Archive for November 2003
DVD
I bought a DVD player last weekend and enjoyed Matrix Reloaded with it.
DVD is really good. You can watch movies both in English and Japanese, and you can also choose subtitles in English, Japanese, or none at all. It is good for me to practice listening.
Of course, Matrix was too difficult to understand in English, though.
My Favorite Shoes
I like walking. I sometimes go for a walk to see the sunrise, the sunset, the sea, or some beautiful scenery. And I like to use trains or go on foot rather than using a car, so the kind of shoes I put on is important to me. I like sneakers. Except for special occasions -- when I must wear formal dress, for example -- I wear sneakers almost every day. And of course when I go for a walk, it's better to put on sneakers. So I have some preferences when I buy new sneakers.
I treasure function. I wear sneakers almost every day, so function is one of the first considerations. I like easy-moving sneakers, of course. Even when I try on new shoes I sometimes walk around; I like to feel comfortable when I am walking. If I feel uncomfortable, I cannot enjoy myself. It's also important how much weight they have. I like light shoes, but if they're too light, I don't find them comfortable. When I am wearing very light shoes I sometimes feel anxious about whether I am wearing any shoes at all. I need the sense of "I am wearing sneakers now." Some weight relieves me.
I also emphasize looks, of course. I don't like eccentric-looking shoes. I like the standard type which matches with any clothes. I don't have so many pairs of sneakers, so this point is very important to me. My favorite colours are white, black, and navy blue. Usually when I buy Converse sneakers, I like black or navy blue, and I like white when I buy Adidas (Adidas is one of my favorite brands). I don't like colorful ones or limited edition sneakers.
The ones I can wear for a long time are my favorite types. And it goes without saying that I don't like them when they're too expensive: I'm not rich, so I can't buy too expensive footwear.
But sometimes I choose sneakers instinctively. I think instinct is important when buying something. So occasionally I get original and colorful shoes simply by following my intuition. I think this doesn't only go for choosing shoes, it's important whenever I have to make a choice.
I like sneakers and I find new shoes invigorating. They make me feel a little happy, and I can walk long distances without feeling tired. My favorite sneakers make my steps light, and light steps make me feel fresh. Choosing sneakers and walking in sneakers is a small bit of happiness in my hasty life.
Open classes
In my school, teachers are now showing their classes to those who teach the same subject. Teachers in elementary and junior high schools are usually familiar with the practice -- we high school teachers, however, are not. So we get to see other classes and think about our own.
It is really good to see classes taught by other teachers. We can reflect on our classes through those of others.
Smileys
Smileys, also known as emoticons, are strings of characters intended to show a human face expressing a particular emotion. In online communication, they are mostly used at the end of a sentence, reflecting on that sentence and interpreting it in a certain way. A winking face, for instance, indicates that the preceding sentence ought to be taken with a grain of salt. Given that most online environments are text-based and lack the subtle (and not-so-subtle) cues of body posture, gesture and facial expression that characterize face-to-face communication, smileys try to make up for a shortcoming of the medium in which they occur.
YaBB, a widely used piece of open source bulletin board software, recognizes the following set of smileys by turning them into little graphics:
- :) smiling face
- ;) smiling, winking face
- :D laughing face
- ;D laughing, winking face
- >:( angry face
- :( sad face
- :o astonished face
- 8) cool face ("8" standing for sunglasses)
- ??? confused face
- ::) rolling eyes
- :P tongue sticking out
- :-[ depressed face
- :-X mouth shut
- :-/ undecided face
- :-* kissing face
- :'( crying face
Netlingo offers a much larger list of smileys. I'm not quite sure what to make of this list, however. I don't hang out in chat rooms and, as noted earlier, I don't have a cell phone, so I'm unfamiliar with two of the mediums in which smilies seem to occur with the highest frequency. Still, I think the list is far too large and includes items that aren't in common use at all. What I see in actual day-to-day communication is more or less limited to ":-)" and ";-)".
In Japanese, a whole raft of smileys are used that differ from their Western counterparts mainly in that you don't have to tilt your face to view them because they're right-side-up. They also draw on a much larger set of available characters.
