Pukman @ WinK: the community that time didn't forget

Remember:

1. You need to have written at least 60 posts before the day of the exam;
2. Those posts should include 12 book reviews, with cited passages clearly marked, and those cited passages constituting 49% or less of the post;
3. You should count your total words, number of posts for each month, and number of book reviews before the exam, so that you are ready to provide those data in the exam. (If possible, prepare these data before January 9th.)
   

In answer to these questions...

1. Olive oil; ryzogalo creamy rice pudding; moussaka (layers of aubergine, tomato, and minced lamb, baked in the oven, and seasoned with oregano, bay leaf, thyme, cinnamon, allspice, and black pepper); tzatziki (a combination of yoghurt, cucumber, and garlic).

2. Athens, population 745,000

3. 132,000 square kilometers (about one third of Japan)

4. Food products such as olive oil

5. Sports, cinema, etc. (Don't know)

Grammar is the field of....

morphology: 形態論
syntax: 語法
phonetics: 音声学
phonology: 音韻論
semantics: 意味論
pragmatics: 語用論

For the country that you are writing about for your final essay, please answer the following questions. Please link to this post in your answer.

5. ¿ǝɯıʇ ǝǝɹɟ ɹıǝɥʇ uı op ǝldoǝd op ʇɐɥʍ
4. ¿sʇɹodxǝ snoɯɐɟ ǝɯos ǝɹɐ ʇɐɥʍ
3. ¿(uɐdɐɾ oʇ uoıʇɐlǝɹ uı ؛sɹǝʇǝɯolıʞ ǝɹɐnbs ˙ƃ˙ǝ) ʎɹʇunoɔ ǝɥʇ sı ƃıq ʍoɥ
2. ¿ʎʇıɔ ʇɐɥʇ ɟo uoıʇɐlndod ǝɥʇ sı ʇɐɥʍ puɐ 'ʎʇıɔ lɐʇıdɐɔ ǝɥʇ sı ʇɐɥʍ
1. ¿spooɟ ǝʌıʇɐʇuǝsǝɹdǝɹ ɹo snoɯɐɟ ǝǝɹɥʇ ǝɹɐ ʇɐɥʍ

˙pǝsn ǝq oʇ sı ǝƃɐnƃuɐl ɐ ʍoɥ ɟo sǝlnɹ ƃuıuɹǝʌoƃ ǝɥʇ ǝɔɹoɟuǝ oʇ sǝıɹʇ ɥɔıɥʍ 'uoıʇdıɹɔsǝɹd ɔıʇsınƃuıl oʇ pǝsoddo sɐ 'ɹɐɯɯɐɹƃ ǝʌıʇdıɹɔsǝp ɐ pǝllɐɔ sı ǝƃɐnƃuɐl ɐ ɟo suoıʇɔnɹʇsuoɔ lɐɔıʇɐɯɯɐɹƃ ǝɥʇ ƃuıqıɹɔsǝp ʎlǝʌıʇsnɐɥxǝ ɹɐɯɯɐɹƃ ʇıɔıldxǝ ʎllnɟ ɐ

˙"ɹɐɯɯɐɹƃ ɐ" ʎldɯıs ɹo "ɹɐɯɯɐɹƃ ǝɔuǝɹǝɟǝɹ" ɐ pǝllɐɔ sı ǝƃɐnƃuɐl ɐ ɟo ɹɐɯɯɐɹƃ ǝɥʇ ƃuıqıɹɔsǝp ʞooq ǝɔuǝɹǝɟǝɹ ɐ ˙sǝlnɹ ǝsǝɥʇ ɟo sısʎlɐuɐ ɹo ʎpnʇs ɔıɟıɔǝds ɐ sı "ɹɐɯɯɐɹƃ ɥsılƃuǝ uɐ" ˙ɟlǝsʇı ǝƃɐnƃuɐl ɥsılƃuǝ ǝɥʇ ɟo sǝlnɹ ɟo ʇǝs ǝɥʇ sı "ɹɐɯɯɐɹƃ ɥsılƃuǝ" ˙ɹɐɯɯɐɹƃ ʇɔuıʇsıp uʍo sʇı sɐɥ ǝƃɐnƃuɐl ɥɔɐǝ

˙sɔıʇɐɯƃɐɹd puɐ 'sɔıʇuɐɯǝs 'ʎƃolouoɥd 'sɔıʇǝuoɥd ʎq pǝʇuǝɯǝldɯoɔ uǝʇɟo 'xɐʇuʎs puɐ ʎƃoloɥdɹoɯ sǝpnlɔuı ʇı ˙ǝƃɐnƃuɐl lɐɹnʇɐu uǝʌıƃ ʎuɐ ɟo ǝsn ǝɥʇ ƃuıuɹǝʌoƃ suoıʇuǝʌuoɔ ǝɥʇ sɹǝʌoɔ ʇɐɥʇ sɔıʇsınƃuıl ɟo plǝıɟ ǝɥʇ sı ɹɐɯɯɐɹƃ

France, Italy, and Greece are some of the countries mentioned in connection with the Mediterranean diet, which is praised by many doctors and medical researchers as the main reason for the low rates of heart disease in these countries.

The Greek diet includes lots of olive oil, some in almost every dish. Greek people often eat beans, olives, cheese, and fish. Their most famous kind of cheese is feta cheese. This is a kind of brined cheese, which means that it is made in salt water. It usually contains a mixture of cow's milk and goat's milk. I have seen it on sale in Hello Green and other supermarkets; unfortunately, it's rather expensive. The picture shows Greek salad made with feta cheese.

