The Painting Flew From Italy

Hello, everyone!

I've wanted to add a new post as soon as possible even though I almost had nothing to post about... But no matter what was on my mind last week, I just needed to stick to my schedule which really seemed to be hectic again and get used to it. Well, I guess I can manage to spend my time better when I have lots of things to do. So now it's time to adjust to it, isn't it?

Today, I'd like to talk about the small trip I took to the museum in Tokyo, where the famous painting in Italy stays right now! It's located in the place called "Ueno", and it takes about 20 minutes from Shibuya to get there. The name of the museum is "Tokyo National Museum", and the exhibition is called "The Mind of Leonardo". Some of you are already guessing who I'm going to talk about today. Yes, it'll be Leonardo da Vinci! The purpose of the exhibition is to rediscover what he had done when he was alive without exaggerating them too much, so that means it would deal not only with his painting but also with the things he observed and wrote down on notes.

His famous painting, "The Annunciation" is right here in Japan now. Since I've been recently interested in Italy very much because of my enthusiasm about the professional soccer played in the country, Serie A. I know there's no similarity between him and the soccer, but I just wanted to feel something the painting told me before my eyes.

The painting must be exhausted after the unimaginable long hours flight from Italy (Ha-ha), and it was the only painting shown in the first site of the exhibition because the other site was dedicated to what he discovered in many different fields. So at the moment I entered the first site, I thought that the painting would have looked somehow lonely or sought for other paintings to stay with just like they do in Italy. To my surprise, it definitely had a dominating presence at the center of the room, and it drew every one's attention. To take a look deeply at what he drew or what he did was just like talking with him through his work. It's awesome to comprehend what he had been interested in by reading what he left, and it showed surprising amount of curiousness he had on his mind which never seemed to disappear. That's something I've liked about him, and I'd like to learn from it.

It's amazing to be able to pay a visit to the exhibition like this, and visiting there made me want to go to Italy some day to see more paintings, cultural buildings, and more importantly the soccer! Since the soccer is not so famous in the US where some readers of my blog live in, I will not talk about it here, but if I do it'll last forever! Hahaha.... (To be honest, watching the soccer in Italy is enough to make me want to visit Italy. )

As I've got to know more and more about Shibuya and Tokyo very slowly, I began to realize how fortunate I am to go to the university which has a campus surrounded by a lot of different interesting places! I am looking forward to discovering more in the area. ^^

As always, I put the rest of the pictures I took on Bubbleshare!
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I hope you enjoy!
Alright, that'll do for today!

The First Week

Hello, everyone~!

The very first week of the new semester finally finished. It seems that the city where the campus is located has become one of my favorite places in Tokyo already, it's always crowded though. As I expected, I can feel something interesting and exciting going on all the time! Also, most importantly, there's a lot of book stores around the city. It literally keeps me from going straight to my home after school! I can go to 5 different book stores on each day of my school days if I want to, where the overflow of the books overwhelms me a little, and the same time, inspires me a lot.

Inside the campus, I've shopped around to see what the classes I'm interested in are like and it now almost has come to an end, so it's the time to make a final edition of my time table.

I wasn't sure how my senior year might be, because the location of the campus has changed, and the level of my study has gotten deeper. However, I'm now ready to adjust to the atmosphere of the campus, and I've even got excited about the seminar I joined! The fact that the location of the campus changed this year added the excitement of learning new things, and rediscovering a lot of new things about my home city to my university life.

Alright, that's my quick report for you to let you know that I kind of survived the first week in the new environment(Hahaha!), and I hope you can now grasp what it's like to be an AGU student in Shibuya. ^^

See you soon!

Casting a Vote

Hello, everyone!

