Monthly Archives: July 2014

rika

This I believe

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When I was a high school student, I really wanted to enter Keio University; I had spent almost all of my school life studying very hard. Also, I was a captain of the softball club, which occupied my after-school hours, so I scarcely had time to participate in extracurricular activities. Now, I am a student in this university, and I believe that “I should challenge all things which I feel interesting” in the university. Today, I would like to introduce what I think the most important in my university life so far.

 

That is my club activity. I belong to the swimming team of the university as a manager. Until now, I played some sports: ballet, basketball, swimming, table tennis, tennis, and softball. But I always has been a player. To tell the truth, I couldn’t understand the feelings of the people who wanted to be a manager at all　before I joined this swimming team. We practice almost every day, and my team is training very hard in order to win the championship of the tournament in this August.

 

Can you imagine what the works of managers in the swimming team is? I suppose almost all of you can’t imagine as I couldn’t before I joined the club. These are our main works: preparation for training, recording time by using a stop watch, putting them on recording sheets, and making Excel file of their data. These look so simple, but actually it takes a lot of time to edit Excel, especially I was not good at that work at the first time.

 

Then, why I still belong to the club and has been able to continue to work as a manager so far?

 

The answer is this: I have been interested in contribution to the team as a manager, and even if it is hard, I would like to achieve things which I feel interesting. It also what I believe now.

 

Since I am a manager in my team, I am not able to swim for the team or make contribution to match results directly. However I feel very happy when the players appreciate my work and make new records. Why? Because through doing my work as a manager, I believe that certainly I can contribute to their swimming career and winning. That is also the point I have been fascinated by taking part in the team as a manager.

 

Thanks to my experience as a manager, I have become doing works in my daily life more carefully than before, felt pleasure by working for other people, and above all, I got special team work and met the best companions. In the tournament in this August, I will face the match with putting all my heart and soul with my best companions.

 

Unfortunately, I have to quit my job in 1 month, after the tournament, but like my irreplaceable experience as a manager, I hope to do a lot of fascinate things in the rest of my university life. Because of that, I‘m going to challenge all things which I feel interesting from now on.

rina

I beleive

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I believe sports make people strong. It doesn’t mean only physical but mental. I have played volleyball since I was an elementary school student. Of course, I play it better than who I use to be. And also, I have learned sportsmanship, politeness, friendship, and cooperation. Playing several sports is also a good experience. You can study many kinds of rule about sports. You can know the background or spirit about them.

I believe starting playing volleyball gradually made me become confident in myself. My coach asked me to talk to my team mates about what I wanted to do and what I was thinking about. Playing it gave me a lot of chances to communicate someone who was not relative. Before I joined volleyball club, I was very nervous of speaking to people in front of me, but playing volleyball made me so active that I could join a class activity and my classmates’ chat.

I believe team sports encourage you to improve your communication skills. You learn how to assert yourself and how to cooperate other team members. You come to know the adjustment between that. Team sports cannot do by yourself. This adjustment is also important in society. No one can do anything without help by other people. Team sports tell you not only how to make friends but also how to be in your community.

Individual sports like swimming are a little different to team sports in point that you don’t have any team mates when you play games. So, you have to fight alone. Individual sports make you train your mental. It is very important to be patient because you might face more difficult situations than playing games.

In conclusion, you can experience some troubles when you play sports, but they must be useful in your life. I believe sports make people strong, and I have thought I’m very happy to have an opportunity to play volleyball. Therefore, I recommend you to play sports seriously.

ikumi

This I believe

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Today I have an interesting motion: “which education is better for student’s growth, American or Japanese”. I believe that Japanese education is better than American one. I have four reasons about it. Then I’m going to talk about these reasons.

First of all, it is not necessary for American students to clean their own classroom after school. On the other hand, in Japan, students clean their own classroom by themselves after school. While this system of American school prevents them from getting into a habit of looking after themselves, the system of Japanese school encourages students grow step by step.
Second, Japanese schools have school festival and sport festival, but American schools don’t have them. These festivals give two good effects to Japanese students. The first effect is that the festival can make deep friendship between them. The second effect is that they can grow up to be cooperative, because they can have a feeling of achievement when they prepare and finish these festivals with classmates in order to success them.
Next, I’m going to talk you about summer vacation. American summer vacation has three months without homework. So, American students having nothing to do in summer vacation and have many time to do what they want to do, such as, learning their interesting things, doing volunteer and practicing sports or musical instruments. However, in fact, most of students idle every day. On the other hand, Japanese summer vacation has about a month with a lot of home works. They can become intelligent, because they have to study very hard. So I think Japanese education is better than American vacation.
Finally, American schools have a system of grade skipping. I think this system has an advantage, but it also has some weak point. The advantage is that students can study what they want to study regardless of their age, but there are two disadvantages. The disadvantage is that they can’t have deep relation with classmates, because their classmates can change each time if they skip the grade. The next disadvantage is that students grow up to be able to get good grades only, but that they can’t have good relations with others and can’t succeed in working. I think that it is very important for all classmates to study at the same level and learn various things in cooperation. So, I think schools should not adopt this system of grade skipping for students.

