Tokyo Next

Hello, everyone~!

Today, I got a call from Yuiko after I spent time at the library looking for what I've been working on for my graduation thesis. She actually called me because she thought she would encounter the commuter rush if she tried to go home now, and she wanted to spend some time to avoid that. And I guess she needed someone to talk to while waiting for the rush time to pass her by.

I got a call from her and I decided to go to where she was. She went to BAGEL&BAGEL, where you can enjoy lots of different kinds of bagels, she chose to go there because one of her favorite foods is bagel. She can even make it by herself!

There, we talked about how each of us is doing right now, and the things each of us has been interested in lately. One of the things that we both has kept an eye on is that, H&M, which is an European fashion retailer, is coming to Japan very soon. I just visited the store once when I went to New York several years ago, but I remembered enjoying to be there at the time. So, I'm kind of excited that it's actually coming to Japan finally.

Well, why "kind of"? Hmmm... I guess it's a little too late. The same can be said for another famous fashion brand, Abercrombie and Fitch, because it seems to me that A&F has been afraid of their image being damaged due to their trial to come to Japan. Of course, it definitely is a good thing for fashion brands from other countries to come to Japan because it's a kind of sign that a brand is being regarded as truly famous and valued at one of the centers of fashion throughout the world. But at the same time, it means that a brand might struggle because the Japanese people are usually said to be easily excited at first, and sooner or later, we will be sick of it because everyone starts to have "it". So, it's really hard to follow what's hot in Japan, especially in the areas such as Harajuku, Shibuya, Shinjuku, and so on.

In the situation like this, H&M is now trying hard to promote their opening in Tokyo at their website. Last week, I was surprised to watch their podcast focus on fashionistas (people who have good taste for fashion) in Tokyo areas. Harajuku, Ginza, for example. I think the people who came up for this podcast are very very passionate about fashion. Though I go to Shibuya everyday and I think that fashion is a part of our daily lives, I just don't understand why some people are unbelievably crazy for fashion! But at the same time, it's fascinating to watch them because it somehow gives me new ways to look at clothes.

If you're interested to watch their podcast, CLICK HERE.

Alright, that's all for today!
I'm looking forward to seeing you at Tapped In!

Stanford's Commencement Address '08

Hello, everyone~!

You might already know that I've been a frequent user of Podcast on iTunes. In terms of learning English, it's impossible to miss because it's totally free!

And if I could introduce my favorites, one of them would be annual commencement address at Stanford University. I found the program about a year ago and the very first one that I listened to at the time was the commencement address by Steve Jobs. He need no introduction literally. His charismatic character saved Apple.

This year, Oprah Winfrey talked at the commencement. Though she's very very famous in the US as one of extremely successful people, she's not so famous in Japan. So, people here don't react at all to the news that the most influential celebrity is Oprah Winfrey. But I'm sort of familiar with her because CNN covered the news about her efforts to build a school in Africa.

The fact that Steve Job's speech was awesome let my expectation for Oprah really high. But, anyway, her speech was also inspiring and there's so much to learn from the way she expressed her emotion, presented herself, and how she chose particular words for particular meaning.

So... enjoy!

You can also get the whole script by clicking here!

I was a bit sleepy today... and What I do at Work

Hello, everyone~!

I was a bit sleepy today.... why? I watched the match of Formula 1 held in Monaco on TV yesterday. I was just curious who would win this race because the race in Monaco has been famous for its difficulty. At the beginning, what I intended to do was just to take a glimpse of it. But finally it turned out that I watched the whole race... Oops. When I was a bit younger than now, I wasn't interested in Formula 1 at all. I even thought that watching it was a away to make some noise in the room. But now I'm now looking forward to watching every race... I don't know what triggered this habit. The same can be said for watching football.

Well, today was the second day of my new part-time job in Shibuya. One of the things I do there is to write down the contents of the news shows that run everyday. I work at a kind of the English institute(As I mentioned before, the people who wish to be interpreters and translators visit there.), so the materials like news clips will be used in the class room. In order for everyone to look for them easier, I and other assistants write down what the news shows deal with. The news shows are, for example, CNN World News, BBC World News, and so on. You might think that I can listen to them only in English, but actually they also are translated into Japanese. So, I sometimes choose the Japanese, and vice versa.

As you probably know, I like to watch the news shows and I often download the podcasts of the shows. So, this task has been really enjoyable to me and I can watch the other news clips that the Japanese media don't cover often, such as the number of violence happened in South Africa has been on the rise lately, and the special report on the Egyptian economy and so on. I'm planning to introduce some of them to you on this blog when I find something interesting.

