uʍop ǝpısdn

Oh Facebook, I love you so much,but why do you sometimes try to go a bit weird?
Today’s example;
(Click the picture below to view a larger version)

“ENGLISH(UPSIDE DOWN)”
This is a new language option for Facebook, in which texts are displayed upside down. For example, you see ¡ʞooqəɔɐℲ oʇ əɯoɔləʍ for the word “Welcome to Facebook!”.When I
first found this, I couldn’t believe my eyes…like “WTF?! Do I have to stand on my head?


Kidding. But I have a question. What is this version for? Who is going to use it anyway?
Well, something that sounds new and weird always makes me feel like I just have to try it .So,I had been using Facebook in English(US), but now I’ve been using it in this new Upside-down English as of 3 days ago.
BUT! —　this is MY opinion — but it’s a FAILURE. In this mode, not all texts are displayed upside down. Some texts are still displayed normal. This makes me confused. Now I can’t tell which are upside down texts and which are not, coz of kind of an optical illusion. I’m kinda feeling sick right now...

This is another funny version. English(Pirate)


Anyway, I love you Facebook, even though you were a bit off~(^U^)♪


I’m off to Kyoto for a seminar camp tmrw. I am going to give a presentation on my major, constitution.I’m still writing some documents.I’m feeling so nervous right now...But after that, we're going sightseeing around Kyoto!It’s been a long time since I went to Kyoto last, so I’m so excited now.I’ll post some pics of Kyoto here later!
Alrighthy then.
Have a wonderful weekend!!


Today's Proverb - Faith will move half a dozen of the other.

This is how I'm learning English

Watch Spirited Away in Animation | View More Free Videos Online at Veoh.com

I’m not sure if I’ve already told you here before, but one of my recent goals in studying English is to watch English movies without ANY Japanese subtitles. I’ve tried watching some English movies and news broadcasted in English(like CNN) but it is still a little hard for me to catch everything without any Japanese dubbing or subtitles.
But recently, one of my friends told me about a wonderful movie website called “veoh”, and I found there were lots of full- versions of GHIBRI movies(directed by Hayao Miyazaki,a world-famous Japanese movie director) without any Japanese subtitles dubbed in English on the site. I am a HUGE fan of GHIBRI movies and I’ve watched the movies many times since I was little, so now I memorize most of the Japanese lines. So I think watching the videos dubbed in English would be the best way for me to improve my English “listening” skill.I’m gonna watch more movies with this tool from now on. If you interested in, why don’t you try it too? You might think it's too easy though… But anyway, once you download the free web player, you can watch the full-versions whenever you want:) Of course it's free!I recommend espcially those who love GHIBRI movies – just like me- to try it.
This movie is "Spirited Away(2001)", which won many awards, including an Oscar and an Academy award.My favorite one.

Hope you have a nice week!=)

2009.9.13 Hinase/Okayama & Ako/Hyogo 日生/岡山・赤穂/兵庫

“FEEL JAPÓN”

My favorite one.

お気に入りの一枚。

　

"Unexpected"

“予想外”

A combination of deep-fried oysters & ice cream.

Challengers say it just tastes horrible.

予想外の、コンビネーション。

牡蠣の味しかしない、らしい。

"The blue sky,Sea,and the mountains."

“空と、海と、山と。”

緑山はかなしからずや空の青海の青にも染まずたたずむ

- Poo山牧水(1988~)

"The Fisher's"

“釣りバカ一家”

Son"Hey,where's the fish, daddy?"

Dad"Dunno!Don't ask me"

Daughter"Boooring.I wanna go home"

The dog "Everyone's at it. Nobody cares about me.Heck! "

坊や「とうちゃん、おさかなどこー?」

とうちゃん「知らん、魚に聞け」

嬢ちゃん「退屈だよーはやくかえろーよー」

犬「ぼくなんかよりもさかなのほうがだいじなんだな、ちっ」

"The loyalty"

“忠と誠”

Oishi Kuranosuke

The symbol of Japanese Samurai.

大石内蔵助

これぞ、日本の侍の象徴。

>> Read the story of the Forty-Seven Samurai - 日本語/English

"Bonds of loyality"

”絆”

The heroes who gave their lives for humanity and justice

忠誠と仁義に散った勇者たち。

"A Time for Joy"

”歓喜の時”

After the revenge, they paraded around the town,

with their enemy's head held high

歴史に残る一枚。

"Oishi Shrine"

“大石神社”

This shrine is dedicated to the memory of the Forty-Seven Samurai.

大石内蔵助率いる赤穂浪士47士の魂がここに静かに眠ります。

>>Click here or press A key to view more photos

The season for Art

If you have a chance to stop by my town, the thing that will suprise you first is probably this;

This is a train on Kakogawa line which runs around my town. I take this train every day to go to University.

