I have two classes this year that should have blogs, so I am giving each class a blog. Please feel free to add comments to either blog, whether you are in the class or not.
I would object to this review's apparent assumption that American humor is monolithic, when in fact it is wildly diverse, from highbrow of various sorts (Steve Allen and Woody Allen should never be confused, just for example) to vulgar slapstick of various sorts. Charles Chaplin seemed to combine all levels in his comedy, but then he was an expatriate Briton who never became an American. He just worked in Hollywood. And the article did note how American humor has changed over time, although ignoring how diverse it remains at any given time.
But I have to recommend this article if only for the following observation:
Yodo-san, as he was affectionately known throughout the Japanese film
industry, could as easily tell you why John Belushi was so scintillating
in “The Blues Brothers” as weep over the line about life being like a
box of chocolates in “Forrest Gump.” He was a living, breathing
incarnation of IMDb.com long before the Internet.
I didn't know which was your favorite scene and/or song in the movie, and I had so many myself. Maybe I'll just put this one on the blog for you to enjoy, and you can tell us what else you liked about the movie. If you liked it.
Oh, heck. Why don't I include my favorite song, the only actual 12-bar blues in the film?
Hi!I'm Sachiyo.
Did you enjoy today's English class movie BLUES BROTHERS? I really enjoyed it. I have some questions and comment about it.
Questions
1 Who is the lady tried to kill Jake and Elwood? Why she have to kill them?
2 At the car chase, why the brothers dicided to crash into the shopping mall?Why Elwood is good at driving a car?
3 At their first concert, why there is the wire netting in foront of the performer? Is it popular in U.S? Why did the audience throw bottles?
I have many favorite characters, Matt's wife, sister, Ray and of course brothers.
I want to see it all as soon as possible. But actually I couldn't understand jorkes in it. Why don't we have a class about how to understand American jokes? It is probably interesting!
Good evening everyone. I’m Sachiyo. Did you enjoy today’s English class movie
Psycho? Actually I couldn’t understand the contents of it. So I ask you 5
questions about it.
1 Who is the man appeared at the first scene? And how is he related with the
woman?
2 Why did she steal money?
3 Why did she run away with that money?
4 Why did police
man chase her?
5 Why did the
motel owner feel affection for her?
The movie was so difficult for me to understand and
listen what they talked about. So I couldn’t take any note and get new vocabularies.
Next time how about to watch it with English subtitles?
I have been to the US, the UK, New Zealand, South Korea, and Singapore. As for the US, the UK, and New Zealand, the purpose of staying there was to learn English. For Singapore, it was to switch planes.
I used to wanted to be a backpacker and wanted to visit every country in the world. Now, I do not really want to be a backpacker but I still want to go to every country, even to the North Korea.
One of the places that I would love to visit Taiwan next because it is relatively close to Japan and I have heard that the food there is nice. I love bubble tea. (๑ᴖ◡ᴖ๑)
Another place that I want to visit is Hawaii because the climate there is nice. Also, I am interested in volcanic activities. I have heard that in the Hawaii island, we can see lava going into the ocean.
Eventually, I will visit every country in the world, hopefully.
I really enjoyed today's report, but then it was by one of my students. Maybe the rest of you can tell us a little bit here about places you've been to and others you'd like to visit. I've been to Japan (OK, I know you knew that, but to me it's an exotic overseas location). But I won't tell you that. I guess I'm the only one here who's been to Africa, except Ryo's been to a corner of it in Egypt. How about I post a photo of the lecture I gave at Bayero University, Kano last time I was there?
No? OK, how about Nigerian tofu?
OK, how about something more touristy, like a cool refreshing waterfall on the plateau?
Здравствуйте!
Yesterday, I had watched the movie; Dersu Uzala. This movie was my first Kurosawa's movie. I heard Russian words after so long. I learned Russian languages in my high school.
До сьидания. → See you!
Правила → a rule
Пожалуйста → please
Вы всегд можете. → You're welcome.
Это → this
I heard these words from this movie.
I want to study and learn Russian languages and conversation more.
Thank you for reading.
