My obituary (an imaginary one :) )

Arisa Ono, of Kanagawa, Japan died Monday, November 7, 2089 at her house peacefully.

Born in Mutsumi cho, Yokohama, on 21st October 1989 to Yoko and Masato Ono, Arisa was an overly energetic but also a talented kid. She showed her talents in music, sports, academics. Her special interest in language made her to go study abroad in Canada and France, where she found great love in English and French. Also, her ambition to always be engaged with the outside world made her to go International Christian University, where she  graduated in 2014.

From 2015 to 2045, she worked as a buyer for an international trade cooperation which locates in London. There, she had chances to travel around the globe and it was in 2020, when she met her husband, Julien Pinot, in an open air market in Paris, France.

After her retirement in 2045, she choose to move from France to Japan with her husband.
She was an avid traveler and enjoyed traveling across the country from top to bottom, with her beloved cat, Jiji. After the journey, she started to travel around the world and she found great love in Africa and Southeast Asia, where she resided for couple of years. However, she always went back Japan because she loved her home country, where she could not spend much time when she was young.
Arisa is survived by her husband, Julien, her daughter Melody, her son Louis and her cat Jiji.
The funeral service will be held at 2:00 December 25, 2089 at her house. In lieu of flowers, donations can be made to the International Cat Association.

chop chop chop !

Cooking is something I like to do, but it is also something which I have't really been keep continue doing. There were times when I tried to make it as a part of my daiy routine, but it didn't work out because I am from a small family of three, and our lifestyle doesn't really require much cooking. It doesn't mean we buy food that are ready-to-eat or we eat out a lot. It is just that because we have such a small number of people at the house, and each one of us doesn't eat a lot, it is enough for us to cook two or three times a week to prepare and preserve food for our obento. For the dinner, we cook and eat separetly due to our schedules, so again, we do not cook a large amount of food at once, since there is no one to share the food. The reason I started to think of practicing cooking again is my boyfriend. He lives alone and when I saw him cooking by himself, it made me want to help him and also to cook something together with him. So I dug out my cooking scrap book, and looked through all the recipes from different newspapers and magazines. In the book, I found the ones which I really want to try cooking. Since I love eating and have a great interest in things related to eating and cooking, I think I have a potential to be, maybe not a good one, but a modest cook. So I will start my experiment from now on, and I hope my families and boyfriend won't be victims of it.... fingers crossed !

spend and save

Last week, I was too busy with shopping that it almost felt like I went to shopping for Christmas or something...
The fist and the biggest thing I bought last week is a brand new MacBook Air, which I had been looking for so long. Now it's on my lap, looking pretty and smart :)  My old laptop was really a mess ... It suddenly turned off and I had serious trouble doing my works with it. So I am so happy that I have a new laptop which actually works and looks pretty at the same time. The next thing I　bought were presents for my best friend from elementary school. I　spent great amount of time choosing her presents, and at last, I　decided to buy a can of tea, which is rapped by a pretty Furoshiki, and chocolate candies which goes nicely with the tea. I also wrote her a card to tell her how thankful  I　am for her being my friend. When I gave her the presents, she looked very happy and her smile really made my day. I also bought a new lunch box, which I think is the prettiest lunch box I have ever seen in my life. Maybe I am exaggerating a little but in any case, I am looking forward to use it. It might seem like I didn't do so much shopping, but because I don't usually shop a lot, I felt like I bought a lot and spent a lot of money... I also became so tired after going to shopping. From next week I have to start saving and earning money because I have my granma's and mom's birthdays coming up... and it's gonna be my mom's 50th anniversary this year, so I　wish to prepare something special for her !  I will start with stop buying coffees at the school cafeteria...

"So, what is your religious belief?"