It is said that this design was painted by a famous artist from Kakogawa, but nobody knows his name(I don't know either.lol).

If I were asked to comment something about this design, I'd say;

"Well, I think I don't dislike the whole design,because I love colorful stuff.Plus,it's very impressive and it has a great impact...you know, in a good way."

But a question still remains.

Why...why did he draw.....eyes?

So many eyes?

...Why?

When my friends come to my town for their first time, what they ask me right after we meet is always this;

"Hey,by the way,what the hell is the train with lots of eyes on it ?!?!"

Who knows.Ask him by yourself.

I am kind of sick of being asked about it.

Anyway, this makes me doubt this man's sense of art.

Especially if you see this in the dark...I guess it'll make you shudder.Maybe.lol

Another version.This looks much better than the first one,though.There are a few more other designs but all of them just look weird to me.

***

Fall has come in Japan. It's getting cooler and more comfortable.In Japan,fall is often referred to as the best season for sports, reading, eating and art.

What do you enjoy in fall?

Well,in my case, at least when it comes to art, apparently I'm gonna have to say that I am utterly ignorant of it.*sigh*

Hooooooo!!!Congrats!

Japan cheers Ichiro's record

TOKYO - JAPAN cheered Monday the latest record set by Seattle's right fielder Ichiro Suzuki, who became the first player in Major League Baseball history to post 200 or more hits in nine straight seasons.

'It is a magnificent record, even if Ichiro makes it look so easy,' said one fan, Mr Hiroshi Chiba, as he snatched up a special edition of the Asahi Shimbun daily featuring the record splashed across its front page.

'In the past few days I have been following very closely to see when he would finally reach 200,' Mr Chiba, 45, said as he gazed at the paper in Tokyo's Ginza shopping district.

Ms Setsuko Ito, a 65-year-old Tokyo housewife, also said she had been watching Suzuki's games with growing anticipation.

'He was very quick to reach the record,' she said. 'I want to see much more of his great playing.' Hours earlier in Arlington, Texas, the Japanese star posted his 200th hit this season with an infield single to shortstop in the second inning of the second game of a double-header against the Texas Rangers.

Suzuki broke a tie with Willie Keeler, who reached 200 hits for eight straight seasons between 1894 and 1901.

The Mariners went on to beat the Rangers 5-0 after dropping the first game of the double-header 7-2.

Major newspapers reported accolades for Suzuki from Japanese baseball legend and home-run king Sadaharu Oh.

'His spirit towards playing baseball is that of the lone warrior,' said Oh, who guided a Japan national side including Suzuki to victory in 2006 in the inaugural World Baseball Classic.

'He has the exceptional talent of staying focused,' Oh said, according to the Mainichi daily. 'The 200 hits in nine straight seasons is only one milestone for him. I want him to beat many more records.' -- AFP

WoooooHooooooo! I-CHI-RO! You are THE MAN!

The 2nd round of H1N1 epidemic and people-watching

The spread of H1N1 has finally come close to me.
Yesterday was a hard day. My boss was absent from work because she got a flu. I am currently working as a part-time teacher at a cram school near my home.I'm teaching Math,Japanese literature and English to 6-18 year-old students.On Sundays there usually are 3 teachers including me.I have 2 classes I teach,each of them are 80 minutes long. She is the chief at my workplace and is in charge of 3 times as many classes as I am. So yesterday, us two had to make up for them. When I got home late at night I was too exhausted,so I went straight to bed.
Regular schools of some of my students have also been closed due to the H1N1 since a few days ago. Students who come to our cram school are not allowed to come into each classroom without washing and disinfecting their hands, taking their temperatures with clinical thermometers and putting masks on before entering.Of course we do them,too. Here,every measure to prevent the flu from spreading has been taken.


But on the other hand, when I pay attention to people in my city, I think something is apparently different from what they were like last time —the 1st round of the H1N1 epidemic.This time, I don't see anyone who is wearing a mask wherever I go. When the first H1N1 carrier was confirmed in Japan 4ish months ago, there wasn't anyone who wasn't wearing a mask around my town. It was just like a part of our fashion.Wherever I went, they had always been sold out.Sometimes I saw people whose masks were just like helmets. Once when I left my mask at home and got on the train without it I got so embarrassed 'cause everyone on the train started staring at me— like "Whar are you doing not wearing a mask>:(?!". Probably I was seen as a KY(Kuuki Yomenai = a Japanese popular word which literally means a person who can't read the atmosphere) ...Anyway, last time people seemed to almost panicked.


But this time it seems like it's the complete opposite. When I'm wearing a mask I feel people are staring at me. Have they lost any interests in the new flu?Did they begin to regard it as just a needless fear?...despite the fact that more people are still dying?Kinda weird.