So, please look forward to it!
Well, that's all for today. ^^

By the way, the day of our chat is finally coming!
I hope I can virtually see many of you there.

Part 2: Review of the lectures

Hello. everyone~!

I'll review the rest of the lectures that I couldn't cover yesterday.

Part 4---"The Omnivore's Choices and the Corporation's Responsibilities" by Michael Pollan, Bob Langert

The first speaker, Micheal Pollan, talked about the complexities of our food choices. As he has traveled throughout the country's farms, slaughter houses and so on, he came to realize that it is actually hard for us to make right decisions about foods even though it looks like very simple. We have a lot more foods to choose from when it's compared to other creatures whose dietary patterns are plant or meat eating, and so on. He argued that what we eat should be not only good to eat but also good to think. His mention that we should go beyond "organic" let the audience rethink about the problems as a whole, and he also challenged the illusion that the term "organic" is the ultimate solution by noting the things about the energy we consume to buy organic and the people who are involved with the organic industry. The second speaker, Bob Langert, was actually a representative of McDonald's. I was glad that he attended the conference like this because these kinds of public meetings are likely to end up accusing the big companies like his, and never get responded from them. According to his presentation, the company has tried as much as it can to improve the condition of its animals and workers. However, it seemed to me that there's more they can do and I think they should be a leader to try to do so because the influences they have will be enormous. If the company can't change, then the industry itself won't change. I understand their struggle to make a profit to satisfy the shareholders, and to concern about the ethical and environmental issues while customers expect them to serve as cheaply as possible. But I think they need to realize the improvements they have to make as the most influential company in the US to let the others follow. After listening to his presentation, I pay a visit to his blog which he talks about the company's corporate social responsibility, and I surprisingly found there was a podcast to let people know how it contributes to the society!

Part 5---"Eating More Ethically at Princeton" by John Turenne, Stu Orefice, Bill Andersen, Katy Andersen, Anim Steel, Nathan Gregory

This lecture focused on the food choices that the students of Princeton have at the university. Moreover, it also mentioned how they made the whole operations at the dining hall profitable. It brought me to think about the dining hall at my university, AGU. I rarely thought about the foods it has because I don't go there very often, and I don't think the tastes are good.(Oops! I'm just saying my opinion!) Moreover, I was interested in what the other univesities in Japan serve at their dining halls. So I googled about it. What I've got from the quick research was that we didn't even care about that, which made me very sad. Though Japanese as a whole care about what K-12(especially, children at elementary schools) eat a lot, that doesn't lead us to consider rethining about what university students eat at their university. I understand the situation in Japan is somehow different from the one in the US, but it's a shame that we don't hear our own voices to act on the issue. I'm pretty sure that some of the Japanese do care about it, but the number of the people is not large enough to make an influence on what the dining halls of the universities in Japan serve. That's why quantity still matters a lot when it comes to the universities' dining halls here. Hmmm.... there seems to be something I can do about it though it probably won't have much impact. It's sad to see some of my friends who really care about the hunger, and the poverty in the world have no interest in making smart and ethical choices for their own meals, isn't it? It's as important as that, I think.

Alright! I finally finished reviewing the lectures, which leads me to think about what I'm going to post about next....

Anyway, goodbye for now!
See you soon~.

Review of the lectures

Hello, everyone~!

I've just finished listening to the last part of the lectures that I mentioned yesterday. So let me just review them here today.

*Part 1---"Moving Beyond Fast Food Nation" by Peter Singer, Eric Schlosser

It was this part that interested me in listening to the series of the lectures. The reason why I chose this was that, as I mentioned yesterday's post, I found that Eric Schlosser spoke about his field as a journalist who probed how the fast food industry in the US has really worked deeply. I actually read his book called "Fast Food Nation" and I was terrified of the contents of the book. After reading, I came to realize that we need to think about what we eat seriously. In the lecture, he mentioned how unsustainable it would be if we keep depending on the eating style that we have now by giving us the idea of continual impacts on the environment which keeps being harmed by the big food chains like McDonald's, other companies, and most importantly our choices. The other speaker, Peter Singer talked about how we should treat animals that we eat humanely even though they'll get killed one way or the other.

*Part 2---"Eating Well and Eating Locally" by Marion Nestle, Gary Nabhan

The first speaker, Marion Nestle, spoke about the need for consumers to have critical views against the choices which the companies offer. She also talked about the tactics that the supermarkets in the US have introduced to encourage customers to buy more by letting them see more products, which means people tend to eat more. What I found interesting about her presentation was that she argued that the signs on the products that said "healthy choice" or "smart choice" didn't mean that they are good for you at all. The second speaker, Gary Nabhan, talked about how we could eat locally. At first, I was surprised to hear that the prices of local foods are sometimes lower than those at the large supermarket chain. Moreover, the fact that the movements for the food issues have become bipartisan made me optimistic about improvements to be made in the future. Then, he finished his presentation by mentioning that we are all nourished by the place we belong to.