Did you watch the final matches of the J1 season last weekend? Kashima Antlers won their match, so they won their second consecutive J-League championship. Kawasaki Frontale and Nagoya Grampus came second and third, respectively. What made the ending exciting was that Frontale could have come first if the Antlers hadn't won their final match. Frontale scored lots of goals towards the end of the season and made the finish very exciting. Maybe Antlers will make a real challenge for the Champions League next year?

You can find out all about sushi here!

I've decided to write about Greece. Here is a map. Greece is in Europe but very close to Africa and Asia. Maybe that is why it developed such a rich culture.

Some more info.

I'm trying to decide what country to write about. Two ideas I had are Uganda and Greece. I thought of Uganda because I enjoyed the movie Last King of Scotland (which was about Uganda), and Greece because I have always wanted to go to the Greek islands and also because Greece is such an important country in the history of Europe and the basis of much of our culture. Another one I was thinking about is Finland, because my brother used to live there, and there are many beautiful lakes and forests. Finland is a large country in area but its population is only about 5 million!

I found some good links to help decide:

• A list of countries, on Wikipedia
• A world map
• World Navigator
  

The World Club Championship began yesterday in Tokyo (I think; maybe it was Yokohama). Unfortunately, I didn't get home from work until rather late last night so I wasn't able to watch the match, even though I had recorded it. Maybe I'll watch it tonight! Many people are looking forward to seeing Manchester United, especially Christiano Ronaldo, but to be honest I'm not expecting much. I'm not sure if Ronaldo will be coming, actually, as I heard he had some kind of injury recently. In any case, I think the players will be rather tired after their matches in the Premiership and Champions League. This year, Manchester United aren't doing so well in the Premier League, so probably they want to save their best players for that. And traditionally, English teams don't give much priority to the World Club Championship (formerly the Toyota Cup).

I haven't checked the match schedule recently, but I think there's a match every other day, at least at the begining of the tournament, so I'm looing forward to Saturday. That's also the day, I believe, when Jubilo Iwata will play to decide whether they will be relegated to J2 next year, or remain in J1.

Hi everyone, the final essay topic for this semester is to introduce a country that you think is interesting or that you like very much. If you have written about a country in a previous essay this year, please choose a different one. This is a good chance to find out about a country you don't know much about.

The last class this calendar year is December 19th. Then we meet January 9th. The test is provisionally scheduled for January 28th.

Since I seem to have a recent theme of CUP books, let me remind you of the Cambridge English Readers series. I recommend that you read all the books at Starter level (my favorite is Dirty Money) and at Level 1 (my favorite is Inspector Logan) to start with, building up your fluency and confidence. A classic at level 2 is Jojo's Story.

Try QWERTY Warriors!

I first played table tennis regularly when I was an exchange student in Shanghai. Since I was in China I decided to imitate the Chinese students around me, who all used the penhold grip. When I went back to England I didn't play table tennis regularly, and soon forgot most of what I had learned, but when I started playing table tennis again recently, I naturally stayed with the penhold grip. In Japan, penhold players always play with a special racquette that makes it very easy to wrap your finger around the handle. I got so used to this kind of penhold racquette that I forgot what Chinese penhold players used.

A few days ago, however, I was given a Chinese penhold racquette by a colleague who bought the racquette in China but didn't like it so much. It's actually very similar to a shakehand racquette, but slightly easier to grip. The bonus is that it's symmetric and therefore easy to flip around, so we can put different kinds of rubber on each side.

Talking of self-study, if you want to improve your vocabulary you may want to check out the Vocabulary in Use books. Like the Grammar in Use series these are from CUP. The book pictured is the Elementary book. They also have Pre-Intermediate, Intermediate, and Advanced levels.

If you want to brush up your grammar, you may want to buy books in the Grammar in Use series. They're a bit expensive but they have many exercises and are very thorough. The book pictured is at intermediate level; there is also a book in the same series for beginners.

The FIFA Club World Cup will be held as usual in Japan this year. I believe it's starting very soon. The participants in the competition are the champions of the Champions League in Europe, the Copa Libertadores in South America, the AFC Champions League in Asia, and other continental competitions. I am looking forward especially to seeing Gamba Osaka (who recently won the AFC Champions League) and Manchester United, who won the UEFA Champions League in May.

The Club World Cup is the successor to the Toyota Cup, which was nearly always held in Japan. Now that it's a bigger competition, it will be held in a different country each year, so maybe this will be our last chance for some time to see it in Japan. I hope that the TV channnels will show many matches! The competition starts on December 11th, and the final is scheduled for December 21st. Gambaranba, Gamba!

Today, let's talk about some ways to join sentences together to make longer sentences. The 3 key words you need to know to understand the explanations are:

1. conjunction
2. compound sentence
3. complex sentence

Below are some excerpts from the website we will use today:

The 'magnificent seven' conjunctions (the most commonly used) are:

and, although, as, because, but, if, or

When you make a compound sentence, you are joining two or more simple sentences together with a conjunction. If you took the conjunction away, the sentences would be complete and they would still make sense.
e.g. 'I hate curry, but I like Thai food.'= 'I hate curry' + but + 'I like Thai food'

Complex sentences don't just divide into neat, complete, simple sentences if you take out the conjunctions. In complex sentences the conjunction is used to join together clauses. A clause is a group of words that contains a subject and a verb. Some of these clauses might be complete short sentences, but in a complex sentence at least one of them will depend on the conjunction for its meaning.
In other words, if you take the conjunction away, the sentence won't divide into complete units that make sense by themselves.

e.g. 'The dinner was burned because she had forgotten it.'
= 'The dinner was burned' + 'because' + 'she had forgotten it.'

