JLC-Thach-Chaneryna

  his book was not not very long, but it was very entertaining. It was about a girl named Mayu (I think) and how she really wants a boyfriend and since she doesn’t have one she decides to draw a boyfriend for herself. She draws a beautiful man to be her partner and she goes on dates with him and everything is great. Until one day she spilled her water on her illustration and he was ruined. Mayu despares for a bit but then realizes that she can just draw him again. The book was very comical. This is the first book I read backwards since the book was trying to mimic actual mangas.  The text was also written vertical rather than horizontal like we do in the west. Not a bad read.

  A lot of the greeting card designs remind me of the red envelopes my family passed out during lunar new year. I think it is very cute that a lot of people still like to make their own cards to give to people. Normally people don’t make their own red envelopes, they just buy them in the store because they are usually pretty cheap plus it's just more convenient. Personally for me I like to write little messages in my envelopes instead of money. ( because I am poor)  Just like Nengajo, red envelopes come in many different styles and colors and sometimes it can feature the zodiac animal.  I was really intrigued by some of the customs/rules people have to follow when making a Nengajo. For instance you shouldn’t send cards to people who are in mourning over the last year, as they  want to remember their loved ones at this time of the year, rather than celebrating with a Nengajo. And just like nengajo, red envelopes have also adjusted to modern times and now you can ...

  せんしゅうの　にちようびに　ともだちに　あいました。 あたらしい　れすとらんで　しょくじ　お　しました。 すしは　おいしかった　です。 でも たかい　です 。 いろいろな　はなしを しました。　とても　たのしかった　です。 tあぶん　らいしゅうともだちとまたいきます。

  Growing up my family and I didn’t go on many vacations. Anytime we would travel it was normally to visit family, No sightseeing. So I don’t think I would count those as vacations. However, last spring break I was able to go to Houston, Texas with my closest friends and it was a lot of fun. We went to many museums and ate so much food! I think my favorite memory was going to a crab shack for dinner and each of us eating at least five pounds of seafood. I would totally recommend it! I miss that place a lot. For spring we plan on going to Ohio I believe. ( one of our friends is from there) And if we all become volunteers for ICON we plan on driving up and  booking a hotel together. I believe it is going to be held in Minneapolis this year and I have never been there before. I’ve noticed in the videos that most of the vacations people went on were nature destinations. Which is something I don;t really do when I am on vacation. I mainly travel to shop and eat. I really enjoy goin...

  I took a break from reading all of the food books this time and tried something new. The book I picked up was called いいですand I mainly chose this book because the art style was really cute! I think this book was about a university student named Ken.He came to Japan to study Japanese. The book goes on and explains his schedule throughout the day. Ken eats ramen with his friend and then goes to class and finally he has work. I want to say that he was confused that his job is charging for plastic bags but most people were okay with that. But Ken's very last customer brought her own grocery bag and he was very surprised.

  リバーマーケットでおみやげを　たくさん　かいました。 いもうと に おもしろい Ｔー シャツを かいました。 ともだちに　にほんてきな　えはがきをかいました。 わたしは　に　かわいい　はしおきを　かいました。

Today we had three different games to help us out with our vocabulary for lesson 16. the first game had you running a cafe and in order to make your food you had to answer a question in Japanese. the second game was a factory I believe. the goal was to make $1,000,000 and if you answer three question correctly you can get a little animal friend to help you gain more money. It mainly focused on Katakana. The last was managing a kingdom. People would come in asking you question but before you could answer them you had to get a Japanese question correct. This game was more about Kanji. I think I struggled the most with the cafe and the kingdom games the most. I felt very humbled. I failed a lot but I did start to memorize the vocabulary and phrases more so it all works out. I was lucky that I remember some of the Kanji from my Japanese calligraphy class.    

  I am an easy girl. I see food and I read the book. This book was about Nabe ( Japanese hot pot. I hope I spelt that correctly).It was a cold winter day and the family wanted to eat something warm so they made hot pot. However, everyone wanted a different type of hot pot. One person wanted kimchi, seafood but they didn’t have the ingredients for those. So they just settled for making regular nabe. The book taught us how to prepare nabe, which was cool and now I am tempted to make my own. ( it looks easy enough). I want to say they use the leftover broth to make another dish? But I am not so sure. That way no food would be wasted. It wasn’t too difficult for me to read. 

  I’ve heard people mention that they love Japanese convenience stores because they actually have quality items unlike here in America.I’ve heard a lot of people are able to just grocery shop at a convenience store in Japan since they have everything. In one of the videos, someone was able to buy a whole crab stick from a convenience store and loved it. The convenience store had such a variety of food/snacks you could buy. It was impressive. All of the stores looked very clean and organized. I am not sure if it was a mall or an outdoor shopping center (the video was 12 mins) but the shopping center was huge. And I was surprised it wasn’t that busy and everything looked spacious.I want to visit Japan but I know it would be so bad for my wallet. I would spend all my money on convenience stores, stationary items, souvenirs and food. Going to Japan would put me into debt.  In America I feel as though you have to go to multiple stores to complete your grocery shopping ( or maybe th...

  わたしはだいがくのちかくに　すんでいます。 わたしはだいがく  ころがす にちじょう. びじゅつかん  は　ここです。わたしはまっすぐいきます。そして、みぎに　いきます。 わたしは  とめる と   クラス に　いきます。

  I really enjoyed Alex Kerr’s Ted talk and I agreed with a lot of his points! I think more countries should slow down on making everything look modern and minimalist. In my opinion it looks boring and lifeless in many cases. And everything starts looking the same too. I notice this in some Youtubers that would prefer to go to Cambodia over Thailand. Because Thailand was being too western or too modern for many foreigners. A lot of people believe Thailand is becoming more touristy and commercialized while Cambodia, while still underdeveloped, has maintained their cultural charm (not to say Thailand doesn’t that is just what I noticed from the videos I watch). But it is nice to know that Alex is trying to make a more sustainable way to have tourism in a country without selling out and harming the people native to there. I really wish America took more notes from the east and adapted their urban planning because it is a mess here (especially in KC). I wish the city was more walkable ...

  This book was longer than the usual blue books I pick up so it was a little intimidating and it did take me just a bit longer to read, but that is okay! The format of the book was easy to understand. They would pick a school related item and ask what is this? And then the following sentences would explain the function of the object. I was really surprised that they had to wear different shoes when entering the school and that the students had to clean up the classroom at the end of the day. I was super confused by the word きゅうしょくぶくろ. So I looked it up on jisho and was really scared when the first result was sudden death! After a bit of scrolling I found out it could also mean school lunch bag which would make a lot more sense.

  This time around I was able to read the book online which was nice. If you read online they have an audiobook you can listen to while you read! ( helped me out a lot with my pronunciation) The blue book I picked for this week was about the game rock, paper, scissors. I was able to read a majority of it on my own! There were only two cakes on the table but they had three people with them, so they played rock, paper scissors to see who would get the two cakes. But unfortunately while they were playing their second round of the game, a cat came by and ate the last cake! The winner from the first round decided to share their cake with everyone so no one gets left out.