Tawawa

ESS debate #2

Mon, 13 Dec 2004 16:47:14 +0900

Yet again, I joined an ESS Debate meeting on December 11th and 12th. It was held at two universities in Kobe Prefecture and was also limited to freshmen. The topic was the same as last time: child care leave. It will change at the beginnig of the new year, so this was the last chance to debate about child care leave with other universities' debaters. Until the meeting started, I spent much time on preparing for speech, attacks against the opponents and on supporting evidence.

Kobe is far from Mie, so I left for Kobe at 5:30 am to reach the university at 9:00 am. Twenty-two teams from various universities participated in this meeting. The first day, we did three games. The next day, we did one because only four teams were allowed to advance to the semifinals and the final; my team wasn't among those four teams. However, we did our best and won two games!

I felt many freshmen have studied a lot and improved their debating skills considerably. Through this meeting, I also managed to make friends with many debaters from other universities. They stimulated me to go on learning debate as an ESS member. So I'll go on!

In this meeting, prizes were awarded to some teams. Moreover, there was another prize which was awarded for good speaking. To my surprise, one of the Mie University students got the second prize out of 44 freshmen. His prize made me happy because I've been studying debate with him until today. I want to catch up with him someday.

After finishing the debate game, I went Osaka with the other ESS members. It was very crowded but we enjoyed it.

I had a good weekend!

Building blocks

Sun, 12 Dec 2004 22:10:53 +0900

I'm old-fashioned: I dislike plastic and synthetic substances, and the sheer abundance of of these materials displayed in any given toy store always depresses me. There seems to be hope, however. Akiko-san, one of my students, has just posted a few pictures of wooden building blocks being played with at Kodomo-no-shiro in Matsusaka.

New group weblogs

Sat, 11 Dec 2004 17:33:03 +0900

Here are links to two new sites that use the weblog format.

RealClimate.org discusses recent developments in climate science:

RealClimate is a commentary site on climate science by working climate scientists for the interested public and journalists. We aim to provide a quick response to developing stories and provide the context sometimes missing in mainstream commentary.

Highly instructive reads.

Supervised by Andrew Lih and Dan Gillmor, ChatterGarden.com is a project of University of Hong Kong New Media Workshop, taught during the Fall term of 2004. Unlike many other courses using the technology, this is a genuine online citizen journalism project that isn't tucked away behind a login screen:

It is an online community for news and discussion about Hong Kong regional politics and public affairs. By allowing anyone to participate, it provides an independent and diverse forum for news, information, and exchange about Hong Kong's local issues, future, and relations with China. By using a participatory journalism model, readers and contributors are one in the same.

Good stuff -- worthy of imitation.

Listening Comprehension

Wed, 08 Dec 2004 16:21:58 +0900

Hey, how's it goin'?

Listen to Billy Harvey (requires Flash and a fast connection) and choose from the following statements:

[ ] Billy is tired.
[ ] Billy is a musician.
[ ] Billy hates promoting his music.
[ ] Whatever
[ ] All of the above

Thanks for stopping by.

ESS debate

Wed, 24 Nov 2004 20:53:25 +0900

On November 20th and 21th, an ESS Debate Meeting was held at Ritumeikan University in Shiga Prefecture. Only freshmen were allowed to join it. Many universities participated in this meeting, and I was surprised to learn that there are a lot of debaters at other universities.

The topic of the meeting was "should the Japanese government oblige every full-time worker to take child-care leave?"

Let me explain the debating rules. One team consists of two students, and five people participate in a debate game: there are two teams of two students coming from the same university and there is one judge. The two teams have to argue the affirmative side and negative side of the topic, respectively. The two sides debate the topic and then the judge decides which team is the winner.

There are four freshmen, including me, in Mie University's debate section, so we could make two groups. In two days, I did six games. The result is ... my team won four games! I was very happy about the result, particularly since I couldn't win during the first meeting in October.

Through this meeting, I managed to improve my English skills and came to realize that debate is interesting. Preparation for debate games is very hard but I'll keep on doing it. On December 11th and 12th, we'll participate in the third meeting.

Lastly, I want to say that ESS is lots of fun!

Imitators or New Generation?

Fri, 12 Nov 2004 22:03:29 +0900

Asian Kung-Fu Generation is reputed to be one of the greatest Japanese "new generation" Rock bands. They sang "I want to be connected with you," and attracted a huge fan base. Their work is praised by many music critics who admire both the lyrics, which have literary sensibilities, and the straight music.

A short while ago, the band released their second album named Solfa, and some critics observed that the songs had become less hard and more "pop" in feeling. I think this is partly true, because the album contains some music which has a pop feeling. But I think they also became stronger in their spirit.