We will visit the lesson Putting Sentences Together at the BBC Skillswise site.

If you have some free time, please try Alpha Attack!

I've just posted an exciting new podcast episode! Check it out! 39! 銅板島枝手!

Here's the list of all the Biscuit books available! The Jack series looks good, too.

I get regular emails from HarperCollins, a publisher, about children's books. The one that arrived today has an interesting list for the Thanksgiving season. One of the books on the list was Happy Thanksgiving, Biscuit. Do you know the Biscuit series? Biscuit is a dog who is very cute and very popular with children overseas (and also with PUK students). I hadn't heard of this title before, so maybe we will get it for the PUK library. You can find out more about the Biscuit series and other books by the same author at her website. Anyway, please take a look at the list and see if there are any titles that interest you.

First of all, please note that this is the last class in November. There will be 3 classes in December (5th, 12th, 19th). After that, there's only one class scheduled in January (9th) and then, unless we do a hokou class, the exams start! So you don't have so long to catch up if you're falling behind! Note that, before the exams start, you need to have written 60 posts for the semester (5 posts a week over 12 weeks). At least 12 of those posts should be book reviews.

In today's class, you need to record your most recent essay ("My favorite...") and post it on podOmatic. Please be sure to write a post on your blog linking to your new podcast episode (and make sure your first podcast episode is also linked to in the same way).

Remember that recording can take longer than you expect. Please DON'T wait until the end of the class. If you're unable to finish during the class, please take the initiative in your free time or in a future class to finish the work. Note that I recommend using GarageBand to record so that you have a file to upload again if there is any problem with podOmatic.

If you need grammar help, please call me. But bear in mind that the priority this week is recording, so there is no guarantee that I will have enough time to help you.

If you have free time during the class, please consider reading one of the books I have brought to class and writing a review of it.

One more thing: at the end of November/beginning of December, please remember to update your weblog report.

I found out that the Japan NT match I was talking about was against Yemen. I was too late to get an advance-release ticket from FamilyMart, and the Ticket Pia website was busy as soon as tickets went on general sale, but fortunately a member of the PUK soccer club had a spare ticket. (She had bought a ticket but was then asked to help out at the match, so she didn't need her ticket any more.) The match is part of the Asian Cup qualifying campaign. So I hope to see you at the ground on January 20th!

It occurs to me that those of you who are younger than me may not know Robert Carlyle and Jon Voight. You might want to check out Robert Carlyle's page on the IMDB. Well-known movies in which he appears include The World is Not Enough (a 007 movie), Trainspotting, Angela's Ashes, and Eragon.

It's been a while since I saw Season 6 of 24. So I was quite excited today to see that there's a new 24 programme, called Redemption.

My wife was reading the paper this morning, and she told me that the Japan national soccer team would be playing in KK Wing early next year. I thought she said January 20th or thereabouts, but Ayami told me today that it was on January 8th. In any case, apparently we can buy tickets at FamilyMart or Hayakawa sports shop. She said the match was almost sold out so I'm going to hurry! I don't even know who the opponent is but after Wednesday's match I want to see the national team play anyone. I hope Matsui plays!

Recently, I've been buying a lot of books. Two of them are about health and are quite interesting. Another was a fantasy work by Katharine Kurtz. It's in the Deryni series, which I remember enjoying very much when I was about 15 or so. At that time, there was just one trilogy, but now there are many, many books. Unfortunately, most are out of print. So I tried Amazon Marketplace for the first time, and bought the book secondhand. It was just as good as I remember the original Deryni books being when I was a teenager.

If you're interested in fantasy, check out the Mythopoeic awards page (in Japanese).

There's another Katharine Kurtz site, created as a wiki so that fans can contribute information.

Did you see this match? It was very late on Wednesday night, so I didn't get to see it until last night, and then I fell asleep so I saw the end this morning. But it was a great match. Japan's play looked so different from their recent peformances. They had lots of energy and movement, and used their imaginations to attack. Two of the three attackers, Tanaka Tatsuya and Tamada, scored a goal. Their midfield and defence also looked more solid than usual. They won 3-0, and it's difficult to find anything to complain about!

The Magic Tree House series is very well-known and respected in the US. We don’t yet have any of these books in the PUK Library. How about at KGU?

Last weekend, I went to the PUK campus festival on Saturday, and then went with my family to Toyo on Sunday. Toyo is now part administratively of Yatsushiro City, but geographically I think it's closer to Gokanosho. It's famous mainly for two things: its ginger production and its stone masonry. I heard that some of the pioneers of stone bridge-building techniques in Japan came from this area, and Oita, Nagasaki, and Kumamoto have the largest number of stone bridges in Japan. There's a museum in Toyo devoted to stone bridges. There's lots of information there about the history of stone bridges, and some interesting practical activities, for example lifting very big stones through the use of pullies and so on, and even building a bridge on a wooden frame, and then removing the frame after adding the last stone, to see whether your bridge is strong enough to stand on its own.

In today's class:

I went to the Hakua Festival today with my family. We had lots of good food and we enjoyed the walk rally. The most impressive thing was the wooden play objects made by students of the Department of Human Habitat.

Please visit the Hakua Festival page.

