked about why we had had bad behavior for studying, and how we ought to change ourselves with Tomomi Kiomura who is one of my friends. Actually, we couldn't find our obvious answer about it, we decided to achieve 5 objectives we had to do from Monday to Friday.

My objective is,
1. "Making and memorizing 250 vocabulary cards"
2. "Study with 3 round 1 unit everyday"
3. "Read 1 article from newspapers"
4. "Don't use the Internet more than 1 hour per day"
5. "Blog 1 article every the end of day"

However, my result today(November 16) couldn't reach the goal. I missed to do 2 and 4 because I just did my homework of Journalism English(to edit pharagraph about Interest Group) with suffering from my worldly desires. But I must do my best even if I can't 5 objecs everyday, because trying to change myself makes a great degree of sense even if it's only small step for the others.

Finally, the first day for 5 aims didn't work well, so I'd like to try harder than today to be able to say "I did them today!"

The Season of Essay

About 2000 kinds of species which came from other countries currently live in Japan as invasive species. Invasive species are animals or plants which are non-native, and compete with the native inhabitants by taking over their territory. Due to close relationships between Japan and other countries, the entry of invasive species into Japan was made possible. The existence of invasive species also affected human beings, resources, and ecosystem.

The beetle is one good example of Japanese invasive species. The beetles’ population started a rapid growth is in 1999. They used to be not so popular before, however they gained popularity for two reasons. First, the International Plant Protection Convention, which came into effect in 1950 and restricted the import any harmful species in Japan, was relaxed. This made it easier to import animals and plants, so the number of species entering Japan increased. The other reason is that the image of beetles people had before changed dramatically because of the affection of children to foreign beetle. Surprisingly, this enthusiastic trend has extended to adults as well. Foreign beetles have characteristics that are different from the Japanese ones with respect to their size, shape, and color. For example, the Hercules beetle, which is a foreign beetle, is said to be the biggest beetle in the world. Its wing color is yellow, and it has a big horn. In addition, some TV animations about insects, especially beetles, were broadcasted in a way that gave an impetus to the popularity of non-native beetles from abroad. So the number of beetles imported from overseas to Japan as pets has increased year by year. In fact, the number of non-native beetles imported in 1999 is amounted to 7,000; reached 463,000 in 2000 eventually peaked at 1,923,000 in 2005. When we compare the ratio between 1999 and 2005, it is about 275 times. This exponential rise in reflects the increase in the number of people attracted to small insects.

As a result, many problems have occurred due to the foreign beetles. First, there are possibilities of any microbe and parasite carrying diseases. It is said that imported beetles haven’t brought any disease nor been harmful for human beings in Japan at present, but we can’t declare this will always be the same. Secondly, it could affect agriculture and environment. One of the invasive beetles, the Rhinoceros beetle, feeds on sugar canes, palm, and pineapple trees. And this feeding habit causes damages to farm products. Moreover, the invasive species usually don’t have natural enemies. That’s why their number has increased sharply, so it can be said that “wild invasive species” take away original environments from the native species. The most serious problem is genetic pollution by hybridization. Genetic pollution is undesirable gene flow into native populations. Spreading invasive species’ genes around domestic species has the danger to distinct native ones. Many scientists have had misgivings about the disappearance of native species in near future.

In 2004, Invasive Alien Species Act was enforced. This is the law to limit how many and what kinds of species can be imported into Japan. Although this law has taken effect for five years, we have faced to the issue of invasive species because of the difficulty in removing them. Practically, it has remained difficult to completely reduce the import of foreign insects.

Finally, we need to know the root of these serious problems about invasive species. The people have brought foreign species from other countries into Japan for several reasons such as pets, and also they have spread them over the country. In the beetles’ case, people who can’t breed foreign beetles anymore, they tend to release the non-native beetles into the wild. They do this because they think that it is the best way for living things even though this action has had a bad influence on the environment. We must not forget our responsibility for all of the species when we concern with them. Japan isn’t only the country that has the issue of these invasive species, this issue has happened in the countries of all over the world too. Nowadays, global warming, acid rain, rising sea level, and environment pollution are well-known as the world issues, and people have made an effort to change them for the better. On the other hand, there are still controversial issues like invasive species on the earth. It is necessary not only to think but also to put these ideas into action to protect all of living things before this problem is more serious.