A fight with an unwelcome guest

I love animals. Especially dogs. I used to have a dog named LOVE but she died just 2 weeks ago. She was a really nice dog. Tears still come out when I think of our happy days with her.We miss her so much.

I often go to the Zoo and aquariums to meet animals. I often see cats sleeping peacefully on the fence of my house under the warm sun and I often hear birds singing around the tree in my garden, which make me feel happy. To me, they are all welcome.


But sometimes, really sometimes, some unwelcome guests come to my house. Or better say, INTO my house.
Roaches, geckos, centipedes...and so on. I wonder where they always come from cause my house is neither that old nor located near the mountains. When I saw them in my house for the first time, I could do nothing but scream.But now we have already got used to getting rid of those kind of things.


But these days, a new ugly animal began to come to my house.
A black, flying animal which has a face looks like dog's...

Yes, A BAT!!!!

A pesky BAT!!!!!!!

I tried to post more "impactive" picture of a bat but I didn't, because I didn't want to see this creepy thing everytime I open my page!lol


The first time we found it in my house was a month ago. My sister found something small and black sticking on the ceiling, and she suddenly started screaming like "AHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!!!!!!!!" 'cause the black thing suddenly spread its wings and began to fly.After that we all fought desparately with it for almost an hour, to get it out of the house.It was flying very very fast so it took such a long time.


Since then, especially when I'm in my room, I often hear a weird and faint noise by the window and under the roof.We tried playing the radio during the night time to get them away cause it was often said that bats dislike the sound.But it didn't work at all. The next day when I saw outside from the window, there they were! There were LOTS of tiny black droppings on the roof(Oops sorry if you are while eating right now)!!!!!


This urged us to do something immediately.So last week, my mother bought this;




"A bat insecticide spray(?)"!

This smells like a peppermint, and bats hate this scent. Last sunday we climbed onto the roof and sprayed this to every part of the roof top and under the eaves, and cleaned and washed around there.During this week,there has been no dropping on the roof!!!!!!!!!Seems like finally this spray worked.We did it!Byebye ugly bats! I hope they won't get used to this scent and come back to my house again. I am sick of seeing them.x(

Since I was born...

Result

You were born on Tuesday
Since you were born has passed 21 years.
Since you were born has passed 253 months.
Since you were born has passed 1,103 weeks.
Since you were born has passed 7,728 days.
Since you were born has passed 185,505 hours.
Since you were born has passed 11,130,280 minutes.
Since you were born has passed 667,816,821 seconds.

Funny Facts:
Your heart beat 890,199,822 times
Your hair grew 317 cm.
You slept 61,824 hours
You ate 8,578 kg. of food
You drank 10,981 liters of liquid
You walked 44,822,400 steps, about 14,900 km.
You blinked 118,702,080 times
You farted 115,920 times, producing 348 liters of CO2 (carbon dioxide) and 271 liters of CH4 (methane).You urinated 26,275 times, almost 11,206 liters.

HAHAHA,this is very informative!

The funniest fact to me is "Your hair grew 317cm".

3m!!!!.... Unbelievable!

Well,now I think I really should have kept my hair grown out without any haircut since I was born.My name would definitely be entered into the Guiness book(Oh wait!I've just found that the world record was 4.17m!Gee!).

This reminds me of an interesting story that a hairdressor whom I had my hair cut last time told me. The story is like this; Human's hair grows about 0.4mm a day,and a nomal adult person has 100,000 hairs on avarage.So if you simply calculate from these facts, it means that your hair grows up 40m a day as a total.

40m a day!

Is it only me that is surprised by this fact?

If you have Facebook, just try it http://apps.facebook.com/lived-time/

Anyway, I love Facebook. These days I spend lots of my time on Facebook.It's the only way for me to keep in contact with my international friends at university who left Japan and went back to their countries this summer. I heard that most of people from English-speaking countries use Facebook, but is it true?

I wish there were something like this Facebook in Japan as well.

In Japan, Facebook is still not popular at all. As the most popular SNS site in Japan, there is one called mixi and I also have an account of it, but there is no function like "status" on Facebook. We can only post journals and share photos and videos.I'm not so good at writing in Japanese (lol) so I rarely do it. We can play only a few games.Boooring.So I haven't logged in for a long time.

OK, I've gotta go now.Back to study! Pardon me for today's random topic. Thanks for reading=)

Next Semester

This is my next semester's schedule.I've just finished making it.

Mon - Constitution, psychology

Tue - English expression

Wed - FREE!=D

Thu - Asian law, Criminal law, Constitution of Japan(seminar)

Fri - International transaction law, British law

8 classes a week. Well, I've expected that I would be much less busy than last semester, but it seems like I'm gonna be as busy as last semester.Stuffed!You might think that I'm not that busy, but actually, each of our law class is really hard to get a credit(Last year I took 11 law classes a week and during finals week I was almost dead)!