The files that go into QuickTime Pro to make a slideshow movie must be images. I could have used the book cover images as they were, but I decided that I wanted to accompany them with some text, so I made a Keynote presentation and exported the slides as images. Keynote gives all the images the same name, but with 001, 002, etc., added on the end.

I like the I Can Read series very much. We have lots of I Can Read books in the PUK Library. This slideshow with sound was made with QuickTime Pro, according to two tutorials at the Apple website.

There are lots of movies playing now or coming soon that look very interesting. John Woo's Red Cliff is a dramatization of the famous Chinese story, Romance of the Three Kingdoms. Part 1 is playing now, and Part 2 is due to come next year. The latest James Bond movie, Quantum of Solace, has already started playing in the U.K. and presumably will be coming to Japan sometime shortly after the New Year. The latest movie from Pixar (makers of Toy Story, Monsters Inc., Finding Nemo, and The Incredibles, and so on), Wall E, is coming early next month.

The next essay topic is "My favorite...". This could be anything, such as book, movie, place, recipe, etc. It can be singular (book, place, and so on) or plural (books, places, and so on). I recommend 3 paragraphs; each paragraph should have at least 4 sentences.

Please use the Essay Map to help you build the essay. And please hand in the essay by email as a Microsoft Word document. (You can put it on your blog later, after I have had a chance to check it.)

If time allows, you should start work today. The deadline is November 21st.

I hope you enjoyed the campus festival last week!

Today, after Juppun ha Juubun, it's time to do our first weblog assessment for this semester. Download the weblog report file from http://public.me.com/ricklavin2001 and then import into Google Docs http://docs.google.com

We'll start work on the next essay (see the next post) if time allows.

Do you know the famous story The Gingerbread Man? If you liked it, you should try

The Gingerbread Girl. She is the Gingerbread Man's sister and she has learned from his mistakes!

I recently read

Yeh-Shen, which is the Chinese version of Cinderella (or it may be more accurate to say the Cinderella is an adaptation of Yeh-Shen). The differences with the Cinderella that I knew were very interesting. I recommend this book and also any of the other Cinderella books that you can find on this site.

30 posts, including a podcast episode. This episode must be linked to from your Blogger blog.

(If technical problems stopped you doing this, make sure you have saved an MP3 file ready for uploading.)

Have you seen Hot Fuzz. Catch it while it's playing!

Most of you asked me to help you correct your work for the first assignment. Because for many of you this was the first time to have a "live" correction session, you probbaly were most concerned with finishing with a good "product".

However, the most important thing with correction is what you learn from it. So for assignment 2, we're going to rework something you did in the first semester (or any other older piece of work if you didn't take the Writing 3 in the first semester). We'll do a "live" correction for this assignment, too, but the key this time is to remember what kinds of corrections were made so that you can avoid the same patterns in the future.

The first thing to do is to find a piece of work from the first semester that you are interested in reworking, and to copy it to a new post in your blog. Make sure the title of the post (or the top of the body) includes "copied from DATE" with a link to the original. Don't edit this post. Then you should copy the post one more time to yet another post and start looking for ways to improve it. You can edit directly in the post or do this in TextEdit or Word and then paste into the new post.

(Please do this after finishing the previous assignment!)

NOTE: No class next week (October 31st)

On today's menu:

1. Juppun ha juubun
2. Finishing recording/uploading/linking to podcast
3. Listening to and commenting on others' podcasts
   
4. List: Places in Japan I would recommend to visitors from overseas. (Do this for homework if there isn't enough time in class.)
   
5. Starting Assignment 2
   

With the campus festival approaching, don't forget that you should be writing 5 posts a week. That means that, before the next session on November 7th, you should have written 30 posts*. We will do a Weblog Evaluation on November 7th.

*"30 posts" includes all posts on your Blogger blog (lists, juppun ha juubun, book reviews, essays, essay prep, diary posts, etc.) and all posts on your podOmatic blog/podcast. (Make sure that you have linked to your podOmatic blog/podcast from your Blogger blog.)

Note that this is counted from August, so if you blogged during the summer your requirement during the semester is correspondingly less.

Do you like Italian food? I like it very much. Pizza is great, and so is pasta. Unfortunately, in Japan it's difficult to get various kinds of pasta, and especially whole wheat pasta is difficult to obtain, except in one kind of spaghetti. Two relatively good places to get pasta are Premier Cru and Tsuruya

Japan played another World Cup qualifier last Thursday, this time at home against Uzbekistan. It was a very disappointing match. The coach, Takeshi Okada, used a similar system to the one he used in the previous friendly match against the United Arab Emirates. Just as in that match, the match ended in a draw (1-1). I have often heard that Japan is not traditionally very good at playing with one striker, and this match (and the previous one) appeared to confirm that, with scoring chances being few and far between.

Okada is traditionally known as a defensive coach, but the ways in which Japan concedes goals suggests that the defensive aspects are not going so well. It would seem unrealistic to expect Japan to keep a clean sheet, so wins are going to depend on scoring two or more goals on a regular basis. And that, it seems to me, depends on having two strikers. The evidence of the last two matches suggests that Koroki is the only really aggressive striker they have available.

On today's menu:

1. Juppun ha juubun
2. Recording your assignment on a place, and uploading the recording to podOmatic (continued from last week). Everyone needs to do this today.

To give you plenty of time for recording, we won't do a list in class, but the topic of this week's list is Books I Like, or Books I Recommend. Please make this list whenever you have time.