Дасвидания!
We have finished watching ''Dersu Uzala' directed by Akira Kurosawa. It was my first Kurosawa movie, so do everyone else. I was surprised that the character was based on the real person. The ending was a bit sad but it was like a spice for the movie. I just thought that, for Dersu, it was the tiger that led him to the fate. Overall, I, unexpectedly ,enjoyed the movie. ^_^
About the similarities between the Altaic languages and Japanese language: even though both types of language has SOV word order, that does not mean anything when we talk about the relationship between those languages, since 43% of the languages in the world has SOV order. Even with the Korean language which seems to be quit similar to the Japanese language, it can not be said that those two are related because those languages does not share the basic terms.
Here's a scene you've already seen, one of the most famous from the film, if not in all cinema.
Tell us what you liked about the film, what you didn't like, what you learned from it, and how you think it will end.
I have been thinking about souls, and tonight, I had a chance to talk about this, with a person who was raised in France and had studied in a Catholic school for five years. He told me that animals do not have souls, as professor Philips mentioned in the class, and that the laughter is the evidence for someone having a soul, as explained in one of the Simpsons's episodes.
It is a little bit difficult for me to understand the definition of the soul in the way that is understood by the people who have Christianity background. For me souls are something that are in the animals including human beings. I guess this was the same idea that people in ancient Rome had, because the word for 'soul' in Latin is 'anima' and from this the word 'animal (living creature)' had been derived. However, apparently the concept had been changed with time and the word soul is started to be used to differentiate humans from other creatures.
It, relatively, makes sense to distinguish human beings and other animals by whether to laugh or not. I have never seen any creatures laugh like humans except apes(Chimps, Other Apes Laugh Like People.). I am impressed how people could notice the difference between them. Also, the person that I have talked told me an interesting story about a debate over whether native Americans have souls or not, during the Age of Exploration (Juan Ginés de Sepúlveda (1547) - Digital History).
I assume that for a religion such as Christianity, they needed to categorise humans into a different group to teach people about morals, because, to me, animals do not really have a rational mind to control their behaviour.
This, soul, is a quite interesting concept, so I would love to study more when I have time.
The top picture is a game package for Akuma-kun which was the originally a comic by Shigeru Mizuki. The boy in the middle with a card is the main character, Akuma-kun. A man next to him who is in a suit, is Mefist II. To my surprise, there is a character called Doctor Faust II. He is the old man with lots of white hair with a green cloak. He is the principal of the Mienai Gakkou (Invisible School).
Akuma-kun has to save the world from bad devils with the helps of the good devils that he calls from the devildom using magic circle.
I remember the theme song of this animation and believe that I used to watch this, however, the stories seem so new to me and interesting. I would love to watch this again and see what kind of features had been adopted from the original 'Faust'.
I don't know where to start with "Faust" here. Maybe I'll just google "Faust" on the Internet. First comes up Wikipedia (why am I not surprised?) with sublinks to Goethe's Faust and the French opera. The Wikipedia page has two different disambiguation pages, one for "Faust" and the other for "Faustus". But since Faustus is a name of other persons, I'll just link the page about Dr. Faustus here. Anyway, that's how important and influential this story is in world literature. The "Faustian Bargain" (or deal with the Devil) has another Wikipedia entry. It also has an entry in the standard folktale type index used by folklorists. There's even a faust.com page about the legend.
The Wikipedia page about Marlowe's play probably has more than you wanted to know about the play, including arguments scholars still have about its religious meaning, and the different ways it can be interpreted. Let me quote a little of that section of the page:
The theological implications of Doctor Faustus have been the subject of considerable debate throughout the last century. Among the most complicated points of contention is whether the play supports or challenges the Calvinist doctrine of absolute predestination, which dominated the lectures and writings of many English scholars in the latter half of the sixteenth century. According to Calvin, predestination meant that God, acting of his own free will, elects some people to be saved and others to be damned — thus, the individual has no control over his own ultimate fate. This doctrine was the source of great controversy because it was seen by the so-called anti-Calvinists to limit man's free will in regard to faith and salvation, and to present a dilemma in terms of theodicy.
