Friday, January 13, 2012

#10My favorite architect, Tadao Ando

  Hi, everyone! I will introduce Japanese famous architect. His name is Tadao Ando.He was born in Osaka, September 13th,1941. After graduating from technical high school, he didn't enter University and learned architecture by himself. It was very surprising for me, because I had thought that he accepted professional education. Thien, I will show the feature of his building.
First,he used concrete to create buildings. Concrete is very cheap material and inorganic. By using concrete,he expressed a variety of shapes and texture.


Second,he tried to harmonize nature and building and work on environment problem. He thought that builing is a part of enviroment , so he adopted the structure which naturally can ventilate without machine when he designed station building of Shibuya station.
In my opinion,Tadao Ando is the greatest architect in Japan.
There are two reasons for this. First, He is excellent as architect. He bought new idea to architecture and made space which didn't have any purpose because it had people exercise their imagination.

Takuya

♯9 About TPP

 Hi,everyone! A Happy New Year!! I will introduce TPP. Do you know TPP? TPP is abbreviation of Trans-Pacific Partnership. It is the approach which abolishes customs of all items.Japanese government promotes TPP,but farmer's cooperative and fishman's cooperative holds demonstrations all over Japan.

I will introduce advantages and disadvantages od TPP. One of advantages is that price of goods will fall because of competition of foreign countries.Especially,the price of vegetables and fishes in foreign countries such as China or America is very low compared with Japanese.Other advantage is that it is easy hor export companies to expand business overseas.
On the other hand,one od disadvantages is that farming and fishing in Japan may be stagnant.
This will aggravate employment in farming and fishing.Finally, Japanese economy may be slump.
I think Japan should not join TPP. I have two reasons for this.First, situation in Japan is appreciation of yen. In this situation, if Japan joins TPP,export companies should acclerate overseas advance.
It will lead to hollowing of industry.

Takuya



Wednesday, January 11, 2012

#10:life

Sotaro

Hi. Happy new year!

Yesterday, I read a book called ‘I don't want to live forever!’.  It is a short book with less than 2000 words. It is so easy to read that I read it in 10 minutes, but it made me really think about life.

The theme of book is what would happen if we live longer. Thanks to the technology, our life span is getting longer and longer. Some scientists are studying how we can get ageless.

If we live longer, the population of the world would grow larger and we will have to face with food or water shortage. This is a common sense.

What if we live longer and become ageless? Our life might get boring. We might get tired of living. Our life may become pointless. People like Osamu Dazai or Mozart came up with my head. They have done a lot of things though they died in young age.

I keep thinking about this although exams are near. If we live longer, we might have a lot of chance to have fun, but the existing itself may become boring. However, I don't want to die now.

I think this is too short to stop the blog, so let me introduce the lecture I watched recently. This is a bit similar to the speech given by Steve Jobs in Stanford.

The lecture is performed by Carnegie Mellon University professor, Randy Pausch.He died in young at the age of 47 by cancer. The lecture is about how he achieved his dreams when he was a child. Though he was in a terminal cancer, he was energetic throughout the lecture and I got energy from him.

I'll post a part of the video. Personally, I like this video better than Steve Jobs's speech in Stanford.

Thanks for reading!

Tuesday, January 10, 2012

Blog#10 capital punishment that is becoming a mere name

Shun


Happy New Year everyone! How have you been? And did you make  New Year’s
resolutions? I hope everyone would lead a peaceful life without serious problems this
year.
Now, I would like to enlighten the terrible state of death penalty especially in 2011 in Japan Which we have to know. Sorry to choose this kind of severe topics from
the right beginning of New Year. In 2011, none of the capital punishments were executed. It is a really surprising affair because this has not happened for 19 years.
On the other hand, the number of established criminals has reached 129, which is the largest since the post-war. They have been waiting for being executed in a jail for over six months despite The Criminal Procedure Code says the Minister of Justice has to order the execution within six months since the final judgement has made. It means he breaks the law. Do you know why such a situation is terrible? It’s because the underestimation of the law causes the serious problem, which will ruin not only the system of law but the social rules. If that truly happens, tons of crimes will be being rampant around the world.
There is a story behind this affair that you approve the execution or not.
From the side of victims, they say that capital punishments must have been enforced mostly from the point of retribution. But yet, generally and from the side of assailants, it is said that death penalty is so strict that we should refrain from exercising it.

In this way, even only one execution causes a lively argument so the final decision is normally supposed to delay. Even so, 129 are too large. The Minister of Law has to make choices in some ways. For now,We can’t help thinking the law is underestimated. We all should argue back and force about this, however, this kind of subjects haven’t been focused on even though there have been held several general elections. There is a need to turn our attention to it.

Thursday, January 5, 2012

Blog#10 evaluations about restaurants on the Internet


Do you search restaurants on the Internet? I search restaurant or dining bar on the Internet when I have to reserve the dining bar for party of club or when I visit the place with which I am not familiar. The sites which give us information about restaurants are useful to check whether that restaurant is good or not before we eat there. Therefore, evaluation on the Internet could be one of principles for restaurant to succeed. As we already have studied about restaurant, there are 7 principles, but the evaluation on the Internet or strategy on the Internet could be eighth principles in today’s world.

However, recently there is the problem that some companies make up false comments in such sites.

According to the news “msn sankei news,” in Tukishima, which is famous for monjayaki, two of sixty restaurants asked dealers to maneuver the evaluation on the Internet, and they succeeded to make line in front of these restaurant.

These dealers said, “ if you give us ¥100,000 per month, we will make 5 comments per month.” Storekeeper distrusted them, but they came up with the idea that many tourists use the site, so sales could be larger even temporarily.

There are two way which these corrupt dealer use. First is making good comments for the restaurant in the site. Second is accessing the restaurant many times and making it featured.

If we allow such corrupt dealers that operate the evaluation on the Internet, we cannot trust the information on the Internet. However, if the restriction becomes too strict, people will not make comments in the site, which makes information sites weaker. I think this dilemma is more difficult than we expect. What do you think in order to solve this problem?

One of the most famous site for searching restaurants is HERE.


Motoki