Also, please remember that you should be writing 5 posts a week. A typical week's posts would be:

1. Juppun ha juubun (in class)
2. A list (usually in class)
3. A book review (usually outside of class)
4. Some kind of diary post (usually outside of class)
5. Something related to the current assignment. This might be the main assignment itself, essay prep, or a post (episode) on podOmatic.

Have you heard of Hot Fuzz? It's a British movie that's playing only at Denkikan. I haven't seen it yet, but it looks like great fun!

Have you seen Iron Man? I wouldn't call it a great movie, but it is a lot of fun. I guess the biggest reason for this is Robert Downey Jr.'s acting, which is always very natural and humorous. He is a very talented actor, and his most spectacular role was perhaps Chaplin, back in the early 1990s.

Iron Man is playing at several theaters in Kumamoto, but be careful: at Clea, they are only showing the dubbed version.

Yesterday, the Japan national team played against the United Arab Emirates in Saitama (or somewhere in Japan). Their style of play was quite attacking and quite attractive, with some nice moves involving Okubo, Okazaki, and Nakamura Shunsuke. However, Japan was unable to score a goal in the first half, or in the first half of the second half. Finally, after several substitutions, including Kagawa, a very young player, Kagawa scored a goal. Unfortunately, Japan wasn't able to add to their score, and near the end of the match they conceded an equaliser. Conceding late goals is becoming a worrying pattern.

One very encouraging thing was Koroki, a striker from Kashima Antlers. He almost scored a couple of times, and he attacked very aggressively, creating many chances for other players. It seems to me that he is the best by far of all Japan's strikers.

Next week, Japan will play a World Cup qualifier, which they have to win to have a good chance of qualifying.

After doing a juppun ha juubun post, let's move on to our main topic, the assignment on a place. (Perhaps no time for a list today.)

If you have finished writing the first draft of your essay (and posted it on your blog), you need to call me to give you individual help with correcting the essay. (You can then post a second version on your blog.) When we have finished that, you can try recording.

If you haven't finished your first draft yet, you need to get working quickly. If you are working with a partner, you should both take a careful look at your grammar and spelling before calling me for help.

So at any one time, some of you will be writing, some asking for help with correction, and some recording.

Alternatively, if you see that few people are using the microphones, try recording a very short piece to practise. You can replace it later with a better recording.

I'm going to write about Vancouver. I'm working with Ayamin.

Sites:

• official site
• Wikipedia

Keywords & facts:

• British Columbia
• seaport
• population: 611,000
• "one of the three most livable cities in the world"

Do you know the movie Wanted? I saw the trailer for this movie many times and it looked very exciting. It stars Angelina Jolie and Morgan Feeman and there's a lot of action, so I assumed it would be interesting, so I went to see it last week.

Unfortunately, it was terrible. It began with a paragraph of text on the screen explaining that Italian weavers in the 23th century had created a secret team of assassins and that now this team operated from America. Maybe such a team did exist in fact, but it sounded so stupid. What's the connection between weavers and assassins?

It got worse. The hero of the movie is a young man who's recruited into the team because he's the son of the most famous of the assassins. He's ordered to kill a man, and he at first refuses because he doesn't know what the man has done wrong. Angelina Jolie tells him that it's impossible to tell the future and the man might do something bad, so it's dangerous to refuse. So he kills the man. So simple!

I like crazy action scenes but this was too stupid to be enjoyable. The assassins shake their hand when they shoot their gun and are thus able to bend bullets round corners or even in a full circle. Another crazy thing was that whenever they got injured or scared they just had a hot bath and they looked fine afterwards.

So let's hope Iron Man and Eagle Eye are better!

• Yes
• Kazue Sawai
  . See video.
• Chitose Hajime. See video.

On today's menu:

I found an interesting grammar website. I also found an interactive test on the Macmillan Readers site.

My summer holiday was quite a busy one, because I spent two-and-a-half weeks in hospital. Most of the rest of the time I was working. But I also went to Aso and some other interesting places with my family. We went hiking in Aso and then went to Sakura for dago-jiru. We also had sweetcorn at the top of Aso. Another day, we went to have dago-jiru (again!) at a small restaurant in Nishihara. The meal was very nice, because it was actually mini-kaiseki ryouri with dago-jiru rather than just dago-jiru.

• Blackberries
• Raspberries
• Gooseberries (not really!)
• Bilberries
• 黄蓮寺

I guess raspberries are my favorite. Do you know how to say them in Japanese? And how about French? (If you like cakes, you might know the French word.)

I found Listen to English. This has colloquial listening practice at several different levels. Another useful site is allcinema. Here, you can find out the correct English title of a movie if you only know the Japanese title (and of course vice versa). This is very useful if, for example, you want to write a movie review in English on your blog but you don't know the English title. Another interesting movie site is the interactive tour of the American Film Institute's top 100 movies.

The Premier League started towards the end of August and most teams have already played about four games. Arsenal and Chelsea are at the top of the table now, and Manchester United near the bottom, though Manchester are expected to do better now that Christiano Ronaldo is back from injury. The other Manchester team, Manchester City, is doing pretty well, and is under new ownership and also with a new manager. Most people think that the Big 4 (Manchester United, Chelsea, Arsenal, Liverpool) will take the top 4 spots as usual, though there is speculation that the money the new Manchester City owners have brought in might help them move into the top 4 next year.

Already, two managers have left their posts, Kevin Keegan (see picture) from Newcastle, and Alan Curbishley from West Ham. Many people wonder who's next.

• Raspberries
• Blueberries
• Blackberries
• Black cherries

The picture shows a blackberry and a raspberry. Blackberries grow wild all over England. A popular dessert in England is blackberry and apple pie.

