30 October, 2005

auspicious under construction

To be better, auspicious is currently under construction. Coming back soon with new design. Of course, it'll be with full CSS layout. Please be patient and stay tuned.

10 October, 2005

LB2 DVD: the great textbook for English phonetics

This is what I've been longing for. Finally, the second series of Little Britain, BBC's hit comedy, is released today.

It will brings some senses of the UK to my mind and makes me laugh. Since I came back to Tokyo, I've led a life, which is not really connected to "English". No matter what I do, of course, there're few chances to get in touch with "English" here in Japan.

However, at lease I've got Internet and satellite channel's BBC. They barely keep my English. And this Little Britain is also helpful for me.

***

By the way, there is another story.

Last month, I got an e-mail from my professor of English phonetics, who taught me at university. He asked me to come to his class and talk about studying in Cardiff. I finally said yes after thinking twice. The reason why I hesitated was because, first, I had to take the morning off; second, I'm not good at talking in front of people. But the reason for the final answer, which was yes, was because I hadn't thanked him for his reference letter for Cardiff university. He is one of those who surpported my going to the UK.

Anyway, I went to my old university last week. I talked about a bit of my life in Cardiff and report about "British English". My speech was not that bad, but not that good. Bit wandering. Nevertheless, the students were more attentive than I expected. No one seemed to texting with a mobile.

English phonetics is a too broad subject. Based on differences of intonation and pronounciation, some students study about American English and some tackle with English spoken by Chinese. But when I say English spoken in one country, it is still broad. To explain this, I wanted to show the Little Britain DVD in the class. "Even in the UK, see how diverse their English is!" If I have a chance to have another speech, I'd show the DVD. Or I'll have my professor buy it at amazon,co.uk.

9 October, 2005

Sin City

Frank Miller's Sin City, was finally out in Japan this month. I went to see it with my friend this weekend.

First of all, it was far from what I expected, but still good movie and I like it.

Although I'd been interested in the movie and introduced it here in my blog sometimes, I didn't know much about the story, to my shame. And I didn't expect it'd be that violent. But it was violent. In many of the violent scenes like Miho's sword battles, I sensed a bit of Quentin Tarantino's taste, who joined as a special guest director.

And another point I noticed was that I needed a little time to get used to atmosphere. I'm not talking about visual things, but slow tempo of lines. At first I found it odd. However, it turned ok to me.

Jessica Alba is cute and Rosario Dawson is sexy. Benicio Del Toro has plays a comical role, while Clive Owen plays cool. Bruce Willis looks handsome in the movie. And Elijah Wood's anthropophagite is disgusting, but somehow funny, maybe because the character is too suitable to Elijah.

Sin city 2 is already planned.