*Part 3---"Concerns for Oceans, Climate and Animal Welfare" by Becky Goldburg, Gidon Eshel, Paul Shapiro

All of the speakers in this lecture were concerned about the influences that we have on the environment, and they also have looked into the impacts of our choices in terms of eating ethically. Listening to one of the speaker, Becky Goldburg, talking about the problems that the fishery industry have was interesting for me because the term "organic" often brings me to think about agricultural fields. I've heard a lot about over fishing because Japan is a country whose people have eaten lots of fishes, but I've never heard of the issue that fishermen sometimes unintentionally end up catching animals or fishes which they don't intend to catch. It was a nice opportunity to know something new about the industry, and to realize that we need to make an approach toward the industry differently from the agricultural industry. Then, Paul Shapiro talked about his organization's campaign to improve the farm animal welfare by pushing retailers to produce battery cage free chickens and so on. I didn't know much of the issue, so almost everything he talked about was new to me. I'm sure that we have several organic stores that allow us to make smart choices for eggs, meats, and chickens. However, I think the awareness of the issue like this still needs to be built more in Japan because we are likely to focus only on the nutrition, especially when it comes to eggs. The third speaker, Gidon Eshel, spoke about the energy that we consume by making dietary choices, and how the differences of the choices affect the generation of the energy. It was a bit hard for me to understand because he used the words that I wasn't familiar with. However, I was surprised how thoroughly this whole lectures tried to cover all of the issues related to the theme, and it made me think about how far I could go to eat ethically.

Wow.... now you see how much I've learned literally a lot from the lectures? The first thing that came to my mind when I heard the title of the conference was that the problems could be solved if we all would eat organic foods. However, I've found that eating healthy and ethically as a whole is about changing the society that we live today. I came to know that I wouldn't be able to review all of them on this post. So let me leave it unfinished, and talk about it again tomorrow!

Okay, I'll finish here.
See you soon~!

Princeton at Home?!

Hello, everyone~!

Well, as you can see by the frequency of adding posts here, I'm now on the spring vacation. However, I still have a kind of school at home! Can you guess what it is? It's "Podcast". I don't know how many people have heard of this and actually used it, but I think it's simple and useful. It's one of the functions of the software called "iTunes".

The first thing I got through podcast was the news materials. One of the reasons I did so was that I thought it would be helpful for me to improve my listening skill of English by listening to them as much as possible on a daily basis. Another reason was that I hoped the fact that I've been able to get the news from countries other than Japan would help me develop different views of affairs which are taking place today. As far as I can see, it's been pretty successful.

Then, let me move on to the main point for today's topic. Yes, Princeton at Home. No wonder you're doubtful. Well, Princeton university launched the program for podcast, and now evryone who has iTunes and an access to the internet can download the lectures. Though each file of the lecture comes from the public seminars conducted at the university. So strictly speaking, they cannot be called "lectures". But still, it's quite interesting to be able to listen to them. Moreover, fortunately, some of the universities in the US like UC Berkeley have given us the audio files of the lectures, surprisingly for free!

I've recently found a series of public lecture meetings held by Princeton univerisity while I was looking around the education section of podcast on iTunes. The program was divided into 5 parts, and each of them was about an hour and half long. The theme was "Food, Ethics and the Environment". Sounds a bit academic and difficult, huh? Contrary to my first impression, however, it was worth listening and I've learned a lot about food. At first, I intended to listen to only the first part, which featured the author of the book I read last year called "Fast Food Nation" by Eric Schlosser. But I decided to listen to all of the parts after I began to feel the presentations get more and more interesting as they went on. Also, through the presentation given by speakers, I came to realize how complicated the food industry in the US has been, and that what we eat is about the same weight as a vote. To my surprise, one of the speakers was from McDonald's! He participated in one of the lecture meetings as a representative of the company. I've learned that the company now has a department for corporate social responsibility. I just can't imagine how tough it could be to attend this kind of meeting!

I think the issues about the food industry discussed in the US also reflects those of which the Japanese one has. Many people including me have started feeling that we have to make a commitment(*1) to educate not only children but also adults about where the foods come from and the choices we have to eat healthy and smartly.

I'm planning to add an additional post here about the lecture just for me to remember. In fact, I still have a lecture left...so I'll work on it as soon as I have time to do so.

Alright, that's all for today!
See you soon~.

(*1)--The word I used here has been modified after Nina suggested changing it. Thanks!