1. Make sure you've posted about one or more of the sites you've visited, including a link! (Ask for help if you can't make a link.)
2. Make sure you have written 5 posts including a book review and juppun ha juubun before next week's class.

1. Target is 15,000 words (minimum 10,000).
2. Some assignments will be spoken.
3. With spoken assignments, you will be expected to be careful with spelling and grammar. You will have opportunities for feedback from friends and your teacher.
   

1. Welcome to Writing IV: explaining the syllabus
2. Juppun ha juubun
3. Today's list (with links)
   
4. Ma.gnolia & Links
5. (Introducing the first assignment)
6. (Comments)
   

Go to Ma.gnolia through winkhome.

I finally got to see Kung Fu Panda. It was very funny, with great action scenes. One of my favorite pieces of dialogue:

Yesterday is history

Tomorrow's a mystery

That's why they call it the present.

You may be interested to hear that the PUK Library has just obtained the 15 books in the Primary Classic Readers series. Check them out in LibraryThing! (You may need to log in to view this page.)

All the books are retellings of traditional tales. They offer you a good chance to read any stories you don't know, and also an opportunity to re-read stories that you already know.

It's been a long time since I was so excited about movies. As I mentioned before, Forbidden Kingdom was great, and apparently the Terminator series isn't dead. And I'm still waiting for the chance to see Kung Fu Panda. And in just a few days, the Dark Knight, the latest Batman movie will start playing. By many accounts, it's the best of all the Batman movies. It's noted especially for the performance as the Joker of Heath Ledger, who sadly died not long after filming was over. As usual, I recommend watching the trailer at the Apple movies site, but I recommend that you also explore the official movie site, which has downloads, games, and a photo gallery.

I like Earl Grey tea very much, and recently came across Earl Grey tea from the East India Company. The East India Company is famous for its trading, political, and military activities in the 17th to 19th centuries, but I hadn't realised it still existed, so I bought the tea with interest. I later found out that the makers of this tea are actually a company founded in 1987, with no link to the original East India Company. But that doesn't matter because the tea was great!

Most Earl Grey tea gets its distinctive flavour from bergamot oil. According to the company's research, however, that oil wasn't known in the early days of Earl Grey tea, and they suggest that neroli oil (oil from the flowers of the bitter orange tree) is likely to have been the original flavouring, so that's what they now use in an attempt to recreate the original tea.

It looks like the best place to find out about different kinds of Earl Grey tea is the Tending Towards Tea site.

Do you know Minnie Driver? She is one of my favorite actresses, but, after starring in Good Will Hunting, she doesn't seem to have been in many movies. But on the Apple Movie Trailers site, I just came across a trailer for a new movie, Take. It looks interesting. I've no idea if it will ever come to Kumamoto, but I assume it will at least be available on DVD at some time.

Do you like martial arts? If so, I think you'll enjoy Forbidden Kingdom. It stars both Jackie Chan and Jet Li, as well as Collin Chou, another kung fu star. Jackie Chan's movies usually include a lot of slapstick humour, and it's a long time since I saw him fighting in a conventional way. But in this movie he fights a lot, including a duel with Jet Li. For a preview, I recommend trailer 2 at Apple's movie trailers site. I also recommend exploring the movie site, which has a timeline and free downloads.

I assumed the Terminator series was over, once the star became Governor of California, but I just found a trailer for a new Terminator movie. Christian Bale, who is also the star of the recent Batman movies, plays the main John Connor role. I'm not sure when the movie is due to come out, still less when it will come to Japan, but I'm looking forward to it!

I've created a new account on LibraryThing to show the PUK Library collection of graded readers, leveled readers, and other readers for students. The account is pukreaders, and you can see the collection here, or navigate there from the WinK People group (click on "_____ members" from the group homepage). I recommend that you make pukreaders a friend, or monitor the pukreaders collection.

Although there are at present 1866 books in the collection, it is not complete yet, and I will continue to add covers and to tag all the books. Please check out the tag cloud.

Note that you need to log in to LibraryThing to use some features.

Do you know Stories of Monsters, from the Usborne Young Reading series? You can see some sample pages here, and listen to an excerpt here. If you like it, why not borrow the book and CD together?

Enhanced podcast episode assembled in GarageBand and exported to m4a, converted at zamzar.com to mp4, then uploaded to YouTube, finally embedded in this post in the usual way from YouTube.
The file has been curtailed with about 20 seconds to go, the photos have become desynchronized from the audio, and the audio has been massively processed to the point of severe distortion. But I count this a success, as I've finally succeeded in getting something out of GarageBand and into the blog.

But one has to wonder: Why, oh why does Blogger allow video uploads but not audio?

Here are the rules on copying that I have already sent to students by email:

Your blog needs to be YOUR OWN WORK. That means not generated by computer, and NOT COPIED from Wikipedia, books, or other sources.

The exception is as I explained in class. If you want to cite (=quote = "inyou suru") something, for example part of a book, you can do that but there are 2 rules:

1. You MUST mark the copied part clearly.
2. The copied part can NEVER be more than 49% of your blog post (number of words).

That means, for example, that if your blog post is 100 words long, a 50-word citation is too long and MUST be shortened. (In general, you should try to keep quotes to less than 30%.)

Please understand that these rules are very important. If you don't understand, please ask. If you break the rules, that will be considered cheating. It might also be illegal.