When I was in high school in Canada, I was taught by a teacher not to talk about politics and religion at parties. It is because these topics, especially the latter is very controversial and sometimes too sensitive for certain people. As of a Japanese myself, it was a bit hard to imagine people actively discussing and fighting over religious point of view, but I saw real examples of these on TVs and also at classrooms. There were many TV programs on religious issues and at classrooms, religion was a popular topic to talk about. So when I came back to Japan, I was surprised how religious is treated differently from North America. In my point of view, in Japan, it is considered too radical to devote oneself to particular religion. It is true that in Japan, it is not so common to see religiously active people compare to overseas, but because I have been brought up in christian schools from kinder garden to University(and surprisingly, I am not Christian !!), religion is not a special thing to pay attention. I thought it was something everyone accepts, until when I realized that for some people, it can be a object of fear. I don't really know the reason behind it, and I am very eager to investigate about it, but for me, religion is a guideline for people to determine their ways in their everyday lives but also in times of difficulties. For example, I can see that some christian beliefs, such as 10 commandments and messages from stories from the bible,  are ingrained in myself. It doesn't mean that I follow the 10 commandments and things that are written in the bible. However, I believe that it is important to respect and love my neighbors and to be nice to people around me without expecting something in return. When I came to university, I realized that these ways of thinking are not necessarily respected and I was very shocked by the ways people react when they encounter with any kinds of religion. Even at this university, some people despite Christianity without any reason, except for it being a religion..... and it simply makes me sad, not because I am familiar with the religion, but because these people are unconscious of the possibility that their actions can be hurting those people who believe in Christianity. Whether you believe in religion or not, I think it is very important to respect different beliefs and to treat people who believe in these beliefs with respect. I know I am talking about something really difficult to be achieved, but I believe sincerely that it is something we should aim for, for the better of the world.

ICU festival

This is the second day of ICU festival 2011. I hope whoever there had lots of fun ! I　went to the festival yesterday and had a great time with my friends from other universities. To be honest, I didn't expect the festival to be fun and therefore I wasn't thinking of attending it... but becasue I heard that my friends are participating it as event planners and my friends from other universities are coming to visit us, I decided to go to the event. The festival turned out to be so much fun and I am really glad that I attended it. As I wrote before, I wasn't doing anything as an organizer of the festival. So I was able to relax and to have good time talking and eating with my friends. They seemed to enjoy the event also the atmosphere of our university, which made me really happy to be a student of ICU. They said that the ICU is more realxing compare to their universities, where there are less space and nature but more students and buildings. I also enjoyed watching my friends who were busy working at their shops. Some were selling spring rolls nearby the main entrance of the school and some were cooking yakitoris right infront of Shin-D. There were also friends who were working at different cafes inside Honkan, busy selling coffees and hand made cakes. They all looked so busy and when I talked with them at the end of the day, they were dead tired. But they also looked satisfied and happy at the same time, which also made me feel very happy. I think being able to participate in school festival is a privilage of student and this kind of memory will be very precious in the future, when we become adult. So it might be too early to think, but I am thinking of doing something for the next ICU festival :)

what love means to me

When I first saw the blog theme, I got confused because I thought I had already wrote on the same topic... but it turned out that I defined love as the most important thing for me and I wrote my thoughts about it in my previous blog entry. So as I have already mentioned, love is the most important thing for me. I was a bit surprised that other members in my group also think love as the most precious thing for them. It was funny how Gen refused persistently to share his personal thoughts about love. I think it was because his personal feeling towards someone is very special and important for him, and I thought that was very very sweet. It is easy to say love is the most important thing in my life, and I think it is true, but when it comes to thinking about keeping or protecting love, I suddenly lose my confidence for saying this. I think I am incapable of protecting people who are important to me, such as my family, friends, and boyfriend, and I wonder if that still makes me relevant to say that I truly love them. I think it is irresponsible to say "I love you"to someone when I can't take any responsibility for the relationship with the person. However, taking responsibility is really difficult especially when the relationship is between someone who is very close to you. For example, from the bottom of my heart, I love my mother, and so does my mother. However, while my mother is taking responsibility of me by feeding me and providing education and other things necessary for my life, I am not doing anything in return. Some say that it is enough for a child to love their families back in return to their love and care, but I don't think that is true. I am her child and of course I love her so much, but I am definitely a financial and also an emotional burden for her. Also,  I believe that the best way to alleviate her stress is to provide financial leeway, which I can not do right now, and it makes me feel disconsolated. I believe that providing financial support is one way to show one's love towards someone and that is something I　want desparately to do in the future. I want to be a person who can actually show my love towards someone by being able to halp that person in substantive ways. So I　think my definition of love has changed a bit from something precious and important to something more substantive. I think the definition will be on constant change until the last day of my life, but I wish to keep thinking and wondering about the meaning of love.