At the time Doctor Faustus was performed, this doctrine was on the rise in England, and under the direction of Puritan theologians at Cambridge and Oxford had come to be considered the orthodox position of the Church of England.[16] Nevertheless, it remained the source of vigorous and, at times, heated debate between Calvinist scholars, such as William Whitaker and William Perkins, and anti-Calvinists, such as William Barrett and Peter Baro.[17] The dispute between these Cambridge intellectuals had quite nearly reached its zenith by the time Marlowe was a student there in the 1580s, and likely would have influenced him deeply, as it did many of his fellow students.[18]
I'm looking for a good video to post here, but as I said, it's a pity that this "Liz and Dick" vehicle is the only major film version of Marlowe's "Tragical Historie of Dr. Faustus", one of the most influential plays in history. Here's a video of part of a college production (Burton's film was almost a college production, too):
Someone posted an entire video of the complete stage play, but I didn't watch through the whole thing. One of the comments reads:
The entire first scene is wasted the acoustics are so bad. The actors shout instead of project their voices. The play is actually more subtle than one would think from this reading.
Tell me what you thought about it, and if you know any other stories influenced by it.
Thursday, June 07, 2012
My Hobbies
1. watching baseball games
I like to watch baseball games; especially professional baseball. I'm excited at their plays. A month ago, I went to Akita to watch the games, the Swallows vs the Giants. I'm glad to see my favorite players and to watch games. In fact, it was cold that day, and I had a cold for several days. I want to go to watch games again someday.
2. cooking and making
I like cooking and making cakes. Though I say it myself, I'm good at cooking fried chicken, chili con carne and making cheesecake. I like not only to cook but also to eat alone or with my friends. I sometimes study meals and cooking by reading recipe books and columns in newspapers.
3. collecting goods
I'm collecting a variety of goods; especially, baseball and Snoopy. I have 6 stuffed dolls, 4 megaphones, 3 posters and other goods. My room is filled with these goods, but I like Snoopy and baseball, and I can't stop collecting them.
It can be difficult when I think about my hobbies. During the school period, I do not have enough time to enjoy doing something else other than my study. The other day, I "managed" to make some time to watch American TV series called 'Medium'. I quite liked it. Besides this series I also like to watch the Big Bang Theory. I have finished watching all the episodes but I watch some of them again. The main character, Sheldon Cooper is nerdy and sometimes he speaks really fast so it can be a good practise for my listening skill. I can learn academic vocabulary as well, since he is a physicist and works for a university.
I also like to wonder about languages. This is something related to my study and often for my assignment but it is quite fun for me to do so. Recently I had been thinking how strange the Japanese word 'toumorokoshi (corn)' is. I have noticed that in classical Japanese texts, the word 'morokoshi' means the Chinese Tang dynasty, but also 'tou' means Chinese Tang dynasty. Therefore I thought it was interesting word.
However, when I have spare time, I do enjoy other things like, creating websites with HTML, drawing, painting, listening to music, singing, dancing, travelling, and reading.
My hobby...it's a kinda difficult question for me...
I may be able to say that my hobby is wacthing movies.
Usually I do not watch romances but socially ones
like "OUR DAILY BREAD", "Darwin's Nightmare", and "Black Gold".
They are about food issues, so if you are interested in them, I can lent them to you.
And also I like to wacth love-hate battles between females like "Ooku" and "Fusin no Toki"!:D
Watching them give me motivations for many things like study or being a girl.
And I really like to watch them because they give me lots of info I did not know.
Maybe it is not what Professor Philips since I am not relaxes by them,
but when I have nothing to do, I try to watch some movies so I could say it is my hobby.
If you have time, I would lile to know what kind of movies you like to watch.
One of my hobbies is playing chess. This is the western form of the same game that started in central or south Asia somewhere, went east and became shogi in Japan.
At my former university my senpai was interested in learning chess and I used to help him. He also taught me shogi. There are not many in Japan who play chess, although shogi is quite popular, so now I mostly play on my computer. I use the software "Big Bang Chess" which came with a previous computer of mine. It crashes a lot and I had to increase the difficulty from the original setting, but I think my game is improving by practicing with it.
