I found two examples. The first example I have is a few games from East Asia. I found them at the Mills International Center in the EMU. The one in the lower right is a Japanese traditional card game. It is called “かるた(karuta)”. The interesting thing is that the word, karuta, is originally from Portugal, not Japan. A similar game that uses clam shells in the Heian era is thought to have existed before Japan interacted with Portugal. This game and other European card games merged around the late 17th century and became a way of playing today. “五子棋(wuziqi)” and”象棋(xiangqi)” are traditional Chinese games and these are also famous in Japan. “街コロ(Machi Koro)” is a relatively new game, and we can see one of the writing systems of Japanese, Romaji. Since it is written not only kanji and katakana, but also Romaji, I think it is an English version and not an original version.

The second one is some magazines that I found. I also found them at the Mills International Center in EMU. From left to right, thetitles of the magazines are “(读者duzhe)”, “MEN’S NON-NO”, “25ans”. 25ans uses all three types of Japanese writing: Hiragana, Katakana, and Kanji. Also, it contains English words such as “ON” and “OFF”. Recently in Japan, I have often seen such cases that simple words are written in English. Another interesting thing is the word in the upper right, “御美脚(omiashi)”. The correct kanji is “御御足”, but it is also good, it is a polite way to say “legs”. In Japanese language, changing suffixes are not the only way to show politeness, but also changing a noun into a polite one is another way to show it.

I think that the reason they have these games and magazines is that they would like East Asian students to remember their home countries and relax, and have a lot of students get an opportunity to know East Asian culture. I think these things have an influence on promotion of international exchange.

So far, I like this class, and time really does fly when I am in class. In regards to the learning process, I think it is a good way to learn a wide range of topics by reading first, and then cover in depth on a specialized topic with lessons and iClicker questions. I’m able to double-check the lecture point through this learning process. It is especially interesting to learn each basic structure and sound system of Chinese, Korean and Japanese. It was difficult for me to hear the difference between the Korean words that GE 김현지 교수님said. So, I’d like to learn how much influence is the number of vowels in a first language on accuracy of pronunciation of another language. I really look forward to the rest of the class!