Here's a list of Japanese smileys put together by Hiroe Takagi.
Which of those do you actually use? Any others?
Technical note: Unlike the majority of Web sites, Tawawa.org uses Unicode, which means that from a technical standpoint it doesn't matter if you post to this site in Arabic, Russian, Greek, Thai, Japanese or almost any other language you can readily think of: it should all render fine. So feel free to post and discuss smilies that use characters not included in the standard ASCII character set.
Apple Macaroni
Alright, here's the deal: men can cook. You may think I'm kidding you but I'm not. I even had a male student a year ago or two who told me he was learning how to cook because he considered cooking an essential part of his education, of learning how to be his own man rather than mama's boy. Times are changing.
A few Saturday mornings ago, Hayase-sensei knocked at my office door and presented me with a bag of big apples grown, he said, by friends of his in Aichi prefecture. They were delicious. Many of them went into müsli. Some of them went into a recipe I invented for those apples.
It's not that I'm much of a a cook, which will be abundantly clear as soon as you read the recipe. However, and although I have little doubt somebody else came up with something similar, this is my recipe. I invented it. It's mine. This is man cooking.
Here's what you need:
- Macaroni (yes, that's the tube-shaped type of pasta; the bigger the tube the better. They're the most enjoyable type of pasta anyone ever invented. Trust me on this.)
- Apple
- Butter
- Cinnamon
I don't believe in "scientific" recipes and I have never had any use for kitchen scales. Rely on your own judgement when it comes to quantities.
That said, here's how it works:
- Heat water in a pot. Once it starts boiling, add salt to the water, then add the pasta.
- A bit after you start heating the water, put some butter in a frying pan and melt it. Be careful not to over-heat it: butter is a lot more heat-sensitive than, say, olive oil. After the butter has melted, add little chunks of chopped-up apple. Stir once in a while.
- Check the pasta. Is it done yet? Italians like their pasta al dente, meaning that it should still by chewy, not soft and flabby. If it's al dente, pour the contents of the pot through a big sieve that catches the pasta and allows the water to drain.
- Put the macaroni in big earthenware Japanese noodle bowls.
- Optional: put some additional butter flakes on the pasta, allow to melt and stir.
- Put the fried apples on top and season with cinnamon.
- Serve while it's hot.
All I can say is that I like it and that it it's easy to prepare.
If you want some real cooking, kindly peruse Kristen's recipes. She knows what she's talking about. She's the man.
Hello Josh
Surely you have received one of those e-mails that try to sell a product guaranteed to enlarge your penis, or that advertise a porn site, or that offer an opportunity to make quick money or earn an academic degree without actually having to study for it. I receive several of those e-mails every day, and maybe so do you. Out here on the Internet, such e-mails are called spam. The people who send them are called spammers. Everyone I know hates spam. Everyone I know hates spammers.
You have just sent me an e-mail in which you invite me to check out the new site attached to the bookstore you run in Tokyo. Your message has the subject line "Nice Blog!!" and in the body of that message you both marvel at the time and dedication that must have gone in to the making of Tawawa and you express your delight at our recent posts on the University Festival.
This makes you a highly unusual spammer. Spammers don't usually read the sites they spam. You are also a book seller, which is a profession for which I have the utmost regard; book sellers, in my humble opinion, are right up there with the librarians. Still, as much as I appreciate your praise of this site (thanks, by the way!) and as much as I'd probably like you if I met you in real life, you are a spammer. The dedication you put into your spamming ironically makes you a less despicable spammer (and as a book seller you can't be a true scumbag in the first place), but that doesn't change the sad fact that you are a spammer. Spammers suck.
As for your offer to link to Tawawa: please feel free to do that. I regularly check the the Tawawa referrer logs and I usually go to the sites that link to us. Occasionally I even link back to them if I think the Tawawa readers might find them either entertaining or profitable. As a matter of policy, however, I do not follow the links that spammers send me, so cannot express an opinion as to wether or not I like your site; I haven't seen it.
All I can do is offer some business advice: don't spam weblogs. The practice is more likely to scare away existing customers than to attract new ones.