plans for this weekend

Time flies and we are getting closer to the end of October ! I cannot believe we are having ICU festival this weekend... I am not participating in any of the activities at school, so this year, I can just walk around without caring about being late for work shift. I really do hope that we will have a better weather this year. I still remember the terrible storm we had last year during the festival because I had to sell these Nachos under the pouring rain and it is not an exciting thing to sell something like Nachos in such a bad weather. I think there was only one customer who came to buy Nachos while I was working, and I am sure that it made not only me but also other members feel a bit miserable being there. November is one of my favorite month of the year because there are important birthdays within the month. First is my grandmother's, and there are also birthdays of some of my closest friends. I am still not sure what to get for each one of them, so I have to spend some time at town to see if there are something special and suitable for each of them. I love this time for choosing something for someone who is important to me, because getting something really makes me to think of the person, and reminds me of the memories I shared with the person. I also love to write a card for someone's birthday, and it always takes me a lot of time because first, I have to find a right card for a person and it is very difficult when you take this process seriously. There are literally millions of cards out there, and even if you think that you have found the right one after a long search, the feeling of doubt rises immediately and then you start to think that there might be a better card at the next store. Anyways, I guess my weekend will be spent on finding birthday cards and presents.

good bye 21, hello 22

On the 21st Oct. I became 22 years old. I know from my 21years of experience that the change in the numbers itself doesn't really bring any change, but it always feels fresh to get older and to welcome a new year. I　was very happy for the whole day because I started to get messages from my friends from the midnight and I saw on the facebook that my friends from abroad were posting birthday wishes on my wall. It was really touching and I was so happy about the fact that they still remember me and consider me as a friend. My friends at school also gave me sweet words when met them. On the birthdays I always feel like to give every single person I meet a kiss and a hug, because I think it is simple a wonderful thing to get blessings for my birth, especially from people who are important and close to me. My mother, however, didn't really say anything on the mortning of my birthday because I　came back around midnight on the daybefore (not because I was playing around, I was working on my presentation !!) and she was bit upset for me coming back home late thesedays. But in that morning, I　found a brand new coat and a pink sweater hanging on my wardrobe and also a book on my desk. I knew from my grandma that these were chosen by my mother, so I felt great love from her, though she didn't say anything to me. As far as I can remember, she have never missed to give me a birthday present, and I think it is because she has been feeling bad for her to miss some of the family events"ordinary" mothers can have with there child. She had to spend most of her time on her work and therefore she couldn't come to events such as sports festival and art festival at elementaly school. Though I wasn't a kind of child who cares about one's mom being absent from school events, there were times when I felt that it was unfair for other kids to have both mother and father around them, while I had only my grandma with me. But most of the time I was satisfied and happy with my mother who was working so hard to feed me and to pay for my education,  and especially, who really cared and loved me from the bottom of her heart. I really wish if I could have said all I wrote here to my mother on my birthday, but I think I have miss the chance. I hope the fight I am having right now with her will not get worse... To maintain a better relationship with my mother is my birthday's resolution.

a busy week

Last week was very busy and I couldn't write not even a single blog post.... I　really think I need to use my time more efficiently. But now I　am feeling relieved because I　finished all my major projects of the semester, a report for Internationa Law and a presentation for Political Therory. I　put great effort on these projects, especially on to the latter one. The presentation was supposed to be last for 45 min. and I　took the project very seriously because it was my first time to do a presentation which lasts that long and which subject is  a very academic one. I was working with two partners and they helped me a lot to develop and organize my ideas. Without them, I am sure that I couldn't have done the project. Although I have many regrets  about the presentation, I am feeling happy to get away with it... because now I can go to bed before midnight, without any worries !! Because my partners and I had completely different time schedules, we had to meet after 6pm to do the necessary meetings for the presentation and it was ususally the case that these meetings to last for more than 3~4hrs.... and as I　live in Yokohama, I　often got home around 11:30pm. So I　didn't really have enought sleep almost everyday and I　am sti amazed how people can get going with not enough sleep when they are feeling tense !! I think I was so worried about the presentation that it made me to feel it was waste of tiem to sleep. Also, my cold has also got away, so now I can finally concentrate on my studies, especially on my academic witing pieces for Sophomore English. I　felt really bad that I had to miss some of the classes and to be absent from my part-time job. I choose to do that to take some rest in order to cope with my cold and therefore not  to be absent for the presentation. I　am now a little worried if I can cauth up with the classes, but as finals are coming up soon, I　really have to put my efforts on my studies and also on other studies, such as French and Chinese. The whole experience from last week made me to think that heath comes before anything else... Our daily life is really depending upon it... and once you lose it, it takes great amout of time to get it back.