Yet they are reputed to be imitators of Number Girl.

I feel there's a conflict in perceptions.

How can they both be "imitators" and members of the "new generation"? To be sure, the vocalist, Masahimi Gotoh, admits that he was inspired by the music of Number Girl, and Asian Kung-Fu Generation also have a song named "N.G.S.", which means Number Girl Symdrome. But I think they established their own identity and their music is quite different from Number Girl.

Many bands (not only bands) are reputed to be "imitators of X," even if their music is great and they have their own identity. Maybe people should be a bit more careful when they label artists.

Mie University Festival 2004

Tue, 09 Nov 2004 14:24:56 +0900

A few photos.

Last year's photos: one, two.

Photo project

Thu, 04 Nov 2004 22:59:17 +0900

I mentioned earlier that I was going to sign up a group of students to the photo sharing site Flickr.

They're there now.

During the last two weeks or so, they've been busy uploading photos taken with their cell phone cameras and discussing these images amongst themselves in English. The photo project gallery page here on Tawawa displays everyone's most recent upload and provides easy access to all the other photos.

Obviously, this isn't a photography class; this is about the conversations that can evolve around the images posted and about English as a medium of actual communication. Some students have already ventured beyond the immediate group of their classmates and they are communicating with some of the thousands of users that Flickr has worldwide.

Which is great.

I don't want to lock my students into a "distance learning" course. Instead, I'm trying to give them access to the conversations conducted out here on the Internet. To me, photos seem as good a starting point as any, and Flickr as good and delightful a community as the best of them.

So this project is meant to be open: if you want to talk to my students, sign up for a free Flickr account and fire away!

Bonus link: Yukiko's photos on Flickr.

The Land of Disaster

Sun, 31 Oct 2004 20:53:08 +0900

In Japan, we have suffered from many natural disasters in the past, for example, the Ise Bay Typhoon (1959), the heavy rain in Tanabata day (1974), and the Hanshin-Awaji Earthquake (1997). Each disaster caused serious damage and people who experienced the events recall them every year. Those who experienced this year's disasters will be busy remembering them too because we had so many of them this summer -- not only disasters, but also abnormal weather… this summer was extremely hot and many people suffered heat exhaustion.

On September 6th, two earthquakes occurred in the area of the Kii Peninsula and we worried that the expected big one might happen after them. Fortunately, it didn't.

Now, many people in Niigata Prefecture are away from their own houses and staying at refuge centers. The big earthquakes which occurred in Niigata made it impossible for them to get on with their normal lives. Many houses were partially or completely destroyed and, what is worse, there was heavy rain after the earthquakes.

We also had "unusual" typhoons this year. The number of the typhoons that hit Japan is extraordinary, and most of them were very strong. Every year Japan is hit by two or three typhoons on average and they do damage to some extent. This year, however, we have had 10 typhoons so far. Each of them brought heavy rain to many parts of Japan and rivers flooded in some areas.

The Miya River near my house was about to overflow and I felt scared of the flood (and the typhoon) for the first time in my life. The rainstorms caused mudslides and people in some mountainous areas are still in the refuges.

It is expected that a big earthquake will occur in Tokai district in the near future. I wonder what will become of Japan and my life if this earthquake should in fact occur. I can't help thinking that there is nothing that remains forever: I may lose what I have now, including my possessions and… family, relatives and friends.

I feel sorry for the victims and the bereaved of this year's disasters and I just hope that the next year will be more peaceful without any disasters.

Tokyo Art Beat

Mon, 04 Oct 2004 00:53:54 +0900

Hot off the press: TokyoArtBeat.com, a Web site that lists current art and design shows in Japan's capital. This is an amazing, well-made project, available in both Japanese and English, that sports a crisp design and state-of-the-art coding -- quite apart from being genuinely useful.

On a linguistic side-note: Olivier Thereaux and Paul Baron, the site's founders and administrators, are both Tokyo residents and native speakers of French. Native French speakers have this thing about the H-sound at the beginning of words: ask a typical French speaker to pronounce the word "heartbeat" and you'll get something like "artbeat". But there's more to the site's name: the English word "beat" also refers to the area patrolled by a police officer -- or, more specifically, to the patrol itself, the round or path that the police officer traverses on a daily basis. If you think of art as a space, the "beat" is a path through this space. Very clever.

Flickr

Mon, 27 Sep 2004 19:16:05 +0900

When Flickr.com first launched, I didn't pay much attention. But as it happened, Austin voiced his enthusiasm for the service just when I had a batch of photos I wanted to share, so instead of posting them to Tawawa, I opened a Flickr account and posted them there, just to see what it was all about.