So what's your hobby? What do you do when you're waiting for a download or the website you want to watch is loading, or when you're done with all your work and just want to relax?
I have read some articles about English education in elementary schools in Japan on the Japan Times. Those were relatively old, but I have found an interesting survey result on this article, and I quote, "A survey published by the ministry in 2005 found 71 percent of parents and guardians favored making English compulsory in elementary schools, while 54 percent of teachers were opposed." This survey was done in 2005, and can be too old, however, I believe this result depicts the reality well. It is now a common knowledge that learning English is important to have some kind of advantages in Japan's society. If someone has high TOEIC score, he or she might have more chance to get a well-paying job, which is considered as a good job. It seems that many Japanese people, especially parents of young children, may be obsessed by English education. The survey shows that 71 percent of parents or guardians want their children to learn English, in elementary schools. This might be because they had some difficulties with not being able to use the language. Looking at the real situation, the one who has to teach English language at elementary school is mainly the homeroom teachers, who have not trained to teach it. Therefore they are not confident, and also it can be too much of a work for them because they teaches many subjects and also have to deal with pupils' parents and even with some 'monster parents'. They might have some help from ALT, but as the words indicate, Assistant Language Teachers are just to assist, so mainly the homeroom teacher have to make the lesson plans. For this reason, I assume that, as the survey result showed, teachers do not want to make English language compulsory. I do not know how teachers at elementary schools are coping with English lessons right now, but I hope the lessons are interesting for pupils. Otherwise it is nothing but a disaster, possibly making children to hate English language at an earlier age.
Thankfully, I did not receive proper English education at secondary schools so I did not hate it, but I must admit that since I have entered the university and been having to study English, I started to have less interest in it than before. However, by enjoying using English, especially in this class, I hope I will be able not to hate it. (?)
This week we wound up talking a lot about education, especially language education, and especially English language education, and maybe especially English language education in Japan.
It's a big topic. Wikipedia has a whole category of articles about English language education, including one about English language education in Japan.
Of course Wikipedia is controversial, and not always accurate, but it's a good place to start researching anything. I always tell students to use Wikipedia but don't cite it. Read the footnotes and track down the information as far as you can, to find out where they're getting it from. Don't forget to go back a few weeks later to see if the article has changed. I have some favorite Wikipedia articles that I like to follow as they change. But I do use Wikipedia, especially to start research, although I don't think I would put it into a footnote.
I'll let you find other sites about learning English and link to them for us. I'd like to show you a video from YouTube about English as a second language:
I hope you enjoy it! (^_^)
Tuesday, May 22, 2012
I have no favorite food; I eat meats, fish and vegetables.
I like cooking and eating. Recently, I have tried to cook various food; chili con carne, borshch, fried chicken and so on... I always enjoy cooking.
However, I don't like mushrooms, konnyaku, bean-starch vermicelli (harusame in Japan), jellies and chocolates.
I have been thinking about souls, and tonight, I had a chance to talk about this, with a person who was raised in France and had studied in a Catholic school for five years. He told me that animals do not have souls, as professor Philips mentioned in the class, and that the laughter is the evidence for someone having a soul, as explained in one of the Simpsons's episodes.
1. watching baseball games
2. cooking and making
I'm collecting a variety of goods; especially, baseball and Snoopy. I have 6 stuffed dolls, 4 megaphones, 3 posters and other goods. My room is filled with these goods, but I like Snoopy and baseball, and I can't stop collecting them.
It can be difficult when I think about my hobbies. During the school period, I do not have enough time to enjoy doing something else other than my study. The other day, I "managed" to make some time to watch American TV series called 'Medium'. I quite liked it. Besides this series I also like to watch the Big Bang Theory. I have finished watching all the episodes but I watch some of them again. The main character, Sheldon Cooper is nerdy and sometimes he speaks really fast so it can be a good practise for my listening skill. I can learn academic vocabulary as well, since he is a physicist and works for a university.
