Last class!

　Today is the last writing class in the first grade. I really loved this class and I was able to get many things in this class. I am going to miss this class a lot.

 Before I take this class my ability of writing was bad. I just wrote things I thought wihtout thinking any structures. In this class I learnt how to write an essay from beginning. Professor Leyda taught us neatly how to write an good essay. I think my essay became much better than in the first place. Firstly I can write it in the correct form and also I think more deeply about the original story when I write the essay about it. I used to read the story superficially but now I read it very slowly and think what each sentence mean. I realize the interest of thinking the deeper meaning of each story.

 As I said above, I think I can do well on reading the story in depth. After reading the story once to understand the brief flow, I re-read it again and write some memo about the part I did not understand. Normally these part includes some important message. Then I think of the critical questions which we used to do in the lessons. This critical questions are hard to think but it helps to write an essay afterwards so I worked on the critical questions hard. It was interesting to find out another new message from the story every time I reread it. Also I can do well on the works cited now. Well, actually i did not know how to write the works cited so before I learnt how to do it, I just copy and pasted the URL of the web page. It was really hard to do it at first. I had some difficulties. We did the practice of the works cited over and over again until we get full mark. As I did not want to do it over and over again, I did the works cited so neatly and carefully taking times. This process enabled me to understand the works cited. Now I can write it without looking at any study aid.

 In my final essay I worked hard on not getting off the track of the thesis. I always get off the track and write something that is not concerned with the main theme so this time tried to keep on the track. This was harder than I thought. After I have written 1500 words I got 200 more words to write. But at that point I had nothing more to write. I researched about the story and the author and finally got something to write about. I thought Next time I write an essay, I should first plan how many words I am going to write briefly in each paragraph and then start to write.

 I think I still have to work on a lot of things. I now understand how to write an essay, so my next aim is to be able to write a better essay. To do that I should read the original story more carefully and think about the thesis that is easier to expand to other points. Also I should plan more carefully about the structure and how many words I am going to write in the paragraph.

Anyway I would like to say thank you to all of my classmates who made me enjoy this class a lot. And also special thanks to Professor Leyda!

 I really enjoyed this class and I am really going to miss you all. I wish I can have the same class as you all again in second grade. I also want to have Professor Leyda's lesson again next year.

Re-introducing myself

 I would like to introduce myself again. I might have changed compared to the previous one.

 As you know, my name is Maharu. I was born in Osaka. Well, actually I only lived in Osaka for a year. Then when I was one year old, I moved to America, New Jersey. I lived there until six years old. I moved back to Japan. I went to Iriaraidaiichi primary school. And when I was in 4^th grade I moved to London. I lived in London until 3^rd grade in secondary school and came back to Japan. I went to International Christian University High School, which was a great school. I really loved this school. It was like a home. I want to go back to high school if I can. And now I go to Sophia University. All the friends are so nice and I am happy to be here.

 My hobby is dance. I started to learn dance from 1^st grade in primary school. That is when I came back to Japan first time. My first dance class was called “Jr. hip hop dance”. It was not the hip-hop but dancing with the music that is popular at that time like “traveling” by Hikaru Utada. When I moved to London I started to go to the Jazz dance class. And in the high school I did not go to the class but belonged to creative dance club, which in 2^nd grade I became “bucho”. And now, in university I belong to “G-splash” which is street dance club. I dance the genre of House now. I want to do Hip-hop as my second genre.

 My favorite TV programme is Sekai no hatemade itte Q and Syabekuri 007. I love the comedy and also foreign country so Sekai no hate made itte Q is my most favorite one. I also love drama. Now I am watching the “Share house”. I thought, as Yo Oizumi is in this drama, it’s going to be funny. I loved the “OKAXILE” which a comedian called Takashi Okamura gets in the concert of EXILE. I recorded this TV programme and saw it again and again. Now I can kind of dance the E-girls anthem, The galaxy express 999, Choo choo train and Rising Sun.

 I used to love Johnny’s a lot. But know I’m not interested like I used to. I loved Yuma Nakayama, Ryosuke Yamada, Tomohisa Yamashita and Toma Ikuta. I loved Yuma Nakayama from the drama called “Battery”, Ryosuke Yamada from when he became in the group called “Hey! Say! JUMP!”, Tomohisa Yamashita from “Nobuta wo produce” and Toma Ikuta from “Hanazakari no kimitachi e”. As you can see I am acting like a fan girl. I start to love famous people when they are popular. Compare to other people I loved Tomohisa Yamashita for a long time. And still I like him. I think the time when he was in the drama of “Kurosagi” was coolest.