Happiness

When I think of happiness, I think without doubt that it is something good and therefore it is something everyone persues. However, when I give myself some time to really think what happiness is, I realize that I have many interpretation of happiness inside me. When I was little, I felt happiness when I was doing something special, exciting, something that is out of ordinary. For example, I remember that every time we had special events at school, such as sports festival and field trips, I was overly excited and became unable to sleep at night. However, now as an grown up, I feel happiness in ordinary life, especially at some moments like when I am simply spending time with my friends and families, doing nothing special but talking or eating together. I also feel happy when I feel that I am putting my effort for in to the things that I have determined to do. Determination can be a small thing such as to sleep everyday by 12pm for my health or to try to have smile on my face as much as possible. I also like to put efforts for my future goal, which is to be an independent person with an occupation which I can be proud of doing. To make this dream come true, I am studying public policy and politics at university and outside of the school, I am studying French and Chinese to advance my strength (i think) in language. I am also trying to learn from the every single moment of life by listening others carefully and being as thoughtful and careful as I can in daily lives. When I think of the happiness in the future, I realized that I have different thoughts comparing to the past. When I was younger, I thought happiness for me is to acquire professional skills and to be successful. However, now I think that my greatest happiness can  be achieved when I will have a family of my own and to become able to support them as a member of the family and also, as a mother of the family. I am surprised by this change which happened inside me and I think I have changed my idea by enountering different people through my life.  I　met people with different ideas and experience and by interacting with them I learned their interpretations of happiness and found some important ideas from them. I think one's interpretation of happiness is something changes everyday and therefore it is important to give ourselves time to think of our definition of happiness. This is because i think it is now very difficult to think of the happiness and therefore there are many people who determine what happiness is and present their ideas through books, movies, and other forms of media. These things can be good tools to think of happiness, but I　think it is important to remember that the true interpretation of happiness can be found only by ourselves and not by what others say about happiness.

Biggest project of the semester

Currently I am working on a presentation for Political Theory's class, which is the biggest project I have got for the autumn semester. I am working with two partners, one junior and the other a senior, both majoring in Politics. They are well found in the field of Political Science and so I get to learn a lot when I am discussing with them about the presentation. This semester, the class is focusing on the issues related to justice and equality. We were assigned to read various essays and journals by famous scholars such as Amartya Sen, Will Kymllicka, and Pierre Bourdieu, and we learned their interpretations and theories of justice and equality. One of the reading which was assigned to the class is titled as "Affective Equality - Love, Care and Injustice". Our presentation is focused on one particular chapter of the reading, which is "The impact of Economic, Social, Cultural, and Emotional Capital on Mother's Love and Care Work in Education". As the title shows, the author of the chapter discusses how different capitals mothers have affect the amount and also quality of  love and care work toward their children. The author also discusses that these love labors which mothers do for their children are necessary when providing children with education. Our group found out that in the reading, the author does not really discusses the basic social structures and cultural backgrounds which might are the reason for the negligence of the importance of love and care in educational process. So we are going to look back on the readings we got previously in the class and then try to construct our presentation based on the thesis that the affective capital (love and care) must be taken into account and be considered as an independent capital like other capitals. I am under considerable amount of pressure because it is my first time to do an hour and 30min presentation .... and our professor is Mr.Kibe, who is very intelligent and critical. He has high expectation for his students and many of the students who take his class try to answer his expectations by preparing good handouts and practicing their performances thoroughly. I also really like the way Mr.Kibe teaches and his passion for teaching, so I will do my best with my partners to make the presentation worth listening and something meaningful.

My weekness and strength as a leading figure

Recently I found my new weekness and strength through my extra-curricular activity at ICU, Japan-Israel-Palestine Student Conference (JIPSC.) The aim of JIPSC is to promote mutual understanding between students from Israel and Paestine by inviting them to Japan and providing place for free discussion. This summer we had our main activity, the 9th Japan-Israel-Palestine Joint Student Conference at Hiroshima. At Hiroshima, we rent a traditional Japanese house nearby a forest and we stayed there for two weeks, doing everything together from cooking to sleeping. This year we had 26 participants in total, 11 students from Israel&Palestine and 15 students from unversities in Japan, in cluding ICU, Waseda, TUFS, and Tokyo university. I was representative of the group and my role was pretty much to be the face of the conference. I often gave speeches at public events and I also spoke with representatives from other organizations and student groups. Other than the official role as the representative of the conference, I　also thought it was a part of my responsivility to care the participants by listening to their thoughts and sentiments. I watched everyone carefully to make sure that nobody would be left out from the group. I wanted everyone's voice to be heard by creating an environment where everyone can speak without fearing that others would not hear his or her oppinion. When we had a feedback session at the end of the conference, I was very glad and satisfied because there wasn't any claim from the participants that their oppinions were not heard. However, It was pointed out by some people that I didn't show my leadership enough by making decisions and therefore they sometimes had difficulty to know where authority resides in the organization. From the experience, I found that I am a person with a holistic point of view which enables me to see the big picture. On the other hand, I have difficuty in decision making, especially when there is not enough time to examine the pros and cons of the decision.
Being a leading figure always makes me to think of my strength and weekness as a person and there were times when I lost my confidence in being who I am. I was worried if my personal qualities were not suitable to be a leader and that made me almost to lose my trust in other members of the conference. However, they supported me to do my job through out the conference and I am really greatful for that.
It is important to know one's weekness and strength, but I think it is more important to think of the ways to work with the others with your personal qualities. Because when working with other people, your weekness can be a strength but also, something that you thought to be yout strength can turn out to be an obstacle for others and even for yourself.

90min.

 That is the time I need to come to school. I am coming from Yokohama by taking 3 different trains and a bus to get to the school. It's pretty long compare with other students who live in Tokyo, but it is not as long as some people think. I know some of my friends who is coming to the school from Chiba and Saitama, and I heard that there are people who use bullet train everyday to get to the school. So I think 90 min is not that long and I can actually enjoy my time on the train by doing different things. One thing I do most frequently is reading. I read newspapers, reading assignments, and other books I rent. At first it was difficult for me to read on a clouded train, especially the newspapers, but now I got some skills which enable me to do readings on the train. For example, if you want to read without wearing out your shoulder or legs, one thing you should do is to get a space on the overhead lack and put your bags as fast as possible before a business man who stands next to you puts his business case on the space. You might think it is a little thing, but it actually makes a big difference. I know this from my numerous experiences, so you can count on me that. The next skill is to have different kinds of reading. When there is some space around you or if you are lucky enough to get a seat, you will have no problem with reading news papers on the train. However, when it is clouded, you might don't want to read newspaper and to make noisy sounds by flipping the pages. Otherwise, you will make people around you who are already grumpy and tired more grumpy. So I think when in such situation, it is better to switch your newspapers to a novel or other smaller reading materials. Or if you desperately want to read the newspaper, you should get an i phone because now all the international papers are available on online and you can even watch news programs on your smart phone.
 When I get bored with reading, the next option I have is to watch videos on my i phone to study languages. I often use youtube to watch different news programs, interviews, and other TV shows in English to advance my listening skills and to learn new vocabs. Also, I often watch TED on youtube. On TED, you can watch lectures by scholars and professors from different fields and some topics are really interesting and stimulating. Most of the languages are spoken in formal ways, so I think it is a good way to study academic English. Also, topics which are discussed on TED are current and something meaningful, so it is good not only for language learning but also for learning in general. 
 There are of course times when I do not feel like doing anything productive, so in these times I just listen to music and try to kill the time. However, recently I realized that even when I am dead tired and do not want to do anything, if I have to spend the same amount of battery of my i phone and 180min of my lifetime, it is wiser to listen to some academic lectures rather than just listening to music.

Chinese lesson

 Yesterday, I had my first Chinese lesson at Sophia University.This is a course for the biginners and the class is thought by a native chinese speaker, who has experience of teaching Chinese more than 10 years. I do not recall her name but I really liked the teacher because she was very straight forward and active. It was my first time to learn Chinese and therefore I didn't know a word of it, except for "Thank you". But later I found out that I was mis-pronouncing this only word I thought I knew in Chinese ! The teacher taught us that the reason why many non-chinese speakers sometimes think Chinese is a loud language is because when people speak chinese, they use various voice ranges, from very high tone to low tone. In contrast to Chinese, it sounds pretty flat when we speak Japanese and that is because our voice tone stays at a particular voice range. I　understood what she meant when we learned different voice tones in Chinese. There are 5 voice ranges in Chinese and they all sounds differently. For example, one type of pronounciation starts from the highest tone and goes down to the lowest tone.   Because this was the first class and all the students had to introduce themselves to the others, we quickly learned the necessary words and phrases for self-introduction. First we learned our names in Chinese and then phrases like "How are you?" and "My name is ~", etc. We also learned some frequently used words like "Thank you", "See you", "Teacher", and so on. I　am not going to write them in Chinese here (sorry I am being a bit lazy here) but it was really exciting to write, hear, and speak a new language ! It reminds of me of my stay in France before coming to ICU. I went to France for a year to study French, and for the first few weeks of my stay, I was not able to communicate with people without my English-French dictionary in my hand. It is a bit frightening to be in a new environment without knowing a word of the language which is spoken there, but I　actually like the feeling of nervousness I　get when I　am in a such environment. I think it is because when I am in such situation, I am trying my best to adjust to the environment by fully using all my sences to learn the new language. I love to see the similarities and differences of languages and it always makes me happy to be able to communicate with people with their own language. I don't know how far I can advance my Chinese, since I also have to continue studying English and French. (and also Japanese!) But Chinese seems very interesting and fun to learn... and it definitly is a very useful language since it is one of the frequenty used languages in the world. In any case, I am going to do my best to learn the language and see how it goes :)