The difference from last semester is that I am going to take some lectures of another faculty as my first trial — like psychology and English expression. Currently I'm in the 3rd year of law major, and classes that I've ever taken were all law.Of course I like studying law and it's fun to me(I'm not going to become a lawyer though:p), but these days I'm feeling that studying law only is a bit boring.As long as I am a University student, I want to try to study other subjects as well and broaden my view and knowledges to some other new fields of study.This is why I decided to take some classes which belong to faculty of literature next semester. Psychology and English expression method are kinda like an unknown world to me, so I'm really excited. Also, Friday's "British law" class is going to be my first law class which is conducted only in English. It might be hard for me to keep up with the class, but I believe it will be a good chance for me to increase my English vocabulary related to law.Anyway,I'll do my best.

"How to make Japanese dishes" show - "Cooking with dog"

This is a cooking show on Youtube which introduces how to make Japanese dishes.

This morning NHK(Japan's national public broadcasting organization) was broadcasting about the topic of this video. This cooking woman is a normal housewife and these videos are taken and edited by her friend, who is explaining how to make them in English. And the dog, Francis....SO FREAKIN CUTE isn't she?! I wonder whether the dog really need to stay there in this video or not because she is just staying by the woman and doing nothing throughout the video LOL(Before watching this I thought a dog was gonna cook hahahaha)!! But she's just cute and makes me so happy:) I think she's also so obedient and patient.my late dog would be trying to hoover up the food.

Ahhh, watching these videos makes me hungry! There are more videos introducing another dishes on Youtube so check'em out!

Finally

Guess what!?
I got a new camera today!
What a quick decision...!
EXILIM EX-Z400 / CASIO.
In the previous entry I just said,you know, I was still wondering if I should compromise and get a cheaper but lower-quality one, or I should just wait until I can afford to buy the latest one which I liked the best.What I got today is.... THE LATTER ONE!Yes, finally I could get the latest one I really wanted to get!Luckly, when I went to another camera shop this morning, I found the same camera as the one I gave up yesterday was somehow much cheaper than yesterday's one!I thought that, if I missed this chance, I would not be able to get this next time,so I just need to get it now. So finally I dicided to buy it.
What a lucky girl I am!I thought I was right not to have compromised yesterday. After getting home I played with the new camera for a while. I totally like this camera!Well, from now on I'm gonna upload pictures taken with this new camera=)

Hard choice.

I want a new camera. The camera that I have right now really sucks. Too big, too heavy, small capacity,and functions are too complicated to handle. No good. My father gave it to me when he got a new one, and since then I've been using this camera. Probably for 6ish years.Yes, it is a very old one. I love taking photos of not only beautiful views but also random shits and stuff around me like above(it's my art! cute,huh?), and I didn't care that much about the image qualities so far, but since I started writing blog entries and posting some pictures that I took with my current camera, I got to want to post better photos with better qualified camera. Today I went to some electrical appliance stores to find a new camera, but good ones I really liked were all expensive...like 4,0000 yen. And I am not rich this month...or rather, in the meantime.But I just can't wait!I wanna get a new one before the trip to Kyusyu(the third-largest island of Japan and most southwesterly of its four main islands...I've never been there so it's gonna be fun!) the end of this month. Cheaper ones are also good enough and there's no problem for taking photos, of course they are still inferior to latest expensive ones in quality though. Should I compromise and get the cheaper one right now? Or just wait until I can afford it? Hmm, hard choice.

Goodbye my friend

Kara,my best international friend from Australia,has just left back for her home country.
For the last year, I had been in charge of her tutor.When we met for the first time, I was too nervous so I didn't know what to talk with her. But she always tried to understand my poor English. We hang out together many times ,and she had been a very special part of my campus life.
I think it was really lucky for me to meet her.Since we met first I had been trying so hard to improve my English skill. I have been writing blog entries since I met her. I have been trying to think of various things in English.
Not only that, she also gave me a great chance to think about my dream in the future.Before I met her, I had rarely thought about my future. But since she came to Japan, I got more chances to communicate with people from around the world, mostly through her. She is really friendly and kind to anyone,regardless of where they are from.I learned lots of things that I didn't know through communicating with people around the world, which made me broaden my view against the world.And finally I found what I really want to do. I got more interested in kind of International relationships and volunteering, so I want to become a member of JICA or Unicef, and I want to work internationally and globally.This is what I really want to do right now.If I had not met her, I would be just wasting my time right now.


I miss her already. But she brought me a wonderful and unforgettable year and she made my campus life more fruitful one. Someday I'll definitely visit Australia to meet her.