It's a lot more than I thought. First of all, the site is very well made; crisp, clear, friendly, quite unlike some of the other photo sharing sites I've seen.

But it's also more than a grab-bag of images. A a free account allows you to upload 10 megabyte's worth of images per month, and the one-hundred most recent images are stored and displayed in an "image stream." The images are either "public" or only accessible to people marked as "friends" or "family." Each image can be commented on individually, and users can freely band together in groups that share a bulletin board and an "image pool". So, whith all this easy-to-use functionality in place, Flickr does what the Internet was probably made for: it organises conversations around content.

It occurred to me that images might be a more evocative starting point for conversations than text and that I could use Flickr in one of my classes next term: I will probably ask my students to upload images -- either from their cell phones or from other sources -- and discuss them.

To make sure things will run smoothly, I need a volunteer with a camera phone -- or, better yet: several volunteers with camera phones -- who will help me test the service and anticipate difficulties.

Anyone?

If you want to help out, please contact me and I'll send you an invitation.

Oh, and Bill has something disgusting but intriguing in his yard. Yuck!

Tokyo, September 2004

Tue, 21 Sep 2004 23:42:08 +0900

I spent the weekend in Tokyo and took a couple of pictures. Today I created a Flickr.com account and uploaded a selection.

Also on Flickr: Becky, Vincent, and Ironing Board by Austin Moody, which is one of the funnier things I've seen in a while.

Whaling in Japan

Fri, 17 Sep 2004 14:25:17 +0900

When I went to Nachi-Katsuura, the southern part of Wakayama Prefecture, I found a restaurant which served whale dishes in front of the station. I saw many kinds of whale products at souvenir shops and I tried some of them. This was the first time for me to eat whale meat. The idea of eating whale meat is a little bit shocking to me because I'm not used to the custom. I don't think, however, whaling is bad or should be banned.

I learned from this web site that whaling in Japan started in Taiji, near Nachi-Katsuura, in the early Edo period, and people in Taiji presented whale meat to the emperor at that time. They depended on the income gained by whaling and so, the tradition of whaling still remains.

Now they can't catch whales for commercial purposes, and the conflict between those who support whaling and those who are against it doesn't seem to have an end. As far as I knew from the exchanges between the Japan Whaling Association and the Iruka & Kujira (Dolphin & Whale) Action Network, they are clashing with each other in every point. For example, the former says that there are enough whales and a limited, carefully determined number of them should be caught. Then the latter protests, "How do you know how many whales there are, and are you really sure the number you determine is appropriate?"

Some people who oppose whaling assert that it is cruel to kill and eat such a "cute" animal as whales. I understand them, but they miss the point. Whether an animal is cute or not doesn't matter. What matters is the difference of culture. Every country has a unique culture and a tradition of eating certain foods; we should respect other cultures as well as our own culture. My idea is that the tradition of catching and eating certain animals should be protected as long as it doesn't do damage to the natural environment.

Learner weblog

Wed, 15 Sep 2004 14:03:08 +0900

If you've followed Kevin Cameron's Bastish.net for any length of time, you know that here's a man who asks big questions. One of the big questions he's been asking is what we as a species -- or more specifically: as citizens and as consumers -- do to the environment, or what we allow to happen to the environment.

Unlike most people, he's always felt urged to act on these questions and do something about them. After examining his options for a long time, he decided to enrol in an M.A. programme on environemental sustainability in Sweden. He moved from Tokyo to Karlskrona, Sweden, a couple of weeks ago.

Now that he's settled in, he has started sustainability.bastish.net, a Bastish.net section which he plans to use as a learner weblog:

I will be following my studies, as well as trying to cover some of the fundamental scientific points of sustainability, both reviewing and further researching what led me here in the first place.

And... it gets even better than that. In a little conversation we're having in the Tawawa Tutorials, he says he "will use it for the other people in the class".

Dig this: students setting up their own weblogs to discuss their studies. That looks like a whole lot of collaborative, autonomous learning.

Rock on, Kevin!

Del.icio.us

Mon, 13 Sep 2004 13:02:01 +0900

This is a follow-up on yesterday's Bookmarks and Furl entry.

A while ago, I created del.icio.us/Tawawa, an online collection of bookmarks. I never got around to stocking it with links, and currently there are only a few of them in two sections: Friends/Neighbours and Media. More links and sections will be added as we go along.

Meanwhile, here's an example. Bill Clifford is a graphic designer, musician, photographer, and creator of wildly funny Web comics. He also maintains a del.icio.us account: del.icio.us/williac. Have a look at the links in his comics section.