The article was about a famous baseball player who passed away recently because of a boat accident at the age of 24. He belonged to Miami Marlins since 2011 and he was quite famous. According to the local police, cocaine and high levels of alcohol was found in his system. Since every one on the boat passed away, no one knows for sure whether there are some relationships between the accident and those drugs,so some people believe that he died because of drunk driving.
After reading this article, we talked whether we want to live as long as we can or die while we are young. In other words,”die young stay pretty” . I would like to mention what I thought during the class.
In my opinion,at first, I thought that I don’t want to live as long as I could because I thought without being able to move by our own decision, it won’t mean that we are living. However, recently my opinion changed by seeing one woman passed away on October. She was 80 years old and she passed away because of a brain disease. Before she passed away, she lived her life with stupor for one year. I was so sorry to see her because she was actually my grandmother.
At first I was not able to understand what happened to my grandma, but by seeing her living her life with utmost efforts, even though she can’t talk, I started to realize what happened to her and became to accepted the reality. Owing to her efforts, all of our family members were able to understand and prepare for the last moment little by little to say goodbye to her with smile. Of course we were too sad to do that, I still believe that we were able to have great time with her. Then, I started to think that living the life until the very last moment will really help others to accept the reality and let them prepare. I really respect my grandmother who have done that for us.
People might say that not being able to move our bodies by ourselves doesn’t mean that you are living your life. However, by supporting that person, we can feel sympathy and think that we are living with that person. I really appreciate my grandmother’s efforts and that really made me change my opinion toward living life.
Author: erikah
reflection aut#1
The class was about happiness and it was mostly about two things, the way to become happy and how happy we are. We were able to learn how we can be more happier than now and how happy we are right now by calculating happiness based on the way scientists have invested. By seeing the result, I realized what we can improve to live a happier life.
In the discussion session, we talked what is the most difficult thing for us to do in our daily life and why these elements raised in the article is important. We concluded that those are the elements we are likely to forget in our daily life and that is why it’s important.
However, after reading the article, I was thinking about this topic and wondering “is this article really true?”
I do agree that there are some elements what we really need in order to live a satisfactory life like enough money and comfortable place to live in. However, I disagree that we can calculate how happy we are and how we can become much happier by following some ways that the other found. I think this way because I believe what make us feel satisfied or happy is different from people to people.
I read an interesting article during the summer vacation. It was about a young Chinese boy. He was raised by a rich family so his father made him live in the countryside for a month to make him realize how good environment that he usually have. However, what he realized after a month made us, including his father surprised. He said he was able to realized how much electricity he used to relay on and he didn’t had enough conversation. Moreover, he mentioned that he was able to realized how poor he were. This was a total opposite thing that his father imagined. From this article, I was able to learn what the adults believe is not always true and what rich people have doesn’t always mean they have more than those who don’t have enough wealth. The content of the article itself was interesting for me and this gave me a great opportunity to really think of what is a happiness to me and how I can de
fine them.
Reflection 3
I read three articles during this period. The article which impressed me the most was the one about El Salvador. The murder rate of that country is 22 times than that of U.S. so we can know how serious the situation is. The officers are checking for tattoos that would reveal certain gangs and a forensic team from a local morgue heads out into the streets to collect the dead bodies every night. The article also mentioned what do the bereaved family feel so l felt really sorry after reading it. This is the summary for the article.
We discussed what can we do as Japanese and than we concluded with two things. The first one is to export police station system to those countries and another is to donate money to make children be able to receive education.
First of all, Japan has a police station which is called “Koban” in Japanese and it is been attracting foreigner’s attention. The representative example is Brazil. Brazil was elected as one of the most dangerous place in the world by UN in 1997, but it started to accept this Koban system from 2005. Owing to 270 of ” Koban” in Sampaio, the murder crime rate decreased to one-fifteenth. It is effective for not only to arrest criminals, but also to have communications with citizens and prevent the crime happen. We thought Japanese can advice on this system to those countries which the crime rate is quite high.
The second one is donating money to make children be able to receive education. It is said that half of perpetrators of abuse are graduated from junior high and 12 percents are graduated from high school and only 2 percents are graduated from university in Japan. From this result, we can definitely say that the education is one of the most effective way to prevent the crimes happen. In El Salvador, the compulsory education is ensured until junior high school like Japan,but two-third of students who are to attend high school don’t go to school. I’m not sure whether donating money is effective to prevent the crime because we cannot say that the money is going to be used effectively by the government. However, I think we can say that to make children receive education is important so if the money which was donated was used to make the education system work, I think it will be good.