In conclusion, these reasons tell us that Japanese education is better than American one for students. Now I’m very proud of Japanese education.

yhiroki

THIS I BELIEVE

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“Don’t have a silly sense of superiority or of inferiority.”

This is the phrase that my teacher of the high school I graduated from said. After hearing this phrase, it became my belief. I have never heard such a profound phrase.

When I was 15, I entered the high school and joined its baseball club. Our high-school baseball team is so strong that it have made it into best 8 in the prefecture tournament. We always practiced very hard to break the record. Our manager, my teacher was always in the center.

He gave us hard menus every day, and if he found what gets on his nerves, he became furious easily. It happened many times that we had to persuade him to let us practice because he got angry. Why did he become that? It’s because we didn’t utter a loud in our practice. He got angry. We apologized. He got again. We apologized once more. Only the same repetition. Did we practice baseball for just humoring him? We hated him. Naturally, also I did.

One day, the time that the summer prefecture tournament was coming, we were practicing with limited members who could be chosen as the member of summer tournament. After practicing, we had a meeting with our manager. What he said was this phrase, “Don’t have a silly sense of superiority or of inferiority.”

What did he want to tell us by the phrase? At the time, I thought he sympathized the members who were not chosen. But now, I think it has another meaning. A sense of superiority stops you from maturing more. Once you find the existence of inferiors to you, you’ll be satisfied with your position. And you’ll never step up anymore. A sense of inferiority is also same. Once you recognize your inferiority, you can’t catch up with superiors you think forever.

I thank him very much to give me such an important phrase. The man I hated the most changes into my best teacher.

Please remember that the wrong impression makes you ruined.
Don’t have a silly sense of superiority or of inferiority!

hiroki, Uncategorized

This I believe (Hiroki S)

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This I believe; the people around me
Hiroki Suzuki

I know that this is sudden, but I’m satisfied so much. I think the people around me have made me feel so. So I believe the people around me. Now, please let me explain why it turned out like this.

I am a university student now, but, until quite recently, I thought that I had few wants. I don’t have the strong desire for getting great grades in my university and even dreams. Though I want to read more books and to get good guitars such ds made by Gibson, such desires are not so strong that I will buy these by all means.
Of course, I don’t have the desires for fame and so on. Those made me think I was lacking in the desires for promotion, recognition, material, and so on that the people around me seem to have. Every desire is the roots of motivations. So I thought it was a problem for me to have little desire that makes me active.

So to speak, I desired for desires, but, one day, I noticed that I had little frustration too, when I saw my friends complain much. At the same time, an idea occured to me. The idea was that my desires had been satisfied already without my noticing it. Thinking desires over, desires are an emotion that every person can not help but has from birth. Then, I found wrong the way of thinking that I was lacking in such an emotion. This made me notice that it is no doubt that my desires are satisfied now. The people around me have been satisfying me without my noticing it.

Since I had the way to think, I came to want to return the favors to the people around me who had been giving favors. So, now, when somebody asks me for something, I make it a rule to live up to the expectation as much as I can.

For these reasons, I believe all the people around me that are satisfying me so much. I believe all the people around me including parents, friends, class mates, and teachers, are reliable people for me, and I believe that it makes me more satisfied that I continue to live up to the expectation of the people around me

ryo

THIS I BELIEVE

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What I believe is the future of Japan.This is because Japan has wonderful good points.Those points are the excellent scenery, the national traits and long peace. In this essay, I talk about these appealing points.

First, a lot of great pieces of scenery are in Japan. For example, Mt.Fuji, historical buildings in Kyoto and Nara and forests in Shiretoko. These are very beautiful and famous as sightseeing spots. However, appealing points are not only their beauty. If you visit these places, you can learn how Japanese people have lived and how powerless human beings are. So you cannot help think what human beings live for. Therefore, Japanese scenery charms people by not only beauty but also profundity.

Second, the national traits of Japanese people are very gentle. They always take actions thinking what other people think. So they often concede something to others and prioritize them. The good example of this is conducts in a train. When someone who are aged or injured gets on a train, most of the people in Japan give their seat to him. And their gentleness appeared on the international stage. In the 2014 soccer world-cup in Brazil, Japanese supporters surprised all over the world by cleaning a stadium after a game. This action was much talked about on the Internet, and supporters of other countries did the same thing.　From these points, gentleness of Japanese people is recognized in the world.

Third, Japan has been peaceful since WW2. This is because Japan has a stable political system. This system include the constitution that prohibit participation in a war, democratic election system and the separation of government. In addition, the alliance with the U.S. has defended Japan from other countries. Especially, this alliance played an important part in Japanese international relations during cold war. These factors leads to long peace of Japan.

Considering these 3 points, I think the prosperity of Japan will continue in the future. In the 21th century, there are a lot of problems in the world. However, if Japan cooperate with other countries and tackle the difficulty, these problems will be solved. Thank you for your listening.

marina

This I believe…

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I believe accepting your decision in the past is always important in your life. In your lifetime there are the times when you want to rewind. There are times when you make huge mistake or the time you suffer because of your carelessness. Nevertheless, if you could change the past I think no one can improve himself or herself for the future.

