Extra Credit #5: My Poetry “A True Color of a Soul”

 

 

A soul has been given to me, i wander around at the present time, investigate the past closely, and portray a future. My existence: an ignorance create my existence, or due to an intelligence, it won’t be created, goad myself. And the only true color of soul: consist of absolute pure thoughts can save me from this agony.

 

I don’t remember when being myself was no longer elegant and I started finding the real color of me. I am always reckless and trying. Nevertheless i won’t gain my own…….I know it, i already have a true color and it dominates me. I just wanted to be better. To regret is meaningless because i always have been wandering. But at least i want to know the meaning of my existence, and I will bring out my color until the limit.

 

No perfect past exists, because i never had that and it’s an afterimage I remember, but i always think about it and I know why..Because the past is the only place i can confirm my existence.

 

A future is always a place without disgrace, it is only created to heal me, but after all it is too lonely to exist for long, created by me, always wander.

 

I was wrong. i don’t exist, I am living for something or possibly nothing, but I have a thing exists, my true color covers all worry and perplexity and i will brighten as a beautiful primary color. Wake Your Color. 

Reflection Post #10: “Vietnam War”

In the last lecture, we have discussed about Vietnam war. To be honest, I did not know much about the issues regarding Vietnam war between the US and Vietnam. One thing i knew about Vietnam was that the US has pride in the fact that they went to the war to help solve internal comflicts in Vietnam. As a result, many soldiers have died in the battle but they did not succeed in solving the problem in Vietnam; the government and people were still fighting each other. This caused the US to learn the lesson that is never to be involved with the internal conflicts within a country since it will mostlikely not become successful mission or it is even possible to take the situation worse. I think the ongoing situation of the US with Iraq is an another good exaple of why the US should not be involved with other country’s internal conflict. In my opinion, the US sometimes tends to be sacrifying too much of their resorce interms of money, time and live sof soldiers to help the other country solve their problem. I believe that is why American people have so much pride in their country and in people who fight in teh battle to restore the peace in the world. For those and other reasons, It was very interesting for me to learn about American history throughout the semester. I would have not been able to learn what we covered in the class if i was not studying in the US and I do not think that i should not take this as granted but it is important for me to continue to increase my knowledge  toward American history. Thank you professor Bogg for teaching us this semester. I think you are very cool teacher.

 

Wikipedia Assignment, PartII: “Reflective paper on Wikipedia Assignment”

 

I have written a Wikipedia article named “Issei.”  I have heard that newly added or improved articles might get disagreement or even get deleted by others participating in Wikipedia. Yet, it has been more than two weeks since I have posted my article but only the change that was made by another user was removing the redundancy of some references by putting them all together. Specifically, as the professor suggested, initially I tried to have the sections of references, bibliography, internal links, and external links for listing my sources but another user has reformatted those by putting into a single sectioned labeled “References.” Another minor change made by the same person was adding a link to my footnote bracket (ex. Footnote, [1], was linked to one of my references).  I am not sure if it is good or bad, but there was no significant changes made on my article in terms of grammar and contents.  Moreover, I checked “discussion” page of my article and there has not been a single message about my article posted by other users.  

Even before I took this class, I have visited Wikipedia for both personal and academic purposes but I also heard about Wikipedia being unreliable source since anybody can post and edit its pages.  At first, I was reluctant to write a Wikipedia article since almost all possible topics that I was interested in writing was already written by other Wikipedia users. Since I was having a hard time deciding what topic I should write about, I had to ask the professor to find me the topic. As he suggested me to write a first Japanese American generation, I believe that he was aware of my nationality and tried to help me out by providing me with the familiar topic and it really helped me become motivated to contributing to Wikipedia using my knowledge about my country and people.  Throughout writing the article, I thought it actually make sense for a professor to give such assignment since it is a good practice of contributing to society through writing and having your own article exposed to public will actually give you an opportunity to learn about opinions of people  other than your professor or classmates.   In other words, the source of reflection on your article is not limited to in-class and people all over the world can read your article and open a discussion with you. As a, result you can improve your knowledge, writing, communication and other skills. It is just my personal opinion but I thought weekly readings of Wikipedia might be better appreciated by students if the Wikipedia assignment was actually assigned in the beginning of the semester. The reason why I am saying this is that I think it actually helps students distinguish good articles from bad ones (if there is any) if they already have an experience of writing their own. Yet, you can say a different opinion about this as well like students might learn better after reading some articles prior to writing their own.  At any rate, I feel very accomplished about having my article published on Wikipedia and I am willing to continue to improving my article in the future.         