I'm feeling that I'm still on vacation even though the new semester has just started, because classes hasn't begun yet actually. However, I've already got the syllabus of the classes in this semester. So I'm now planning to make a time table which adjusts to my daily schedule outside the campus. Well, compared to the last year, it's so much more enjoyable for me to make it because I can choose almost whatever I want to take as long as I have time to do so. But the more choices I have the more complicated it becomes... Anyway, that's how it goes in terms of new semester! I'll handle it. ^^

What I want to talk about today is that I'm now given the right to vote! It's kind of sad to face the fact that I'm now 20 years old(!), but I'm glad to be able to vote because it makes me feel that I'm a part of the society I've belonged to.

The election was conducted to choose a governor of Tokyo. Choosing the person means a lot not only to the city itself, but also to the country because Tokyo is regarded as some kind of a country. The concentration of the capital town's power is so hard to break up that the things done by Tokyo have a big influence on the administrations of the other parts of Japan.

We, the Japanese, are now making a transformation to make what candidates think and want to do more understandable by making a manifesto. However, I think we've got long way to go because the law of how elections should be done is not ready to make specific rules for now. Even if the candidates can make one, the number of copies they can distribute to voter is limited. I've seen some candidates go online, and they posted their manifests on their websites, but it's still uncertain that they're read by everyone who has a right to vote.

I guess the fact that candidates have started making their own manifestos is a good sign because they now feel that what she/he is going to do if elected needs to be addressed to make voters understand who she/he is, and doing that leads to votes. It's just started to occur, so some candidates misunderstood how it should be written and ended up criticizing other candidates. I think it's ridiculous to write a manifesto as a way to offense instead of addressing what she/he will do, but there's lessons to be learned before it works out well.

As the number of the people who don't have any particular party to vote suggests, the disconnection between politics and real life has gotten worse. Many people say that voting can't change the present situation, and they don't even go to vote. But I still think that voting is one of the important roles as a citizen, and it has a power to send a message. Also, people don't realize how the government has protected their rights and given opportunities until it's out of their hands. There's a possibility that what they've taken for granted will be suddenly gone if you don't show your opinion by voting.

Well, I hope you understand how excited I'd been to be able to cast a vote!
That's all for today!

Take care.

How have you been?

Hello, everyone~!

It's been like forever since I added a post last time. I've been busy doing other stuff, and honestly I was lazy! Well, the new semester has just started, and I'm now shopping around to choose what classes I will take for this semester. As you can see, I'm doing fine and excited about going to the campus in the center of Tokyo, Shibuya!

Also, being able to say that I now go to the campus in Shibuya means that I advanced to the third year successfully! Yaaaay! The letter which told me how I did in the last semester has been sent to my home while I was on the trip to San Francisco, so I'd been extremely nervous about my grades until I opened the letter! But thankfully, what the letter told me was that I could now go to Shibuya! ^^ Sometimes, there's people who still have to go to the campus where they used to go because they failed the classes which they can't retake in Shibuya. It takes about an hour to go to the campus in Kanagawa from Shibuya's, so it would be exhausting. So now you can see why I was so nervous about whether or not I passed the classes.

Last year, one of the things that I decided to focus on was to improve my skill of writing in English. So I spent plenty amount of time practicing how to write correctly, how to attract readers, and how to say what I want to say in a proper way. I guess all the work had been paid off. I got "AA" on that class, the highest grade of all! It surely was hard for me to write in English even though I've updated my blog as much as possible, because I couldn't always write about what I want on the assignment given by the teacher. But it finally led me to the realization that writing in English could still be fun!

Well, I guess some of you wonder how the rest of AGU 2006 people are. I met some of them who advanced to third year at the campus in Shibuya, Hiro, Maiko, Yuki, for example. And they looked excited about the new semester!

By the way, I enjoyed talking with Nina, Yuki, RitaZ, and YiRen about an hour ago on Tapped In. It's always nice to talk at a place where I'm allowed to speak only in English, because it definitely helps my English improve!

Again, I'm sorry to keep you waiting for my new entry! But now I remember what it's like to write here, which is really fun! I promise I'll post more often!

Alright, that's all for today.
Take care!