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

You can find out all about sushi here!

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.

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?

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.

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.

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

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!

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

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.

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)
   

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 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!

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!

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?

Take a look at the cake that Ayami made. It looks delicious.

The third and last of the movies starting next week that I'm interested in is The Curse of the Golden Flower, directed by Zhang Yimou, of Hero and Lovers fame. The story is often rather thin in Zhang's movies, but the action scenes are spectacular. Although Michael Clayton is the move I'm most interested in of the three, the Curse of the Golden Flower is the one that will benefit most from the big screen.