Reflection Post #9: “Hiroshima Peace Memorial”

 

In today’s class, the professor showed us a movie that discussed about US’s bombing in Hiroshima. He also personally asked me about the Hiroshima Peace Memorial so I decided to write a blog post about what happened to Hiroshima city at the time of bombing as well as how the institution came to exist as a representation of peace in the world.   

The nuclear bomb was dropped on Hiroshima at 8:15 A.M in August sixth, 1945. It is estimated that about 140,000 had died by the end of December 1945. Immediately after the bomb was dropped in Hiroshima, diseases caused by heat rays, fire, blast, and radiation were spread all over the city. Even after those diseases were healed, the effects of the bomb continued. The aftereffects included keloids, which is known as an excessive growth of scar tissue over a burn, as well as leukemia. The number of survivors having leukemia increased from five to six years after the bombing. About ten years after the bombing, the survivors began contracting thyroid, breast, lung and other cancers. In addition, many babies inside their mothers’ wombs at the time died before they were born.

                About ten years after the end of the war in 1945, Hiroshima was recovering from the damage due to the bomb quickly. The one of the biggest reason why the city was recovering so fast was due to the Hiroshima Peace Memorial City Construction Law enacted in 1949. This law says that since Hiroshima is the first place in history to be destroyed by a nuclear bomb, it should take the role of appealing to the world for peace. Because of this, Japanese government provided money to help the city rebuild as a symbol of peace in the world.  The numbers of people from all over the world visit the peace memorial to learn about the war and how people lived at that time. The former president of the US, Jimmy Carter is also one of those people who visited the site. When he visited the memorial in May 25^th, 1984, he said “This memorial must be a constant and permanent reminder for all people to work for peace and better understanding [1].”  About sixty years have passed since the war, many people from all over the world has been continuing to wish the global peace to come true today.  

[1]The Official Website of Hiroshima Peace Memorial:

http://www.pcf.city.hiroshima.jp/virtual/VirtualMuseum_e/frame/vist_fr3-1.html

Extra Credit Post#4: “Most Developed Humanoid Robot, ASIMO”

               Imagine yourself coming home very exhausted from school or work, but you still have to do your homework or household. You may probably wish that you could ask somebody to help you do your job. Interestingly enough, robots already do a lot of the jobs, such as cleaning house or washing dishes, that humans do not want to do or cannot do. When you think of robots, you might think about Rosie, the Jetson’s housekeeping robot, or C3PO from Star Wars film. The robots being developed in the contemporary world are not quite in the realm of C3PO, but there have been major technological development. Honda’s Advanced Step in Innovative Mobility (ASIMO) is the world’s most humanoid robot with the abilities to run, climb stairs, maintain balance while walking on uneven slopes, carry objects by moving carts, and interact with people.

         

         ASIMO does not only see, hear, and walk, but does it also have a sense of touch. It uses Force Sensor Abnormality Detection System (FSADS), which is installed on its wrists, to receive and deliver a tray, and carry a cart. For instance, FSADS allows ASIMO to carry a cart while maintaining an appropriate distance from the cart by adjusting the force of its right and left arms. Even when the movement of the car is disturbed, ASIMO can continue manipulating by taking flexible actions, such as speeding up or slowing down. Similarly, if a guest asks for a glass of water, ASIMO can bring it for him/her using a tray. If a person wants to interact with ASIMO socially, it can integrate information gathered from visual sensors and FSADS to move in sync with the person while holding hands.

 

           Moreover, ASIMO uses external database system when it needs more information. The task of ASIMO is to guide a guest to a meeting room is to call a company representative to notify him/her about the guest. Company people expecting guests use the reservation system to choose meeting place and time and gain guest details on a company’s web page. When a guest approaches ASIMO, it extracts the movement of human shape and recognizes the face. Then the interaction manager confirms the meeting schedule with the reservation system and sends a notification to client on use personal computer. When the companies send replies to the interaction manager, ASIMO show the guest the way to the meeting place requested in the company’s web page.

 

          ASIMO has a potential to play an important role in the society by performing helpful tasks to assist human activities.

Assignment Post #4: “Century Media”: Women and Postwar Film

 *Choosing for Happiness: Part One

*Women in Business: The Art of S & M          

            The role of American women has been gradually changing since the WWII. During World War II, many men joined the armed service and went abroad so that women took care of both households and the jobs that were previously closed to women. One of the significant reasons why the US won the war was that those women successfully raised their children during day time and managed the jobs, such as manufacturing, by taking night shifts while men were fighting out in the battle fields. The notion of women being too weak to handle men’s jobs was proven wrong by this.  Yet, after the war, despite of their willingness to continue their career, many were fired from their jobs so that the returning soldiers could be employed again. Some of them still kept their jobs such as secretaries and waitresses that are considered not very important compared to the men’s jobs.   Today, the women are typically more educated and have more successful careers than about 60 years ago. In this assignment, two video clips, “Choosing for Happiness: Part One” and “Women in Business: The Art of S & M”, that talk about the role of women during post-war and that of modern women are compared in order to identify and analyze the changes in the portrait of the women.

In the video clip, “Choosing for Happiness: Part One”, the story focuses on the past relationships of the narrator’s college friend, Eve during the post-war era. It points out the characteristics of men that are important for women at that time to look for when choosing a marriage partner.  For instance, she broke up with a football star boyfriend because he only cared about how people perceived him and paid a little attention to how she felt. In addition, she also broke up with a boyfriend who was a mathematician since he only viewed women’s heart as mere a mathematical puzzle to be solved and failed to realize her individual thinking or feeling. The story signifies how important it was for women at that time to analyze whether their personality really suits the characteristics of the partner in order to determine whether they will be able to accept those characteristics of men that cannot be changed. This shows that they had relatively little control or influence on men since Eve had to switch her partner every time she found some attributes that she hate about.

Unlike “Choosing for Happiness: Part One,” another video clip, “Women in Business: The Art of S & M,” focused on discussing how women can pursuit or maintain their successful career by manipulating the mind of men in modern age. The speaker in the clip is Nina Disesa, who is considered one of the 50 most powerful women in 1999 fortune magazine. She says that women should use their own skills, such as empathy and listening, that men tend to neglect at work in order to maintain pleasant relationship with the male workers. She says that women can influence the male workers to work harder and become more cooperative by loving them and showing sympathy toward them. From this, we can understand that women in modern age realize that women can use their own skills to influence the attributes or behaviors of men that they used to think it was impossible to change.   

The difference in the portrait of women between the two clips is that many women in a modern age acquired a power to compete or to be cooperative with men by having the equivalent jobs. In “Choosing the Happiness,” the mathematician boyfriend told Eve that she is different from the other girls by being smart like a man. This shows that during the post-war, women were perceived inferior to men and women had accepted the perception without questioning if that is actually true or not.  In contrast, “Women in Business: The Art of S & M,” points out that women have their own way of solving problems in the world and it is as effective as that of men. 

Therefore, women in modern age are more independent and becoming the indispensible part of jobs in many fields by having the distinctive skills from men while they had to depend on their partners to anticipate the future in their lives back then.      

Source:

“Choosing for Happiness: Part One”

<youtube=http://jp.youtube.com/watch?v=PGnRgCC70RU>

 

 

Reflection Post#8: “How Can You Tell Which One is Japanese and Chinese?”

On April 17th, the professor Boggs mentioned about the racial segregation agianst japanese people during WWII. During the lecture, he showed us the advertisement made by the anti japanese organization. The picture had a face of a Japanese man and that of a Chinese man pointing out that American citizens at that time was encouraged to be able to distinguish their faces since the target of the segregation was Japanese, not Chinese. The professor including some of my classmates seemed to be pretty surprised that I could easily tell the nationality of the two men since we, asians, look very similar to each other according to them.   There are a couple ways, at least for me, to identify who is Japanese or not.  Japanese people back then typically had a mustache that looks like a square: they had a habit of shaving off the edges of mustach. Also, they used to eat foods that were comparatively  tough to chew, such as dried squid, so that they typically had a square face since their muscle arounf the mouth developed by biting those stuff.  Yet, modern japanese people have rather thin face since their economy has developed and people eat more luxuirous foods that are much easier to chew with. It is very interesting that what is obvious to me like distinguishing the nationality of Asians is very hard for non-Asian people. Since America has been a melting pot for decades now, I think modern Americans has more knowledge of different races than they used to do during WWII. I would be interesting to know how Americans’ impression of Japanese has changed or stayed the same in almost 60 years after the war. As professor Boggs said that he does not think its racist to point out streotypes of non-American people, I also believe that it is better to be honest and be open for disccussion since we are only able to learn about each other through communication.

Reflection Post #7: “How Technology Changed the Way We Study”

 

On March 31^st, we have discussed about how technology influenced the way we study. Since I am trying to complete both B.A and B.S in business and electronic engineering, I believe I can discuss some differences and similarities in terms of how science and business classes use a technology as a medium to teach students.  

                The foremost difference between the science and business classes is that science classes have a limitation to how effectively teachers can reinforce the course materials to students whether using technology or not using it at all. The reason why I say this is that if you are able to understand the science by reading text book or power point lecture slides, you never have to go to lectures to understand the materials, and hence most of those students tend to neglect the value of interaction with a professor. On the other hand, business classes highly value student’s involvement in lectures since they often engage in discussion based on students’ experiences and opinions. In this respect, online lecture or discussion enabled by communication technology enhanced the way business students can learn and the amount of knowledge they can gain from those opportunities.

                Although the degrees to which use of technology is valued in science and business classes are different, they share some common benefits that technology can bring. For instance, since there is abundant information available online, both science and business students can easily select various knowledge that might be suitable for their interest. The way they can access to information is made very convenient by technology since many individuals own a personal computer these days. You can see this by just observing how many people in your class bring their own laptop to their classes. Since our generation is considered multitasking, meaning being able to engage in online chat or net surfing and typing up what the professor says in class to word document  simultaneously.   There are both positive and negative sides to use of technology in class for those and other reasons but the technology has surely enhanced the way we learn today.

Assignment Post#3: “Alien Menance Module:How Do People Perceive My Own Kind?”

 

According to dictionary.com, the term, “Japanese” means a native or inhabitant of Japan or the language of Japan.  As you can see, the definitions are very likely different from how people generally describe Japanese people. We tend to use our experiences and perceptions or even those of others’ in order to describe about things more in details. Stereotype is typically a distorted or selective information about things or people and they are not necessary true or false in real life.  I have surveyed four of my acquaintances who have more or less experiences with Japanese people or culture in order to discover how they perceive Japanese people in general. As a result, I found that their descriptions of Japanese people are very consistent with each other and surprisingly, almost none of their description said anything negative about them. Since they tend to be somewhat more protective about their traditional culture and to have pride in their ethnicity, they are generally described as innovative, well-educated, polite, and caring for others.

Alice, who is a Chinese student in United States, said that Japanese is innovative, creative and polite to foreigners.  Wen, who is a Chinese American, said that they are well-educated, polite, and have hospitality for foreigners. Max, who is a German business graduate student, said that Japanese are very polite, sushi, and they do not like to say “No” to others. Alan, who is a Spanish American student in the US, said that they are smart, technology oriented, and robot is their friend.  From this, we can see that people generally have common perceptions toward Japanese.

    

             *image of Japan after WWII                               *image of ASIMO                                         

           Interestingly enough, the perception toward the Japanese people about their culture of being polite and caring for others have been the same in history, but their technological development is something that they did not have five decades ago. During WWII, their infrastructure was completely destroyed due to the bombing of their enemy, and many people did not have anything to eat to survive. Before WWII, their dream was to become the strongest military country to conquer the world, but after they surrendered in the war, they encouraged each other to become one of the top economically and technologically developed country. After the war, Toyota started off with a few people, fixing the broken radio and today it is known as the biggest pillar of Japanese corporations today, manufacturing and exporting one of the top quality automobiles to many countries.  Honda, another pillar of Japanese Corporation, developed a most advanced humanoid robot, called ASIMO, that can interact with human smoothly, carry a tray or push a cart, and climb up the stairs and kick a soccer ball.  From this, we can understand that those technological developments were newly added to the stereotype of Japanese after the war and it intrigues many people from different country.

                

                  *image of bowing

In addition to the newly added stereotype, hospitality and politeness are predominant stereotype of Japanese people.  This is very simple for me to explain since I am native Japanese and am aware of how foreigners would perceive our behavior. While American culture values individualism, most of Japanese people are taught by parents and school teachers to take precedence in caring for others over their own desire. They believe that by doing so will keep harmony within the society and also protect them in a long run in a way that they are not making any enemies. The reason why we bow to others is to show appreciation for elderly and higher-up , and at the same time, indirectly asking them to continue their friendship or a partnership.   Also Japanese people are very cultural oriented so that they like to interact with people from different countries, and at the same time, they tend to be exclusive to other culture so that they like to keep their tradition as it is.  

Therefore, I agree with aforementioned stereotypes of Japanese to some extent.  And I realized that Japanese people are very aware of how people perceive them since they seem to be successfully spreading positive images about them.

Image of Asimo found from

  <http://www.plasticbamboo.com/wp/wp/wp-content/uploads/asimo_drinks.jpg>

            Image of Japan after WWII found from

<http://www.k2.dion.ne.jp/~taxmania/LOVELOG_IMG/taxmania-2007-03-19T07:22:43-2.JPG>

            Image of bowing found from

<http://www.japanese-culture-visit.com/secnd_righ/reiho_new03.jpg>

Class Reflection Post #6: “Discrimination leads to Another Type of Discrimination.”

 On March 24^th, the professor showed us a distorted image of an Irish person depicted by American.   In the picture, the Irish person had an ape-like face so that it sort of showed that they are inferior to white people. This really prompted me to think about the racism in general. Although the topic we discussed was specifically about stereo type, if one is perceived inferior to other races and people use stereo type as a medium to spread those inferior images to others, I believe it should be considered as more like an action caused by discrimination than just a typical stereo type joke that nobody gets hurt by. Since this is rather complicated and controversial issue, I thought I could use my own experience as well as my friend’s to talk about it.

 Most foreigners encounter a language barrier as well as feel the difference of their appearance while they live in America. For instance, when my Japanese friend participated at a company’s cocktail party as an employee, he came back to me with a frown and told me that he felt like he was out of place at the party. He was the only foreigner there, and he could not encourage himself to interact with the others because he believed that he could not speak English well enough and that he didn’t have anything to relate to with them due to the difference in their background. These incidents prompted me to consider what causes foreigners to feel inferior towards Americans, and I realized that similar incidents are carried out by different people in different places.It is not strange that foreigners feel some inferiority when they compare his or her country with a strong military and economic power like the US. Foreigners from Asian countries are usually comfortable and act naturally with each other as if they have known each other quite long: this implies that the similarities in their culture and appearance seem to stimulate affinity to others who have similar backgrounds.

However, in the presence of an American, they tend to neglect a culture of another country and put more importance on impressing the American. When I first came to the States at the age of sixteen, I attempted to become friendlier with Americans than with the other foreigners because I wanted to be treated as an American in order to avoid the discomforts that often result from being stereotyped. I had heard some Americans saying “Asians always stick together” and I did not want to be like those whom they talk about. But as I grew older, I started to realize that I should not be judging a person from a single perspective, and I learned how significant it is to learn the other perspectives to fully interact with people.

Inferiority within the foreigners originally derives from the comparison of the authority of their countries with America on the basis of economic, politics, and culture. As I mentioned above, America is one of the leading western countries and attracts many foreigners to adopt their culture. However, when foreigners encounter a barrier of language and difference of appearance, the existing inferiority within them starts to affect their behaviors towards Americans. Therefore, America is a country that provides foreigners with a variety of hardships to overcome in order to become successful, but at the same time, living through hardships in America would also help them gain a different perspective to re-evaluate the culture of their home countries.