The most precious thing in my life

"What is the most precious thing in your life?" To answer this difficult but also frequently asked question, I would say "Love is the most precious thing for me." I do not know much about love yet, but I am pretty confident with the answer. Even though my mother and father got divorced before I became one year old,  I believe that I wouldn't be here if there were not any form of love between my parents. And my mother and father weren't here if their parents and ancestors were not in some sort of love and gave birth to their children, and so and so forth. So I think love gives birth to new lives and therefore, it is very precious thing. Some people might say that children can be born without parent's love, and it is true in some cases, but I think child raising which comes after giving birth cannot be done without love and care from parents and other family members of the child. As myself still being a child, I am confident to say that I am loved by my mother and grandmother, who have been taking care of me since the time I was born. They took great care of me and did their best to provide me with the best education they could provide. Not only the education, but they provide me good food, shelter, and cloth to maintain my physical health. Not only the physical health, but they also keep my mental health healthy as they listen to my talks and cheer me up when I am having difficult time with my studies or relationships with others. In return to their care and love, I also love them and care about them, especially their safety and health. In contrast, I hardly ever felt love for my father and it is because I do not have any experience to be loved or to be cared by him. I do have a biological bond with him, but not a emotional tie. It is not that I hate him because he left me, but I do not have any particular feeling towards him. I am curious how he looks like, but I don't have any intention to meet him. I guess a picture will do to satisfy my curiosity.
 As I said at the beginning, I do not really know about love and I haven't really thought about it. But recently I started to think and feel about the importance of love in my life. Up until now, I've always been the one to be loved and I haven't really question about it. I thought it's natural to be loved and to be cared. However, I realized recently how important but also difficult it is to show love and care to the others, especially to someone who is important to me. I started to realize the complexity of the feeling of love, and now I understood why there are so many songs, paintings, movies, and other forms of creative works to express the feeling. I think everyone suffers, get confused, and maybe delighted by the feeling of love and therefore everyone wants to share their feelings with others. In any case, I am very comfortable with my relationship with my family and I want to love them as they love me. Also, I recently met someone who has become very important to me, and I am surprised by the amount of new feelings I get in our relationship. I think love enables me to stay calm, and to be who I am, and also to discover new dimensions about me. I know I am not being logical when I am talking about love and I am pretty sure that it's shown in the writing, but this is why I think love is the most important thing for me.

Favorite movie of the summer 2011

 This summer I watched numbers of movies and the one I liked the most is "From up on poppy hill". This movie was created by Goro Miyazaki, the son of famous movie maker Hayao Miyazaki. His previous movie "ゲド戦記(Gedo-senki)", which is created based on the novel series "The Earthsea Trilogy" by Ursula K. Le Guin, was criticized so badly for its rough illustrations and poor development of plot. Part of the reason why he met harsh criticism was that he is the son of Hayao Miyazaki, who is one of the leading Japanese film makers. His film company "Gibli" has produced numbers of successful animation movies such as "Nausicca" and "Princess Mononoke" and the company and its films are beloved by most of the Japanese from different generations. Therefore, it is not difficult to imagine how high the expectation for Mr.Goro and his first film was, and also the disappointment of the people after watching the movie. Before the release of his second movie "From up on poppy hill", there were numbers of interviews set on different magazines with Mr.Goro. In these interviews he talked how difficult it was for him to endure the pressure of being the son of Hayao Miyazaki and to create a film by his own hands. I was very surprised to know that he knew nothing about film making before he made the first film and he had actually had no intention to become a film maker before got a sudden request to create a movie.
 I will not go into the precise details of the movie, but I really liked the movie for several reasons. First, the story takes Yokohama city, which is my hometown, in the 1960s. In the movie there are many places I know and it was fun to see how the places looked like in the past. The second reason was that the story takes place in the actual world and not in a fantasy world. Gibli movies usually take place in fantasy world and that is something I really like about the movies, but it is also interesting to see how Mr.Goro tries to discover different approach of film making. He said in an interview that his uniqueness is his ordinary viewpoint and I think he presented his view point really well with greatly depicting personalities and emotions of characters. I really want Mr.Goro to produce more and more movies with his style and be the next leading figure of Japanese film industry.  I also want people not to just listen to what critiques say about his film and quit watching his movies. If you are interested in the movie, I really recommend you to watch it !!

