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

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: