Miraikan and More

1.19.08

Today I woke up bright and early to get into work for 8:30am. My first lesson at 8:45am went really well, mainly because my student was able to read her entire book (about five pages) to me without any help. She most likely memorized the words, but that’s what I wanted her to do. Sight words like “the”, “in”, etc. can be learned quickly using this technique.

On a related note, Lauren and I have come to notice that many of our students cannot read. Both of us agree, if a student cannot read, their English education will not progress. With this in mind we have started to work on very simple phonics. Since I started going over phonics a few weeks ago, many of my students are finally beginning to understand how to sound out some simple words.

Today one of my older students and I had a lengthy conversation about business taxes in Japan. Each week we usually discuss an article he had chosen to read the previous week. The article we discussed this week was an editorial entitled “Why are many firms in the red?”. Basically, the author pointed out the incongruity between the Japanese National Tax Agency’s report of a 0.5 percent business surplus from the previous year and the finding that more than two-thirds of the companies reported deficits; he also went on to explain why he thought this was happening. One of his reasons for this was “ the widespread occurrence of tax evasion and undeclared income”. I explained to my student how I had been completely surprised when I read the following quote in reference to tax evasion: “Companies are not required to pay taxes if they report they are operating in the read in tax reports.”. After a lengthy discussion with my student, I learned that a company has to pay prefecture tax, city tax, national tax, as well as prefecture and city fixed costs (i.e. garbage removal, etc.). So in a sense the quote was partially correct; companies “in the red” are not required to pay national tax only. I can only imagine the impact this would have on the economy—businesses would want to report deficits so they could benefit from the lower tax payments.

Tonight I’m planning on watching the 1^st half of the second Godfather movie with Lauren. Maybe we will eat some good ‘ol American style popcorn too; most Japanese people eat kettle corn, which is on the sweet side as many of you know.

1.20.08

Today Azusa and I met up to go to the Miraikan Museum in Odaiba. Also known as the National Museum of Emerging Science and Innovation, the Miraikan, is filled with all sorts of interesting exhibits for kids of all ages. The main exhibits focus on the following areas: Innovation and Future, Information Science for Technology and Society, Life Sciences and The Earth Environment and Frontiers. There were so many things to see that Azusa and I didn't have time to see the entire museum so I guess I will have to go back at a later date. Here are some of my pictures from my day:

Here we have Azusa standing in front of the Miraikan Museum.

The "Geo-Cosmos" globe, made of over one million LED's, is suspended from the Miraikan's 3rd floor.

Slices of Our Brain

This little, furry, interactive seal had been used in a study to test whether it could positively effect the development of children with a particular aliment. The study found that children who played with the seal on a regular basis were able to overcome their aliment more quickly then those who were not allowed to play with the seal.

A life size model of the first internet next work called ARPAnet. ARPAnet was set up by the United States Department of Defense in the 1960s. In the exhibit, you could send "messages" in the form of "packets" or groups of black and white balls (black and white were used to represent the computer encoded 0's and 1's in the network) from one station to one of three others. You can read more about the four initial network hubs of ARPAnet by clicking here.

This is Honda's famous robot called Asimo.

When I got home from the museum, this was waiting for me. Lauren and her old host family had taken a trip to CostCo and while she was there she picked me up....A 6 POUNDS OF PRETZELS! For you metric lovers that's about 2.7 kilos.