 I love listening to musics. When I become to love that song I listen to it repeatedly. Now I listen to Taylor Swift, One Direction, Carly Rae Jepson and Beyonce. My favorite song changes so often. Lol

 My favorite clothes shop is “Coen”. I could not find my favorite cloth shop before but finally I found it! It sells many cute clothesJ You should go and see it.

I am quite shy to talk to people so please talk to meJ

Speech and Totem Pole

　Last time I wrote about the first piece I did in high school so this time I would like to write about the piece which I took part in the competition. I took part in the competition two times. One in first grade and another in second grade. Mainly 4 or 5 people in the second grade make the piece.

 The first piece I did in the competition in first grade was “Speech”. Surprisingly we dance not with the music but with President Obama’s speech. We remembered his speech, his way of saying and the timing of the applause. I still remember it:

There will be setbacks and false start. There are many who won't agree with every decision or policy I make as president. And we know the government can't solve every problem. But I will always be honest with you about the challenges we face. I will listen to you, especially when we disagree. And, above all, I will ask you to join in the work of remaking this nation, the only way it's been done in America for 221 years -- block by block, brick by brick, calloused hand by calloused hand.

And so on…. We also made our idle screen in to the picture of President Obama to feel him. lol

When I first heard his speech I did not understand a single words he was saying. Also I did not get the timing and the sound. But after listening to it over 50 times I started to understand his speech and the up and down of his way of speaking. I heard his speech like music. We practiced a lot and the result of this piece was 5^th in vice champion, which means 8^th place over all. The result was lower than we expected. So we promised to revenge next year.
 

And then another piece, which we did in the competition, was “Totempole”. I was in second grade so I had the chance to make the piece. I put my hands up to be a creator. I had trouble being a creator as originally this piece was made in the school festival and I was not in the original member. And there were 4 of us being creator and other 3 except from me was original member. One of them said the love toward the piece is different as I was not in the original piece. But I really wanted to be creator and also I thought if I was creator I can give some opinion from 3^rd person’s view as I was not in original member. And finally that girl assented and I became one of the creators. We all did our best to make the piece better. Like I did in the piece of “frog” I researched on Totem pole. There were some days we thought about the piece until late at night. We practiced a lot too. We also practiced around the big tree to get the feeling of the nature.
Then in the competition we got Champion 2^nd place! That is 2^nd place over all. We were very happy and this piece became one of my treasures.

There is a shortened version of the piece of Totem pole so watch this if you like. 

http://www.kk-video.co.jp/concours/chuko/063/high_2.shtml

I thought I would not be able to make better piece than this. 

I want to dance this piece again:)

Green cuties~dance of rainy day~

 This time I would like to write about how I made the dance. Actually I am in the middle of making one and it is really hard.

 In the creative dance we firstly choose the theme. When I was in the first grade in high school my group chose to do the theme of “frog”. Within group we choose 3 people who would make the piece. I came forward to be one of the creators.

 The piece making starts from choosing the song. In creative dance we normally choose the one, which has many effective sound in and also we choose the one that has not got the lyrics. We were having trouble researching the song. And my senior gave advice to us and we finally were able to choose one. The song was from the game’s background music.

 Then our process of making the dance starts. We research about the frog a lot: their biology, what they eat, how they live and lots of others. We even watch a lot of movies from YouTube, which were quite disgusting. I say some movies that frog is eating frog. When I saw this, I couldn’t see the movie of it for a while. Lol. Also I went to see frog in the zoo. This was my first time to make the piece so I did everything I can do to get image of the frog. I think everyone was looking my friend and me weirdly as we were at the frog corner for a long time. I did no t actually like the frog so it was hard time for me. Haha.

