Blog #10 Movies' Names in Japanese

Hi! This is Kimura Takuto.


As you know, during the cultural festival I went to Hokkaido and met many international students from all over the world. One of whom was from Britain. He asked me what is my favorite film, to which I replied BIOHAZARD (バイオハザード）. And then, he said " you know? the film called like this in Japanese is dubbed RESIDENT EVIL in English." I was surprised to notice that and decided to research on this. As to the film, which originated in a Japanese game, when the game was imported to occidental countries, it was named RESIDENT EVIL. And that is why the film has the same name.


Seeing films from America and Europe imported to Japan, you will easily figure out they have Japanese names. For example, we watched The Big Sleep in the class, which is named "三つ数えろ, Count to Three" and City Lights, "街の灯". And even though some movies in Japanese have the same (or alike, because of the difference in pronounciation between Japanese and English) title as those in English, they are named in Katakana, Top Hat, " トップハット", Paper Moon, " ペーパー・ムーン", and The Modern Times, " モダン・タイムス" not having the in Japanese version.

Who decides Japanese names? The answer is distribution companies. Movie distributors purchase not only the right to broadcast films but also that to name them. And since English characters are less familiar to the Japanese than Kanji, Hiragana and Katakana, they are likely to re-name.


But sometimes, titles in Japanese do not go with their stories, which movie companies in Europe and America are afraid of and make contracts to rename their movies only in Katakana with Japanese distributors. And also in Japan, there are some who do not like films with terrible names in Japanese, saying they are nonsence.


Now, English is intelligible to many Japanese. And I think movies from foreign countries need not be dubbed in Japanese, maybe Katakana is okay. Films mistakenly dubbed in Japanese would just confound spectators and benefit little to them. If movie distributors have time to discuss film titles in Japanese, they might as well make inpressing trailers.

Blog #9 TED:Peter Norvig "The 100,000-student classroom

Hello this is shoko. TED has many attractive lectures and I personally think watching TED talks is so much better way than watching boring TV programmes to kill your time. Today, I would like to introduce you this lecture:"The 100,000-student class" by Peter Norvig. This short lecture is about an online education system which was filmed Feb 2012 and posted Jun 2012.

I choose this lecture because I am interested in education and its effect on people. I am taking teacher training course and studying lots of things about teaching and learning. I actually knows online education has a huge possibility to change the current education system and there are already various online education courses which are provided by many education companies.  However his system is different from those ordinary ones and it actually seems an interesting way. So I would like to share his idea with you.

 

 

Peter Norvig is a computer scientist and currently the Director of Research at Google Inc and he used to be a teacher at the Stanford University. Through his teaching experience, he noticed that even contents of each lecture have been improved, the way of teaching has not changed at all for long long time.  In the fall of 2011, he started to change the way of teaching and learning: he made a  free online education system. People can watch the high level lecture movies on the web. In addition, in his system, he gave students homework and decided due date so that students can study as if they actually take this course in class. After student completed their course and if they pass them, they can receive an actual certification.  

 

Online education system is no longer interesting and new thing. What attractive thing in this lecture is his original ideas. He tried to make online web course more real: he gave small quizzes during a video and homework assignments.  Also he changed the way of teaching: he adopted man-to-man teaching method. In order to make a content easier to grasp, he divides a long lecture into small 2~6 minutes video. Those characteristics are really effective to motivate students to keep studying. Because an online course does not have a class, students have to study by themelves and in that situation, they often lose motivation easily and quickly. Therefore, this difference from other online lecture courses amazed me.

 

Free online education system has huge possibility. It enables poor and busy people to learn high quality contents whenever they want and gives opportunity to people all over the world.  However, only people who have a computer can do this program and other the poorest people cannot. This is obviously an attructive education system. However, we also have to think about people who really cannot study in their life. More than 160,000 students from 209 countries enrolled Norvig's web site so this system actually does work. This system can be impoved more and more in the future for people who need it.

 



Blog #9: TED Susan Cain: The Power of Introverts

Hi! This is Takuto.

I was surprised to hear in the class about TED, which I had been using as a study material when I was in highschool. There are many stories I recommend you to watch, but this is the best I have ever seen.

I chose this story because, as you know ( or don't know?) in the class, I'm not so talkative person. That is why the first time I heard her story, I was completely encouraged and came to think I don't have to pretend to play an assertive person, but I have only to be honest to my personality.


"There's zero correlation between being the best talker and having the best ideas." [10:36]


Susan Cain states introverts have talents to come up with unique, innovative ideas which are usually hidden inside their minds and never let go, and we should not underestimate them. The story begins with her uncomfortable experience when she took part in a camp in her childhood, forced to become "ROWDIE". And then, she casts a doubt on the society we live in, in this talk she puts school and workplace as examples,  praising aggressive, appealing people and denouncing those rarely expressing themselves. After that, she mentions cultural history in western countries including America to show why introverts have got so excluded. In conclusion, she says though she knows the importance of groupwork or communication, sometimes extroverts should be isolated and work alone to raise creativity, and as for introverts, they should expose their opinions a little more.