To conclude, we discussed that exporting police stations “Koban” system and donating money to make the education system work is something that we can do.
Final essay (draft)
Final essay ‘ I believe in～’ Law-Law 2nd Erika Hirayama
“God will not let you be tempted beyond what you can bear.” This is what I believe in and what I always keep in mind. To be honest, I don’t believe in God and I don’t even believe in any religion. However, this word teaches me that the hardships you face is something that you can surely overcome and makes me think things positively toward the situation.
Watching the Davos meeting held in 2012, I heard a story told by a high school student who suffered the great east Japan earthquake. On March 11th 2011, just after her graduation ceremony, she was hit by the quake. She realized herself on top of a twenty meter high heap of debris and then she discovered her mother trapped there. Her mother had her right leg pinned under heavy pieces of debris and at the same time, she knew that another tsunami is going to hit in few minutes. Her choices were two. Try to help or escape. She chose to save her own life, and after few days her mother was found dead. In the end of her presentation, she said the following thing.
‘Even now, I can’t think of that decision without tears. When I left at last, I said to my mother over and over again. ‘Thank you, I love you.’’ I believe I’ll never experience something so cruel as this for the rest of my life.’
In spite of the merciless experience, she never gave up her dream to become someone who can support children who lost their parents, just like her. She is studying hard at Keio University right now to realize her dream.
Every single person faces with a difficulties someday. As for me, I confronted with the biggest challenged in my life when I was 4 years old. I had to leave Japan and live in Singapore because of my father’s work. I had no choice, but to go. The first several weeks were just like a hell for me. I couldn’t speak English at all so it was not easy to attend school and become friends with someone who cannot make myself understand. However, I attend to school every day because I kept on believing what my mother told me on the first day of school. ‘There is nothing that you cannot overcome. God will not let you be tempted beyond what you can bear.’ In the end, I was awarded a prize for perfect attendance every year until I came back to Japan. Since it has been more than 10 years, I forgot almost all of my memories in Singapore and English skills, but the spirit of never giving up is what exist in myself even now.
We have difficulties more or less, but we can certainly overcome it. In process of achieving my goals, I’m sure to encounter with many difficulties. However, when I give up, that’s when the game is over. Never stop dreaming and never giving up even it seems impossible is the most important thing to overcome difficulties
. This is whatI learned from the story and my own experience and the reason is why I strongly believe in a saying, “God will not let you be tempted beyond what you can bear.” (542)
election in Italy -The first woman mayor-
Reflection #2 Erika Hirayama Law-law 2nd 31509980
The article was about an election held in Italy on June 16th. What is special is that a woman won the vote and became the first female mayor in Rome. Her name is Virginia Raggi, a 37 year-old lawyer. She said that she’s going to restore legality snd transparency to the city’s institutions which means to end the internal corruption. To end in a defeat for city mayoral election in metropolis has taken a beating for the Roberto Giachetti, from Renzi’s center-left Democratic Party (PD), the article reported. This is the summary of the article.
Gender equality is being one of the most important topics these days. Hillary Rodham Clinton the representive example. If she won the election, she is going to be the first president so it is been a hot issue especially in America. Women are trying hard to take part in politics and that percentage is becoming higher. I think it is a good thing for both woman and man to be treated equally. However, when is comes to Japan, the situation is quite different. We only have 11.1% of women engaged in managerial position and this is the worst number compared to other developed countries such as America or France. Those countries are 43.1%and 39.4%, which are the highest number in the world.
I think the reason why it is has such a difference is based on two reasons. First of all, Japanese used to think that woman should do house work inside. This is like one of the traditions and what people used to believe importantly. Though the mind is changing right now, I think there are some people who still the division of gender roles are important in Japan.
The lack of a nursery school is another reasons why women cannot work. It is said that a number of child on the waiting list for daycare is 23167 in Japan. Government is trying hard to change this situation, but because of the low salary of nursery school teacher, many people leave that job so the task is getting harder and it is causing a vicious cycle. In order to make woman be able to work, I think it is important to change the situation and woman should be more positive for doing a job like politician or managerial position, just like the woman’s case in the article. This is what I thought after reading the article.