 On a parallel to researching about frog we made the basic story of the piece and the structure. The story of my piece was firstly the frogs were having normal life in their living. Playing with their friends and enjoy dancing. Then suddenly it started to rain. As you know frog loves rain. So they got excited and start to dance happily. They jump and dance. Then the storm came, and one of the frogs became lost. However other frog came back to her and they dance again.  This piece ends with frog sticking at the wall. It took long time to make this story. Once in a month we had the “Check”, where senior and teacher came to see the piece and they gave us advices and bring up the bad points. We got 10, 30, 50, 70, 90, 100% check and it has very scary atmosphere. We were all serious. We changed our pieces a lot after having each check.
 Finally we choose the costume. We wanted the costume to be impressive and also look similar to the real frog. We thought there are no good clothes that is ready made so we went to Yuzawaya and made it. Luckily we found the green cloths that shine wickedly so we chose that as our top. For the bottom we chose to wear the green tight and light green pumpkin pants. We could not fine the pumpkin pant so we also made this as well. The green tight slipped a lot so we cut the toe and heel so that it won’t slip. We dwell on the frog further more and made green ball by the felt and stuck it on our fingers. We could not think of any good idea to stick it on our finger so we put glue on our finger directly. We put red food coloring on our tongue so in the first scene when we show our tongue there is an impression.

This is my piece.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=teWfJn-a43M&list=UUDvNPw0Jeeo5Z1iU3ObGX2Q&index=197

The technique of dance is not good enough but I have many good and bad memories in this piece. I love this piece so much.

Haujyo

This time I would like to talk about my best friends in G-splash. My three best friends are called; Saori, Natsume and Mami. We are all in the same genre of dance called house so we call ourselves “Haujyo”. It means, House girls. Compare to other genre like Lock, Hip-hop and girls, the number of girls are small. There are only four of us. We became together from Sosai. Before Sosai, which is Natsuga, only Mami and Saori was in the genre of House. I was in the genre of Hiphop at that point and Natsume was in the genre of Lock. In Sosai there was also Minami but she changed her genre from the next performance. The next performance, after Sosai, was Christmas party, and in this performance Moeno came. Finally in the most recent performance, which is First challenge, there were only four of us. I really love the atmosphere when I am with them. And I cannot talk about my dance life in university without these three!

Now I would like to talk about each of them.

Saori
She used to be Ms. Yamate in her previous school. This name is given to a girl who is very cute and to a girl who people think she would represent their school. I first met her in the welcome party. I sat next to her. Her first impression was that she is very active and loves to talk to people. I was really envious that she was able to talk to senior naturally. I want to learn some techniques how to talk to the seniors naturally. Haha. She is very fashionable. And she talks friendly to everyone. She always listens to my distress and gives me some advice. She is now practicing her number, which I am planning to go, and I am feeling pressed that she is improving her House.　I should have take part in the number. She is like my elder sister. I think she is very adultish. I wonder why she does not have a boyfriend.

Natsume
I have had the incredible encounter with her. I first found her in the social network called “mixi”. I was looking for someone who wants to join the G-splash and who majors in the English literature. Then I found her. I did not know her face so I could not find her at first. Then in the first writing class, I met her. Firstly we each made a blog page. It was very first thing we did so most of us wrote our own name for the blog. Then a girl next to me asked me how to do things and I looked at her blog page. And, you know what…. It said “Natsume’s dairy” or something like that. Basically it said "Natsume" on it. Then I became very friendly with her. I was really surprised. She has a very soft atmosphere. I have a strong image of Lowry’s farm. Haha. It really suits her. She is very kind to every one and I think no one hated her. She is very good at dancing and I wish I can dance like her one day.

Mami

I met her in the summer camp. My first impression of her was that she is crazy. Lol. However since I sat next to her in the bus on the way to Sosai camp hotel, I became very friendly with her. Now I am always with her. I cannot explain about her because I am always with her. But basically I love her so much. She loves teacake and we are planning to go to eat one some time in the future. She cannot eat chocolate. I think she is having some unprofits because chocolate is so delicious. She said she wants to be a sheep in the future, which I cannot understand. Haha.

I love all of these three!
And I cannot talk everything in 600 words.
I think I would be writing about them again so check outJ

Favorite group in Writing class!!

 This time I would like to talk about my favorite friends who I used to be in the same group in writing class. The member of the group is Rika, Junna and Ryo. We became friendly when we got in to the group in the topic of Trifles. I knew Rika and Junna before meeting in the group discussion but I did not know Ryo. Even though we were discussing about the topic, our group went on with non-stop laugh and we got close to each other soon. Until being with this group, when we did the group work we only took contact by small amount of e-mails. However with this group we made the chat box in the face book and we took contact constantly. In this chat box we talked about many things: about the group essay, about ourselves, silly stuff and many more other things.