In my opinion, I doubt if introverts are wiser than extroverts, however, I absolutely agree her thoughts that introverts should be much more welcomed to the society, which means we should understand these sorts of people. And once in a while, we must need time to think alone.
If you are fed up with pretending to be energetic, this story will give you the courage to follow your true characters.

Blog # 8 Minimalism

Hello! This is Kimura Takuto.

Even though it is far from the end of this year, I have begun cleaning my room. And I have sold some card games I used to play with. When cleaning my room, I recalled an article in Courrier Japon. This is about minimalism.

Minimalism originated in art, design and music, and means erasing all unnecessary things and making works simple without characteristics. But recently, it has been incorporated in lifestyles, living a life with only 100 belongings including furniture and clothes.

To become a minimalist, five things are required.

1. Throwing away all unnecessary things

2. Having a good eye to distingish precious things from your stuffs

3. Cherish what you have chosen, not discarding it so easily

4. Never look at huge empty space in your room as sad, but as pleasant

5. Change your life style over and over again. Never linger in one particular style


If you don't see what I'd like to say, please refer to this, written in Japanese.

Thanks to tablet PC and smart phones having many functions, not so many things are needed when living. ( For example, clock, weather forecast, TV, newspaper and so on can be replaced by these devices.) And since economy is still dipping and people are likely to refrain from spending money on luxuries, minimalism would become appreciated.

However, there are some dissidents arguing eliminating unnecessary things also means eliminating memories and emotions reminded from them. Think about toys you used to play with. Can you erase them without any compromise?

Blog#7: Writing My Name in Other Languages

 Hello. This is Kimura Takuto. Thank you for putting good grades on my presentation!! I'm sure it will give me confidence to presentate.

By the way, did you meet those from foreign countries during summer vacation? I did.  When I was in Korea, I chatted with not only Korean people, but also a professor from Iraq majoring in entomology and a Taiwanese person.

I'm fond of linguistics and every time I talk with those from other countries or Japanese studying languages I cannot speak or don't know, I have them write my name in these languages like this picture. This is Kurdish, spoken mostly in Iraq, Iran, Turkey and Azerbaijan. I asked the professor from Iraq to type my name in Kurdish, repeating my name. And interestingly, when I told my name, he said " why are Japanese names so long?". As little had I thought about such a thing, I was surprised to hear that. No wonder he said so because his name is only 7 letters in English, mine is 12.
And I found my name is difficult to pronounce. I repeating my name, he misunderstood my name for " Kimura Takumu" . I don't know why he took like this, nevetheless he got correctly at last. Mistakes in pronounciation reminds me of the trip to Seatle when I was in highschool. While I was there, staying in host family's house, I was called " Taquito", one of the famous Mexican food dishes.

↑My name written in Kurdish

And I also asked one of my friends studying Russian to write my name in it. Thanks to Russian letters' complexity , I don't know how to pronounce it.

I think this is easy way to make friends, asking those from other countries or studying languages unknown to you to write your name in these languages. And what's more, they will remember your name soon.

Try it!!







Blog#8 South Korea's Education

        Hello everyone, this is Shoko :) How was your summer vacation??I went to the lake Kawaguchi and enjoyed swimming in a river, eating Houtou which is kind of noodle, and watching fire works!!Yet i have been so busy for working and studying these days:(

        As you know, The relationship between south korea and japan is getting worse these days. I think the statement to japan’s emperor by Lee Myung-bak is still fresh in your memory. So, today’s my topic is south korea and I would like to focus on its education because i am taking teacher training course.

        South Korea, the official name is Republic of Korea, is a country located in the southern part of Korea peninsula. It is also one of neighbors of Japan which you can visit there within 3 hours by airplane from Tokyo. It is a high democratic country. The population is about 50 million. After the war with North Korea which ended in 1950, it has culturally and economically developed rapidly. Despite its tininess; 109^th largest country in the world, now it is one of the largest developed countries in Asia. According to Wikipedia, in 2008, its GDP was 1,163 trillion dollars which was ranked 15^th in the world and now its economy is fourth strongest in Asia and fifteenth in the world. Recently, South Korea is famous as exporting its culture such as K-pop, drama, food, and electronic devices. Samsung, a Korean consumer electronics company, is now one of the biggest companies as other world’s companies.

Map of South Korea

           South Korea has a compulsory education system like japan. All 6 to 14 year-old students can be taken education for free for 9 years. 