Have you heard of Kung Fu Panda? It's an animated movie from Dreamworks. I saw the trailer recently and it looks very exciting. I like kung fu movies and I like animation, too, so this is doubly interesting for me. Still not interested? Well, the voices of Jackie Chan and Angelina Jolie feature. Yeah!

Things to do to ensure a pass:

Most of you have the "Orange Book", the 読書記録手帳. The back of the book has a list of books, organized by series and level, with details of the difficulty and number of words. When you note the books you are reading, you should write two figures in the words column, the number of words of the present book and your total number of words so far.

The Orange Book doesn't have details on all books. A book with lots more data is the 英語多読完全ブックガイド. The PUK Library has three copies of this book. How about the KGU Library?

Usually, I make a big effort to see as much tennis as possible during Wimbledon, but this year I haven't seen any. I was very tired after watching Euro 2008 soccer matches, and I couldn't work up any enthusiasm for staying up late.

Things to do in the last few weeks (last two classes plus make-up period):

1. Final essay (1-05): Self-Introduction (10 years in the future)
2. Get your blog assessment up-to-date. (Your final blog assessment will be in the exam, July 25th. It's important that you master how to do it before then.)
3. Check your blog sidebar/footer.
4. Ask any questions or get help with any technical problems.
5. Make sure you have 12 book reviews, 5 "essays", more than 60 posts, and lots of words.
6. Make sure that your posts are your own work. Copying sentences from books or websites is stealing, unless it's done in a specific way. From an educational point of view, it's like cheating in an exam. It's also a legal problem.
7. Add the books you've read to LibraryThing.
   

Sidebar/Footer Items:

• Visual Thesaurus
• LibraryThing
• Recent Comments
• Links (friends' blogs, Kumamoto links, other)
  

My favorite presentation in this class was Yui's. It was about Amakusa, and it had a cute picture of dolphins! Also, check out Misaki's one on Ozu (with no wizard!). And Ayumi talks about Koshi City, while Kyoko introduces the Kuma region.

As you know, the Euro 2008 football competition is coming to an end soon. Last night, and the previous night, the two semi-finals were played, and the final will be held on Sunday, I believe.

Actually, I don't know the result of last night's semi-final, between Russia and Spain, and please don't tell me! The match started at about 3:30 this morning, so I recorded it and am planning to watch tonight. The previous semi-final, between Germany and Turkey, saw Germany emerge as victors after a very tough match, in which everyone says Turkey looked much better but couldn't score many goals. Unfortunately, it wasn't shown on Japanese terrestrial TV, so I just saw the goals.

Everone seems to agree that this year's competition is much more exciting than last year's. Interestingly, though, the number of goals in the group stage was higher 4 years ago in Greece. Another interesting feature of this year's competition is that, generally, the teams that had a long rest before the quarter- or semi-finals lost their matches. This is surprising because in the domestic leagues it is usual to have about a week between matches, and everyone says that two matches a week is too much.

Anyway, I'm looking forward to the final!

On today's menu:

1. Juppun ha juubun
2. Uploading presentations to Slideshare
3. Weblog Assessments / Free blogging

Notes on Slideshare:

1. If you already have an account on Slideshare, click Login (top right). (Remember to use Safari with Slideshare.)
   
2. Click on the Upload button (top left).
3. Click on Browse and select files, then find the file on your computer.
4. Add tags to your file. For example, if your presentation is about food in Kumamoto, you could use the tags kumamoto and food. Also make sure the title is OK, and add a short description.
5. Click Publish.
6. When you see a green check mark, click on the word here.
7. When the slideshow appears on your my-slideshows page, click on the title.
8. When your slideshow appears, click on the orange Blogger symbol to send it to a post on your blog.
   

Remember that you cannot upload Keynote files. If your presentation was created in Keynote, export it to PDF before uploading.
Also, the uploading and sending to Blogger stages don't always work perfectly. Please be patient. If things don't work, stay calm and just try again!

Hi. Check out my podcast.





Woops. That doesn't seem to work very well. I wonder if there's a free alternative to VisualHub?

As I mentioned above, the Euro 2008 competition has reached the quarter-final stage, and the first quarter-final was held last night. It was between Germany and Portugal, and Germany won 3-2.

Traditionally, Germany is known for performing badly at the beginning of competitions, but somehow beating teams that look stronger in the later stages. But this time Portugal looked really strong and attacking, and Germany looked quite weak, so I thought it would be different. But it looks like the old saying that "Football is a game where two teams kick a ball around for 90 minutes and Germany always wins" is more accurate than I suspected.

The Euro 2008 football tournament has reached the knockout stage, after 24 (?) matches in the group stages, and the quarterfinals are now being held, starting last night, I believe. Who do you think will win? I support Holland, and I think maybe this year they will be successful.

The quarter-finalists were/are:
Portugal v. Germany
Croatia v. Turkey
Holland v. Russia
Spain v. Italy

On today's menu:

1. Juppun ha juubun
2. Comments
3. Continue creating your presentation

If you've almost finished your presentation, please look at it again. If you have five or fewer slides, please add a few more. And check your grammar and spelling (or ask a friend to)!

When you've finished, try uploading your presentation to Slideshare, and then see try sending it to your blog from Slideshare.

If you change your presentation after uploading it, just upload the new version, then delete the old one. Also delete any blog posts containing the old one, and send the new one to your blog.

Remember that, based on last week's experience, Slideshare works best with Safari, not Firefox.

Note that the deadline for this assignment is next Thursday (June 26th). If you finish today, please start preparing a script to accompany your presentation.