When I look back into my past, I had always been following my intuition. They weren’t always the situations that I had first imagined; however I rarely regretted my decisions.

My life so far had so many decisions to make. My first big decision was made when I graduated elementary school. My father got a job in Pakistan. My parents were thinking of living separately, my father in Pakistan and my mother and I in Japan. However, when I first heard the news, I thought it’s a challenge that I have to go through. Then my family moved to Pakistan and spent three years there. There were times when I missed my friends in Japan and envied their life together in Tokyo. However, after 5 years, I am grad of myself for making the choice of going there. If I wasn’t deciding of going, I know that my life had been so boring and normal for lest of my life.

Second decision was made right after my stay in Pakistan. My parents and I often talked about which high school I will be attending to. My parents preferred me of going back to Japan and study Japanese culture and language in my home country. However, I was feeling myself uncompleted in my English skill. Therefore I told my parents that I want to continue my life in abroad during my high school life. My parents agreed to my decision, and together, we found the school in New York, which teaches both Japanese and English. The name of the school was Keio Academy of New York. When I first got in to the school, I regretted of coming to the school. Because every one in the school spoke Japanese, and there were no English at all. I thought there was no way I could improve my English. However, as the time went by, I noticed that whether it gets better or not is depending on my attitude. Since then, I tried to communicate with as many English teachers and supervisors at dormitory who can’t speak Japanese. By that, my speaking skill got much better compare to the time when I was in middle school.

From these two big events in my life, I learned that the life always have challenges and when you are in struggle, you might look for the way to escape or change your decisions that was made in the past. However, by following your first decisions will eventually mature ones self greatly. For the lest of my life, I will like to follow my intuition, and always accept myself in any moment.

saki

This I believe

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I believe that it leads to happiness in the future to make an effort towards an aim little by little every day.

When I was an elementary school student, I had the habit of studying every day. At first, I was made to study by my parents, so I studied against my will. I could not play until study is over. I studied at early morning or coming home immediately because I ended study early and wanted to play. So I gradually came to study every day.

 

I studied every day to play as quickly as possible childhood. This leads to continue making an effort towards an aim.

 

After that, when I was Junior and senior high school student, it is hard to be successful both study and club activity. I was a member of the tennis club. I didn’t want to give up another one. So I made an effort both them little by little. I concentrated on club activity before the match of club and concentrated on study before an examination.

 

As a result, though I was not able to leave a make an achievement in the last game, I enjoyed it. And, I could enter Keio University. Now, I’m having fun every day. I think that the reason why there is the present life is that I made an effort seriously when I was Junior and senior high school student.

 

People should make an effort not only one thing but also all thing that they want to do.

 

But recently, I tend to give priority to club activities and part-time job, travel and so on. So I am apt to put off study. Of course, I think that it is important to play with friends and do part-time job because it becomes the precious memories. However, I entered Keio University due to study and find my future. It is the way which I decided by myself. I think that we are able to find what I want to do in the future by making various studies. I haven’t found it yet. So I want to try the study hard without giving it up. If I can find my dream, I set an aim, and I’d like to do my best and work hard for my dream. I believe that it lead to happiness in the future.

rintaro, Uncategorized

I believe

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I believe that racism will disappear one day.
“I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the colour of their skin but by the content of their character,” said Nelson Mandela. Unfortunately, people of the time didn’t realize how cruel racism is. To discriminate people because of skin color, or cultural differences were a matter of course.
But things have changed. The world is now setting against racism. Nowadays, only a tiny minority of people support racism, separated toilet facilities according to race don’t exist anymore, equal opportunity in education is assured. In addition Barack Obama became the first African-American president in 2008. However, complete eradication of racism is not yet achieved. There are still violent racism all round the world (of course in Japan too). For instance an estimated 800,000 Rwandans were victims of genocide in 1994, racial discrimination is on rise in India and Australia. Further more, in France the rise of far-right wing parties with Marine Le Pen known of her discriminative speeches can be mentioned.
Racism has been a part of human history since time immemorial. It stems out of a tendency to create racial stereotypes on the basis of race, colour, nationality, religion and other factors. Often racial discrimination is practiced without even being conscious, It seems to be like human’s nature. We live in a world in which we are surrounded by things that cause us to develop associations that produce stereotypes. So maybe racism will never disappear. However discrimination can be reduced significantly by education.
Education at school should help us realize how racism is immoral. Educating young people and revise stereotypes are effective solutions, in other word transforming the school’s culture is required. For example, it is desirable that school encourage children making a cross-race friend in order to tackle prejudice, because discrimination can not prevail over firm friendship. In addition, school should take a firm stance against racism. Racial incidents must be monitored more attentively and If students exhibit racist behavior, teachers should deal with it immediately and strictly, because by not reacting swiftly and by not giving severe punishment, we send the message that racism is acceptable.
Instead of being colorblind, we should celebrate differences. Educational organization should not assume the air of indifference, because Ignorance is at the bottom of racism. I think that we also have to make efforts to be open-minded and strive to make Nelson Mandela’s dream come true.
If we believe that all human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights, if we believe in love for humanity, we should not tolerate racial discrimination.

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