Now I’d like to talk about each personJ

Firstly Rika. She has a very girly atmosphere. She looks very cute and has whiteness. However she is crazy. haha. This is what I like about her. She suddenly talks about crazy thing. Lol. I first met her in the bus of the orientation camp. I remember that we were talking about our favorite things and hobby. When we were talking about favorite music, she said, “I like Pornography.” and I asked her since when she like them. Then she said, a week ago“. I thought she is really funny at this point. She also said that she only know few songs. Surprisingly the room in the hotel was next to each other so we talked a lot. Now we eat lunch together on Wednesdays and Thursdays and I really enjoy chatting with her.

Secondly Junna. I can’t remember since when I got friendly with her. I really like her dialect. I wish I could have a dialect too. She sleeps in incomprehensive timing. Lol. She suddenly sleeps when we were talking. She loves Mike. I think…. Her key ring, which is the shape of Mike and the eye moves, is very scary but she said it is very cute. First when I saw it I thought it is very scary but after a while I stated to feel a great deal of fondness for it. Lol. I was very surprised when she changed her hair in to red. But it really suited her. I think she has some common point with Lady gaga. I actually have no reason but I think so. She tends to be with foreign friends. I often see her eating lunch and chatting with her foreign friends. Please introduce some of your foreign friends to me, Junna! J

And Ryo. We call him “Ryopochi”. As I said in above I first saw him in the group discussion of Trifles. I knew there was a boy sitting on the right side of the room but no more than that. He is really funny. He makes us laugh a lot. The first impression of him was very dark boy, as he was very quite, but actually it was completely the opposite. He is very kind that when I had a time to spare and had nothing to do, he hang with me in the "Line". I really enjoy chatting with him in "Line". It was surprising when he changed his hair in to blond. First when saw it, I thought he is stupid. Lol. But now his hair color suits him and I think it coolJ He said I can write more than 10000 words about him but I can’t write more than this. lol

 Anyway, these three are my favorite friends. And we were planning to go to the Disney land together. We have not decided the date yet so we have to schedule it. I cannot wait to go!

I love you all:)

First snow

 On 14^th January, we had our first snow of the year. I had the practice for the performance, which we are going to have a show on 21^st March.

 First of all, I would like to tell you about the performance. This performance is called “SAIEN 7”. The special adviser of dance club in high school organized this performance. This title is chosen because it is the performance done by OB, OG and active services from dance club in ICU high school. So the word “SAIEN” includes two meanings: 再演 as replay of the performance and 再縁 as re-bond. This SAIEN is held 7^th time and this is my first time to be in the piece. Last SAIEN was held when I was 1^st grade in high school which we could not take part. I really wanted to join in this piece so I was very delighted when I first heard about having SAIEN 7. The image color of the SAIEN is black and half of the piece is replay of the performance, which we did when we were high school student. We arrange the original piece in to black image. And another half, we make a new piece.

 This time, the theme of the SAIEN 7 is “computer”. The entire piece has somehow linked to computer. I am going to be in 6 pieces including opening and ending. The pieces are net café, bad feeling, net shopping, like? and logging in as a different account. I am making the piece of “logging in as a different account”. It is very difficult to make it. The genre of the dance we are making is not the street dance but the creative dance that is near to modern dance, I think, so each movement has to include some kind of meaning. I shared the dance I made to a girl called Yuri who is going to dance the same piece but I thought I have to remake it.  

 Anyway, on 14^th January I had the first practice of SAIEN 7. It was great to see my dance club friend again. After being explained the flow of the performance we did the rehearsal. The purpose of the rehearsal was to understand the order and the atmosphere of the performance. As we went to different university we couldn’t practice well so the piece was really bad. However the special adviser got some idea of the piece and said it was OK so we really have to practice a lot to make it a perfect piece.

 The practice was from 9 o’clock and at that time it was raining. However after we finished practicing and went out, the landscape was white. I was so excited. One of my friend called Kiiru throw a snowball to me and we started to play a snowball battle. I have not played a snowball battle hard for a long time so it was so fun! We also tried to knock each other down on the snow. I tried hard to knock him down but in the result we both got down on the snow. It was so cold. Haha. Every one said we were childish but I did not stop because it was enjoyable. I got very wet. We promised to continue the fight in Inogashira Park in Kichijyoji but we became cold at a stretch so we decided to do it next time when the snow falls again.

 I had a really enjoyable day. Meeting with my dance friend and my best adviser of dance. Also playing a snow fight with my favorite friend, Kiiru, Shion and also my junior of dance club.