what is your favorite food ?

In Japan, there is a saying”食欲の秋”(Syokuyoku no aki) which means, something like, "autumn, s season for strong appetite". There are many other sayings and idioms which relate the season of autumn to eating, and I assume that it is because Japanese people love food in autumn. We enjoy eating fruits such as pairs, grapes, persimmons, and chestnuts and some people go on an organized tour for gathering these fruits. As for vegetables, we eat lots of eggplants and mushrooms in various ways. I love to simply bake them, put soy sauce and eat. Autumn is also considered to be the best season for eating Sanma (pacific saury), and the most popular way of cooking the fish is broiling it with salt. Sanma is one of my favorite fish and I eat it throughout a year, but I also agree that it is best in the autumn. The seasonal food in autumn goes along really well with my eating habits, because my dietary life is consist mainly of vegetables, fruits, and fish and other sea foods. I do not like things that are oily and too sweet and I do not eat much meat. I avoid eating food with artificial additives so I do not eat any junk food, fast food, and other foods of that sort. I do not have to take snacks but when I get hungry I eat fruits or sometimes vegetables. I also do not drink any pops, energy drinks and juice. In stead, I prefer drinking mineral water, tea and coffee. When people hear about my eating habit, they often get surprised how strict I am to myself. However, I am just eating what I like and avoiding what I do not like. I am very comfortable with my current eating habits and I wish to continue eating in this way. Because of this somewhat special eating habit of mine, I sometimes avoided going out on lunch or dinner with my friends. I was annoyed by people always asking me questions about my food preferences and I also didn't like to make others worried or annoyed of my food preference. I thought and still think that eating should be something fun and free without any concern or negative feelings so oftentimes I chose eating alone at my home. However,  I have recently started to enjoy going out to eat , thanks to my friends who are tolerant and kind enough to accept my food habits and take me to various kinds of restaurants. I think I have also learned better ways to explain my eating habits, instead of telling others what I can not or do not like to eat. I like eating with others simply because it is so fun to share nice food with others and having good conversations at the same time. I also think eating with others let me try things that I usually don't try when I am by myself. So I wish to enjoy the autumn with great food and great friends !

What does writing mean to me ?

 Being a student requires me to write a lot.  I am often asked to write reports, journals, essyas, short paragraphs, and other forms of writings for assignments. The University also asks us to fill out and sometimes to make documents. I know some friends who hate writing and therefore try their best to avoid taking those classes which require them to write essays and reports. I can understand their feelings but I personally don't have any problem with writing. I am a person who take writing assignments quite seriously. Actually, I can find it fun doing these kind of homework. I prefer writing letters than texting messages and I enjoy writing personal journals. I write blogs and tweet too. I feel great joy when I feel that I was able to put my feelings and thoughts into right words. It is much more exciting when my words are accepted and understood by others. I think my love of writing comes from my great love of reading. Ever since I started reading, I've always been amazed how various and effective writings can be, even though they are made up simply of words, something we use everyday. I have always wanted to be like those amazing authors who can move people's hearts by their use of words and I think that is the reason why I found it fun writing by myself. I do not have any specific plan yet, but I wish to write a book in my future. But this is only if  I have accumulated things that I can feel worth sharing with others. The other reason why I like writing is because it helps me organize my ideas. It is often difficult for me to give spontenous responces to certain questions because I prefer to have certain amout of time for making considerations before giving answers. So writing helps me to understand what I really want to say in responce to some questions. Though writing means quite a lot to me, my writing skill is still very limited and therefore I　sometimes it difficult to fully express myself. I am eager to learn from the sophomore english and improve my writing skills.

