Super Size Me

A thought came to my mind during watching this movie. That is the different cultural back grounds between the U.S. and Japan affects on the difference of their dietary habits considerably. In spite of the fact that the 60% of U.S. citizens are obese, they don’t try to exercise and cut down the amount of fat, cholesterol, or sugar. Therefore the number of those who suffer from diabetes in the United States will definitely grow more and more because of the lack of will to get lose weight. On the other hand, Japanese, most of who don’t overweight, seem nervous about their posture and engage in reduce their weight by exercising at sports clubs or taking some medicines.

The way of thinking is related to food culture of both countries. Japanese people are generally so shy that they consider how they are thought. So they are always anxious about their appearance. Many young people in Japan desire to have a graceful figure and research how to get to be like models in magazines or TV shows. This is perfectly because they want to be regarded as a cool person by friends of them. Americans, on the other hand, are said not to care for how other people think of them. They insist their opinion or idea distinctly in front of a large number of people, which gives sounds like difficult for Japanese due to shyness. For that reason, the people in the U.S. don’t feel uneasy their figure very much though they have potbelly.

I have no idea which is good or which is bad. But in regard to the risk of life, the U.S. citizen has to take less amount of harmful substance such as sugar or grease, and take care of their precious body more. And Morgan argues through “Super Size Me” that the most effective way to do this is reducing the first food.

Japanese Connotation

“Babaa!!” This is the most negative word in Japanese when you call a woman, and “Jijii” is the same for man. We sometimes call an adolescent like that if you are attacked by stranger, what’s more, we may say these words even to parents when you have quarrel or fight with them.
The neutral way you call an adult is “ojisan” for a man and “obasan” for a woman. When you speak to your parents, however, these words can be disrespectful way in any situation.

HW for Adam

#9 what is emotional intelligence?

The emotional intelligence is the ability to putting yourself in a person’s place. This is different from the capacity to just understand the feeling, but to think something about or get into action for the person. For instance, if you watch people injured in a war in TV program and feel something sadness, that is not the emotional intelligence. Intelligent people are expected to do something to help the wounded or appeal to stop the war.
And I think the skill of this intelligence makes progress rapidly by reading various kinds of novels because you can experience different life in them.

HW for Adam

#4 how has your education affected your intelligence?

Most of the Japanese students have to choose if they’re going to learn liberal arts or science in college, at the begging of the second grade of high school. Then, the students who isn’t good at math or science tend to stop study them at that time. On the other hand, those who hate English of classical Japanese don’t have to learn more, and they apt to devote to scientific subjects.
I was one of the former so I gave up mastering math after the first grade of high school. But now, I really want to study math and physics, and regret having chosen the literal side. Although it was my fault to have decided not to learn more math, this Japanese educational system cannot be welcomed when I think of it now. I think this method fix our capacity to broaden the view of world. Only high school students are not able to conclude which subject suits them.

HW for Adam

#2 why is society interested in your intelligence and schooling?

Academic achievement is generally in portion to economic level of the country. The entire industrialized nation emphasizes the education so that children in those countries are highly literate, while the developing nations cannot afford to train the youth because they have to pay attention to how they live, not how they live comfortably.
Because our intelligence influence directly on the future of the county, the government concern with our scholarly level. It can be said that the deeply students can consider many issues, the more rich the nation will be. I wonder if Japanese economic power is going to be weaker because of the drop of their intelligence and the falling birthrate.

funny book

About a week ago, I found an interesting book: it says “let’s train your brain only for a month by listening CD in which Japanese famous novels are recorded at three times as fast as normal speed, and reading along it.” It didn’t need much time for me to decide to buy the book since I’d never seen that kind of drill exercises and since the book also maintained our reading speed will definitely rise.

From next day, I started training my brain. At first, though my reading speed was twelve words per second, yesterday (ten days from the beginning), the speed moved up fourteen words per minute!! I was so happy and now I’m looking forward how fast I can read three weeks from now. Well, if you’re interested in this book, please let me know!

difficult to teach

Once a week, I teach dance to elementary school students, and every time I do, I learn new things from them. Those schoolchildren see world through different filter from ours, so I often worry about how I can convey the pleasure of dancing.
They are honest to show their feeling. They become lazy soon when they feel bored. What is more, they start playing if they get tired of dancing. On the other hand, when they think they’re enjoying dance, their concentration on dancing is terrific! I become the happiest person at this moment. So my wish is to make the students like dancing, and I know I have to learn more to grant this. Teaching something is very difficult!