8.26.07
With all the running around I have done over the past week, I decided that today was a good day to sleep in (until 9:40am), work on Monday's lesson plans, and talk to family and friends on Skype.
Lauren went out to visit some friends and I decided that after a lazy morning it was best for me to get out and go somewhere on my own. I was a little apprehensive at first since going out would be my first time around Japan completely alone. Previously I had either gone out with Leah, Hiroko, or Lauren. So I made my way toward the bus stop, which is literally a thirty second walk from my apartment door. I saw the bus coming so ran the last few steps and was able to make it just on time. I took the little ticket as I got in (Lauren learned the other day that we had to do this) and took a seat. After getting on the bus, I walked to the bookstore because I wanted to pick up these two books that Lauren and I had found a few days before. Guess what kind of books they were!? Hiragana and Katakana writing books so I can learn how to read and write some of the many Japanese characters.
I walked around the bookstore for a little while. I found a really awesome map of Tokyo with lots of tourist information. I might have to go back and purchase it. After leaving the bookstore, I walked around the area and into a music shop where I saw some familiar and some not so familiar guitars. I walked into some other shops and decided that it was about time to go back home and meet Lauren. When I got back home I took a side trip to the park right near my house. I wanted to walk around and scope it out. I found a nice bench and started reading about the four different types of Japanese characters: Hiragana, Katakana, Romanji, and Kanji. I felt a little silly tracing the Hiragana letters as little children rode past me on their bikes. Everyone has to start somewhere right?
With Lauren's help I got through my first five Hiragana characters (a say "ah", i like the "ii" in Hawii, u say "oo", o as in oak, e as "eh"). Only 41 more to go!
I saw this today and I was trying to reason it out: "imagination is more important than knowledge". Don't you need to have knowledge before you can even begin to think imaginatively? Or would knowledge cause your thoughts to become corrupted, and therefore, unable to imagine? For example, I have often thought back to the days when I was able to spend hours and hours playing outside while now I seem to get bored so easily.
What do you think?
4 comments:
I think knowledge puts a bit of a filter on imagination, which when you think about it limits your creativity because you "know" it "must be" this way. If you think of knowledge as an association game, where words tie in to their meanings. How fun would it be to change those mappings. So a pineapple would no longer point to the fruit pineapple. Instead it would point to the object we call computer. Using it in a sentence: I'm typing on my pineapple and reading your blog. (it's a bit corny I know, but it's the best I've got sunday morning)
I love your question about imagination vs. knowledge. My first thought was of little children; they use imagination all the time, and have very little knowledge. As we grow older, we gain knowledge and loose imagination. It seems our thought processes get hemmed in by the boundaries of facts and the way things "have to be", so we lose touch with flights of fancy. Think of a child coloring an elephant blue. It's not long before we teach him that, no, elephants are not blue, it must be this... I think we tend to get self-conscious = imagination stifled.--Brenda
Thanks Brenda and Hu! I agree! <3 sheilabeila
yay guitars someone traded in a clear les paul style guitar. you could see through it and it was wicked heavy
Post a Comment