Fall semester

I heard that autumn semester is considered to be the busiest term in a year. I do not know the reason behind it, but I must agree that this fall is going to be very, very, busy.
This semester I am taking Sophomore English, International Law, Political Therory, Japanese Politics, Introduction to Sociology, and Archery as P.E. This is my first time to be satisfied and truelly interested with every single class I take within a term, so I am very happy about it. I think it is because now I am sophomore and therefore be able to take courses which are more academic and focused into more specific topic. However, this also means I have to put more efforts into each of my studies and therefore I need to think of the ways to use my time wisely and effectively. As for extracurricular activity, I'm taking a part in JIPSC, Japan-Israel-Palestine Student Conference. Last August we finished our biggest project, the summer conference, which was held in Hiroshima this year. Now we are writing reports of the conference and getting ready for the debriefing session which is going to be held this December. Though I am not going to continue working for the conference next year, I'm determined to do the best I　can to help the members of the next year conference. As for the studies outside ICU, I am going to take French lesson at TUFS and Chinese lesson at Sophia University. I am so excited about both classes, but especially the Chinese class ! It's has been one of my dreams to learn Chinese because I　have so many friends from China, Taiwan and Hong Kong, and I really want to communicate with them with their language, in order to have better understanding of their culture and also their way of thinking. The other thing I am excited about this autumn is that I'll start taking lessons at Yoga studio. Now I  am taking Yoga classes at a sport gym which I　go to, but I've already got used to all the classes that are held at the gym and therefore wanted to take more advances classes. I wish to improve my Yoga skills because I　think this is a sport of my lifetime :)
 There are so many new things I　am going to start from this autumn and I wish to the best I can on each one of them.

Who am I ?

 "Who am I ?" I think it is the core question which we are going to be asking ourselves throughout the semester. When I think of the answers to the question, things that come up in my mind are such as, name, gender, age, nationality, profession, social status, hobbies, etc. So my answer is going to be something similar as this: "My name is Arisa Ono. I am 21years old and I am Japanese. I have no siblings and I am currently studying at ICU. I love reading, traveling and playing sports, especially Yoga and jogging."
But does this really answer the question ? I think it does explain about me in some ways, however, I also think that there are many parts of me that cannot be explained by this answer.  I believe that we are made not only of what we currently possess, but also of the things that we have had before, such as the path we have gone through or memories and experiences from the past. In my case, books that I read in my childhood have left great influence on me and I can still feel their effects on who am I today. When I was little I read almost any kinds of books that were around me. After reading all the children's books in my house, I went to a small library nearby, which is a minute walk from the house,  and as I grew older and entered elementary school,  I started to use school library and municipal library. Now I spent a great amount of time at university library, partly because I have to deal with tons of assignments, but mainly for to walk around the shelves for the purpose of finding interesting books that I have never seen or heard of. I also love going to huge book stores and book cafes in Tokyo. It is frighting even just to think of it, but if I didn't read books in my childhood,I wouldn't have had this great hobby, which I think can entertain me throughout my life.
 My love of books gave me interests in various fields, from the Greek mythology to astronomy (it doesn't necessarily mean that I understood the books on astronomy at that time). I often read bibliographies of important historical figures and illustrated reference books of flowers and plants, stars, insects, animals, dinosaurs, etc. I think reading books in various fields made me curious and open to learn and accept new things.

Sophomore English: The first day of the class

This is my first blog entry for the sophomore english class, "YOU: A Course of Personal Writing". As for the first entry, I would like to write why I decided to take this course.

I choose to take this course because it seemed a bit different from other classes. I realized from the syllabus that this is the first time for the course to be held at ICU and that made me to think that this course might have more relaxing and free learning styles in comparison with other courses with specific learning materials and learning goals. I also thought that this course will help me to discover more about myself, which can be a great help on some occasions such as interview for job-hunting and presentations at university. I have always had a difficulty explaining myself in occasions such as job interview and it has been a great concern for me. I thought that one of the reasons for me not being able to fully expain myself is because of my lack of understanding of myself. Therefore, I thought that this will be a great opportunity for me to think and to discover something new about myself.

I am looking forward for the class to begin and express myself through various academic writing styles, especially by writing Haiku! This will be my first time to make Haiku in English and I am sure that it will be exciting. I also simply wish to enjoy the class with my new teacher and new classmates and I hope everyone else is feeling the same way as I do !!