A response to "Don't judge marines too fast"

As Sandoval mentions in his response, probably it was careless of the female victim to get out of a bar with the four U.S. marines she met for the first time. Even if she was drunk then, she should not have acted hasty. It is not true that she never had a fault.

Although her careless is somewhat argued, the four marines who assaulted her also should be punished rigidly. What they had done to her is much worse than her fault. The rape is guilty. They should have know it was not fair to assult a strange Japanese woman, even though four men and woman. He seems to defend the four in that way, since he used to belog to or now belongs to the U.S. military.

Moreover, as Egan argues in his response, this case of the four has nothing to do with the withdrawal of the U.S. army from Japan. It is responsible for them as men, not as the U.S. marines. In the last paragraph, he no longer has an objective thoughts but just expose his self-conscious of the U.S. military. He seems to boast that the U.S. military has defended the world including Japan.

Why am I in IES?

This question seems quite simple but pretty hand for me to answer also. I don’t think I can answer the question with a few words. So let me explain of the reason why I entered this university, Kansai Gaidai, first of all.

My high school was a general course school and I couldn't take a special education of English there. But a female English teacher noticed my grade of English and offered me I go to an university of foreign studies. Since I hoped to study abroad in the future, after searching for universities in which I could major in English, I decided to go to Kansai Gaidai or Kyoto University of Foreign Studies. In the third grade, I studied hard for the entrance exam and what motivated me to study then was to study abroad in the university.

Now I am in IES in Kansai Gaidai. In a meeting held in the Tanimoto Memorial Hall, a professor said students who hoped to study abroad should choose the IES program and so I did that Then I somehow got high score in TOEFL and was chosen in IES. In the class, there were many students who had studied abroad. I was astonished their fluent English at first. But now, not only surprised at it, but also I am imspired by them and it determines me to study English.

The great reason of studying in IES still comes from the desirability to study abroad. I've dreamed of it since I was a junior high school. I also think that studying abroad must change my life. Therefore, IES is a necessary step for me to achieve my dream.

She better go to the Rehab

These days, I'm hooked on Amy Winehouse, a singer & a song writer in the U.K. Her 2nd album releaced in 2006 was given a great value and won the top in the music chart in the U.K. Recently the album was also releaced in th U.S. and she is one of hot artists now.



I watched the video "Rehab" for the first time this summer and since then I 've been a lot of fan of her. At first, I thought she was just a pop singer but was astonished to hear singing. She was a soul singer who reminds us of good and old soul music according to the title of her album. I expect she would be nomineeted in the Grammy Award next year with her single "Rehab" and her album "Back to black". What's more, she is said to be called blck-haired Aguilera, Ringo Shina in the U. K. and unprecidented like Eminem. I don't mean I also like her because I like Eminem but she is now as hot as compared with the three famous artists.

She is one of a few artists who act exactly what they sing. But, in case of her, it is a problem. She sings, "they tried make me go to the rehab. I said no no no," but she actually escaped from the rehabilitation to get through the addiction to drugs and this made her a big gossip. So every time I go to a CD shop, I wonder so much if I buy her album.

Incredible watermelon

One day in this summer I found a watermelon in a backyard of my house. When I saw the watermelon for the first time, I couldn't believe my eyes. This is the picture of the melon. First, let me say that I live in a city, Osaka, and there are never fields around my house. The backyard is a vacancy and it seems to be almost possible to grow crops. The size of the watermelon is not so big but as big as a handall. But I never know who grew it up nor when it was planted.

Last month,unfortunately enough, I saw the watermelon withered when I went through the backyard. I felt sad about that because I wanted to pick it up and try eating it if I could. But it is still mysterious why the watermelon grew up at such a place.

A response to "Japanese: A language in a state of flux"

I think Japanese is a leading beautiful language in the world. All characters of Japanese have roots on Chinese character. Kanji was brought in Japan in the 5th or 6th century from China and its shape was broken and changed into hiragana and katakana in the Heisei era. Unlike Chinese, Japanese has three kind of characters, kanji, an imposing character, hiragana, a delicate character and katakana, which usually stands for . That might be why I think that way about Japanese, while it is also one of the most difficult language to study.

This thought is, however, changing because of a great invention of plenty of loanwords. I have no doubt that the loanwords are indeed necessery in Japan now. It is almost impossible to translate things around us into completely suitable Japanese, such as マンション, ハンバーガー, ガソリン, ニュース, カード, ドーナツ, カレーライス, コーヒー etc... These days, however, abuse of the loan words are overstanding.

Taking a look at the nespaper of a day, I saw huge loanwords. Articles contained comprephensible words, such as ポスター as poster, テロ as terrorism, バランス as balance, オートバイ as motorcycle and アピール as appeal. On the other hand, there were complicated words which many people don't seem to understand, for example, トロイカ as troika, キャッシュフロー as cash flow, 住宅ローン as subprime lending. The loanwords seem stunning written in katakana but most people have trouble presuming the meanings of them or even can't understand them, especially elderly people.

Loanwords are important for Japanese to keep catching up with the internationalization but we also have to look goodness of Japanese over again.