Tonight, there are two exciting soccer matches scheduled and then one tomorrow. I don't know whether I'll be able to find the time to watch all three of them! Tonight's matches are Euro 2008 fixtures, involving Holland against France, and Italy against Romania. Holland had a surprising and convincing victory against Italy a few days ago, while France had a scoreless draw with Romania, so both Italy and France are in some danger, even though they were originally favorites to top the group.

Tomorrow night, Japan will play Thailand away. If Japan wins, their chances of going through to the final qualifying rounds of the 2010 World Cup in South Africa will be very good. If they don't win, they will be in something of a crisis. Okubo is suspended, while Nakamura Shunsuke has a slight injury, so I wonder what their line-up will be.

Last night, I saw Japan's Under-23 team play against Cameroon. Japan played really well, but the game ended in a scoreless draw.

Charlie Wilson's War is a movie that is playing now in Kumamoto. It's based on a true story, and is about a politician in the US who decides that his country should help Afghans fight against the Soviet Union. I don't know enough about the true story to judge his actions, but my interpretation was that individuals need to think clearly and work hard to do good things when the systems in our society are not working well. On a more pessimistic note, the movie seemed to suggest that there are limits to how far this approach can go. While in the beginning some determination from Charlie is almost enough to make things happen, at the end his efforts are blocked.
The movie stars Tom Hanks and Julia Roberts, and you can read about it here.
(135 words)

Check out the search widget in my sidebar, and use it to search the KGU English Reading Garden collection. Some sample searches to try:

• Usborne
• I Can Read
• Bookworms
• Cambridge

If you want to add a search widget to your own blog, go ahead!

Last week, we didn't have much time to work on "Essay" 4, a presentation about Kumamoto, but you did have a chance to start thinking about the topic, and to experiment with Keynote and/or PowerPoint. This week, we'll start serious work on the presentation. Key points are:

1. Save the work you do, preferably in at least 2 ways/places;*
2. 5 slides minimum, and about 10 slides maximum;
3. You can base your presentation on Essay 2, or do something a little different;
4. You shouldn't have long paragraphs on your slides. It's better to use small amounts of text and some images;
5. Because the amount of text is small, please make sure it's well-written!

If time allows, I'll show you how to sign up for SlideShare, the service we will use to put the presentation into our blogs.

* Please save images and notes as well as your presentation file. In the future, we may use those again to present the information with your voice.

One other thing: I had forgotten all about the "Word Count" widget, but was reminded about it when I saw it on a few students' blogs. I recommend that you install it in your blog footer; then you can count the words in your posts easily.

The Euro 2008 football tournament is proving to be quite exciting. Teams that are generally considered very defensive, such as Italy and Greece, have lost their first matches, while attacking teams like Holland have been doing very well. There have been some major upsets, such as Holland's 3-0 victory over Italy, and last night's defeat by Croatia of Turkey. Unfortunately, not many matches are on terrestrial TV channels, so I have only seen one match so far. Tonight, another two matches will be on TV, featuring Holland, France, Romania, and Italy.

(This was created in GarageBand and converted to Windows media (.wmv) using VisualHub.)

(This was created in iMovie. I had a voice track and a podcast track, into which I dragged pictures.)

Another movie that's getting a lot of attention is the second Narnia movie, The Chonicles of Narnia: Prince Caspian. Apparently, it didn't do as well as expected in the U.S.A. BUt I think it's much better than the first Narnia movie, The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe. When I first saw the trailer for the first movie, I felt that the makers weren't really comfortable in the Narnia world, and were kind of copying The Lord of the Rings, and that feeling continued through the movie. In the second movie, the makers seem more liberated and comfortable exploring the world of Narnia, and the special effects were much better. The one thing that wasn't so good was the four children. They weren't the focus of the movie as much as in the first one, and they seemed a little detached what was happening. You can read more about the movie at IMDB, and you can see the trailer at Apple's trailers site.

Please be sure to use the Edit HTML tab!

Woops! I seem to have messed things up! Let's see how you do!

Please be sure to use the Edit HTML tab!

This is generated from a sample weblog report in Google Spreadsheets. You can also embed this at the bottom or top of your blog.

This is session 8, 8 weeks after the beginning of the semester, so you should have written at least 40 posts this semester, including 8 book reviews and 3 essays (self-introduction, Kumamoto, movie review).

On today's menu:

1. Juppun ha juubun
2. Weblog evaluation 1
3. Starting "essay" 4: Kumamoto Presentation

For number 2, useful tools are Excel and Google Docs & Spreadsheets.
For number 3, we'll use Keynote or PowerPoint.

It's very important, especially with your Keynote or PowerPoint file, to keep your work safe. If you have a flash memory stick, please be sure to keep your file there. You can also use the school teishutsubako system. And emailing the file to yourself is another good way; if you do this, email it in two formats: the original, and one other (e.g. an archive if you use PowerPoint; PowerPoint if you use Keynote).

I was surprised to read today that Celtic have become champions of the Scottish Premier League. Although they have had more points than Rangers for a long time they also had played more games, because Rangers had been very busy with UEFA Cup games. Rangers just needed to get a few good results at the end of the season to become champions. I guess Rangers must have slipped up because they have allowed Celtic to overtake them.

As you know, Celtic is the team where Nakamura Shunsuke plays. He must be very happy to have got two consecutive championships. But I doubt that he won the Player of the Year award this year, as he was injured for much of the year and only looked good in a few matches. I wonder if he'll be in the national team this Sunday for their match against the Cote d'Ivoire?