So infrastructure of education system is good compared with other developing countries. After compulsory education ends, 99.6% of students enter high school. There is no entrance examination for high school in South Korea unlike Japan. Therefore entrance examination for university is the only examination which students take. This is one reason why exam for university is extremely hard. You might know that examination  is totally bruising. Korean people attach huge importance to career. It means university you graduated decides your job and future. It is quite common that parents take a day off on the day of exam to encourage and pray for their children. Despite extremely low temperature, they wait outside until exam is over. Sometimes even police are there to take care of those parents and drive students who get a wrong exam venue to the right place.

Praying parents 

           Cram school is also one of features of South Korea’s education. Parents let their children go to cram school at an early age. Many students usually get up early in the morning and go to bed late in the night for studying. Because of that, many students damaged their health. South Korea has conscription and needs healthy young people to make strong army. 

So the government once prohibited cram school to prevent losing healthy young men. However, it did not work at all. Soon high schools were replaced as cram schools and students continued to study until midnight every day

South Korea's cram school

        There are many problems cause by its education style. In that highly tensed situation, students obviously feel unbelievable stress and pressure from parents all day. Of course they have no holiday. You might have heard that suicide rate in Korean is highest in the world.  12,858 people killed themselves in 2008, which is equal to 35 people killing themselves every day and many students are included in the number. You can see more detail HERE. Also, bullying is another huge problem.

        Thanks to such a severe education style, Korea marked high score in PISA investigation. However, its education style makes children physically and also mentally tired and unhealthy. They might need to think what is the best way to educate children once again.

Blog #8 IELTS TEST

 Hello everyone!! This is Chiaki Tochihara. Today is the last day of my long summer vacation, but I really want to see my friends, so it’s ok for me. I hope you had a great summer vacation, too:*

Today, I’ll introduce to you about an English examination called IELTS, which means International English Language Testing System. Do you know about it? Or Have you ever taken the exam?? I have taken the exam twice, and I felt the test was terrific test that I have never taken before.

Nowadays in Japan, TOEIC test is very common and we had such an exam when we entered this university. Most of Japanese people would know TOEIC because when we start to find a job, almost all companies ask us about the scour of TOEIC test, so university students try to study hard and get high score of TOEIC test. Basically, thought TOEIC test has two sections, listening and reading test, it becomes to have other section, speaking and writing test. Unfortunately, however, we cannot use the score of TOEIC test for studying abroad.

On the other hand, recently, IELTS becomes popular all over the world and same as Japan. The test is suitable test for people who want to show their English skills for study abroad and study training, or who apply for their transmigrations. IELTS is admitted by some institution of higher education in UK, Australia, Canada and New Zealand. In America, it is getting to be accepted for the entrance exam, and the candidates all over the world have been getting increase.

Speaking of study abroad, TOEFL test is very common one, but TOEFL test has many difficult specialist vocabularies and examination candidates have to take the exam with using a computer, so that means, in speaking section, we speak to the screen of the laptop. I think it depends on the person which exam is good for them but there are three advantages of IELTS test.First, we don’t need to have specialist vocabulary’s knowledge. Of course we need to learn many vocabularies, about 10000 words, but even if we are lack of the specialist vocabularies, don’t worry because we can figure out such a difficult meaning word by reading sentences around the word, we can guess its meaning. In TOEFL test, if we have not learned a special field, we cannot get high score even if we have high English skills. But in IELTS test, we are equal on the situation weather have learned a special field or not, so it is easier to get high score. Second, we can test our real English skills for all four sections. IELTS test has four sections, listening, reading, writing and speaking, and we have to write the correct spelling of the answers even on the listening test, it means it’s not a mark-test. Of course there are also some questions for the test-taker to select among, but we are needed to write correct spelling and the singular and the plural, so it will become our real English skills because nowadays writing on the paper becomes less than before because of the computer or some convenient devices, many people, even native people, cannot spell correctly today, so IELTS improves our spelling skills too. And especially on the reading section, some topics of the passage are really interesting and good for our life, we can get to know about interesting categories, so I have never felt tired as reading and studying for IELTS test. These new knowledge make us more clever and we can put our learning to practical use after entering the foreign university. Third, we can feel as if we were in other place outside Japan. The exam begins with an explanation which proctor gives in English. At the first time that I took the exam, I was surprised but I could enjoy the environment looks like foreign countries. In addition, there are many candidates, not only Japanese but also the people come from other countries. So I can also feel foreign environment. At last, we can talk with a British examiner during speaking test, so it is a sort of a good training of talking with native speaker. I cannot speak in smooth and fluent English but I like speaking section because of I can talk with them!!

In short, IELTS is an exam but I can enjoy taking this exam!! If you have never taken this exam, please try and know your real English skills. After taking the exam and getting to know which section is your weak point, you can strengthen that point!!

Oh, I have to say to you guys, please pay great attention, because this test has very strict surveillances: due date, show passport, expensive, identify fingerprint and many things that we should do before the exam….if you forget to do only one of these, you cannot take the exam even if you paid….the same as me….