cause i've still got a speech to write...

but i realized that i haven't updated a blog posting lately (a real one, anyway) and that needs to be done!
absolutely nothing to do with the fact that i'm drawing a complete blank on what to write my speech about... nothing at all. nope. (too much protesting?)
also am realizing that recent posts have been horribly lacking in photos, too. whoops. haven't really done anything photo-worthy lately, so...sorry. i'll try to remedy that soon, and take some pics of, well, something.

on to the past week--on the bungaku front, we finished up our first short story. now the homework is that we're all supposed to write our own critical essay about the story (which we'll be doing for all of them from now on). and the length is "up to us." i HATE it when they do that! i mean, "up to you"--what does that mean?! does that mean 1-2 pages? 3-4? gah! whatever. i do actually have things to say about this story, so that's something i suppose.
pop culture class is also still fun. we're in our movie unit now. we got to watch "Shall We Dance"--the amazing Japanese version (DVD of which i own), as well as the embarrassing Richard Gere + J-Lo American remake--and compare the two. that was friday, then today we discussed Miyazaki's "Spirited Away," one of my FAVORITE movies. so even though i'd seen it a million times before, i rewatched it over the weekend as "homework." hehe. god, i love this class.
friday afternoon, we also had a screening of "Battle Royale," cause we'll be discussing that in a few days. it's a super famous movie, and i'd always heard of it as one of those must-see films. and it was, cinematically speaking, very good, i thought. but, it was seriously the most disturbing movie i've seen in recent memory, if not ever. it's based on a book that caused a huge controversy (as did the movie). the premise of the story is that Japan has gone to the dogs, so they decide to pass the "battle royale act," which means they randomly select one class of 9th-graders, send them to a deserted island for 3 days, and make them kill each other off until there's only one left standing. (as incentive, if there's more than one person left alive at the end of the 3 days, then everybody dies)
....you can see where the controversy comes in. like i said, it was a really interesting movie from the perspective of social commentary, and sort of getting inside the kids' heads, seeing what makes people kill each other, and how they all deal with the stress and everything. but, when it was all over, we all felt pretty shell-shocked.
i find myself torn between wanting to see the movie again, with subtitles---and *never* wanting to see the movie again.

let's see, what else...oh yeah, business japanese is going pretty well too. i only have it once a week (fri mornings), which makes it kind of a nice, low-prep class. i.e. we do useful things *in* class, and there's lots of conversation practice and things that i think are helpful, but there's not a whole lot of outside-class work. which is really a good thing, because nobody really has the time to do much prep for such a relatively minor class, on top of everything else. and i think the teachers realize that. altho maybe it's a different story in the other fri morning classes (i.e. reading, speaking, writing classes respectively). but i'm happy with my situation.

ok, wow, this post got long. so i guess i'll wrap up now.
oh! but, it snowed yesterday!! ^_^ a sunday, so as far as potential vacation days goes, it was a waste of perfectly good snow as far as i'm concerned. but it was certainly pretty while it lasted.

eek, almost 10pm. ok, i spose i'll suck it up now, and go and try to write my speech. that's seriously the hardest part of all this--trying to figure out *what* to write about. after a while, you run out of topics...
ok, bye for real now. and i promise to try and include some pictures next time!