Best,
:: Rudolf
:: http://www.tawawa.org
Karadakara
Karadakara was held on the 3rd of November and of course I participated. Many of my friends and even Ruedi-sensei came to see the dance performance.
This was the third time for me to take part in Karadakara, because I have belonged to Mie University's Dance Club for three years. This year I performed in eight stages, that is, KARADAKARA Ⅹ Prologue, DATSUGOKU, Saru, Yadokari-no-Yuutsu, Legend of the Princess, Watashi-wo-Ikiru, Karadakara Ⅹ, and Finale.
We (the Dance Club) used a lot of images on the screen at the back of the stage in the Prologue, and I think that they enhanced our performance and made it more attractive for the audience. Since the Prologue was the beginning of Karadakara, it tried to get the audience interested in our dancing.
DATSUGOKU means prison breaking. We imitated escaped convicts and pretended we were running away from the prison we had just broken out of.
I wore monkey clothes to perform Saru (monkey). While I was dancing, I threw away the banana which I had made. I hope that people laughed or chuckled at my comical behavior.
We danced Yadokari-no-Yuutsu in Kobe this summer and passed the trial game. We use big painted barrels to imitate the hermit crab (yadokari). The barrel stands not for a rock but for the shell which that crab always wears. The weight of the biggest one is almost ten kilograms and the girls of the Dance Club can lift it over their heads with their arms! Through the performance of the Hermit Crab, we wanted the audience to understand the depression (yuutsu) which all people sometimes feel in their daily life.
In the 'Legend of the Princess', I performed the second strongest villain and, of course, Miwa-san was the heavy queen and the strongest of all the villains. The villains carry off the beautiful princess from the hero and try to defeat the party of the hero who are chasing the princess to save her from the queen, but they fail. After that, the hero fights against the queen (Miwa-san) and he loses at last. Then, the beautiful princess gets angry with his defeat and she beats the strongest queen! This story is a piece of comedy and I heard that people laughed at the performance.
I wore a pink dress which I made by myself in Watashi-wo-Ikiru. The girls want to decide which way they should proceed, but they don't have the confidence to do that. They go through the conflict again and again, then they become independent and find their own ways.
Karadakara Ⅹ is the hardest dance of all, I think. We practiced it many many times, even though we felt tired. All the dancers of the university's Dance Club and the alumni/alumnae took part in it.
In the Finale, we danced not on the stage but on each step of the aisles. We appreciated the audience coming to see and enjoying our performance. During the Finale, I thought that I did my best!!
Maybe this will be the last time for me to join Karadakara, for I'll be a senior next spring and won't have much time to dance with my peers. I don't want to admit it, but I must study harder than ever to find a job...
Anyway, I hope that everybody who saw Karadakara had a good time on the evening of Nov. 3rd.
Oden Stall at the Festival
At this year's university festival, I helped run an oden stall with the other members of my circle. The dish we sold contained eggs, Japanese radish, konnyaku (i.e. paste made from the devil's tongue), chikuwa (i.e. fish paste cooked in a bamboo-like shape) and so on.
It was warm on the first day, so the oden didn't sell so well. We had decided to offer it because we thought it would be cold on the weekend of the festival. It turned out that were wrong, however, and we expected the stall would be a failure.
The next day was also warm. We were disappointed, but the oden sold well. Many customers said that the oden was delicious, so we were happy. At around three o'clock it sold out and we were able to enjoy the festival after that.
Preparing the stall took a lot of time, but we had a good time and it was fun to communicate with many people.
University Festival (Post #2)
Finally I managed to get the second batch of Festival photos together. Unlike the previous series, there are no students of mine in this one.
Bonus pictures in full Technicolor:
Another Festival
You wouldn't be able to tell from the picture, but they're all teachers: three male and seven female, including me. We became cheergirls wearing mini skirts, pink outfits, and of course make-up. Before the event, we practiced dancing for three hours a day.
We danced at the Culture Day festival in my high school. Many students got excited. Well, we enjoyed ourselves very much, but the most important thing for me was to show them how to enjoy themselves.
University Festival (Post #1)
Here's a short series of portraits I took today. If anyone objects to having their picture shown on this Web site, please let me know and I'll remove it.
More pictures soon.