Oct 29

1.  Lang-8 - Write a diary entry in English (100 words minimum) and correct someone's Japanese diary entry.

2.  Japan Times

3.  Anki (161-170)

4. Homework

Article 1

The Windows 8 operating system debuted worldwide Friday, with Microsoft Corp. looking to gain a competitive edge in the market for mobile devices by focusing on smartphones and tablets.

In with the new: Microsoft Co. Japan CEO Yasuyuki Higuchi (fifth from left) and executives of various PC makers celebrate the debut of Windows 8, Microsoft's latest operating system, in Tokyo's Akihabara district Friday. KYODO

As Apple Inc. and Google Inc. continue to increase their presence in multiple markets, Microsoft views its new OS as crucial to counter competition from its archrivals, according to experts.

"Microsoft is taking a big gamble over the next few months with Windows 8," U.S.-based IT consulting firm Gartner Inc. said last month. "It is a risk Microsoft must take to stay relevant in a world where mobile devices offering new experiences are becoming the norm."

Article 2

The Bank of Japan may ease monetary policy for a second straight month at its Policy Board meeting Tuesday amid fears the postdisaster-related economic upswing is stalling, threatening to prolong the country's deflationary spiral, sources said.

In what would be a rare move, the BOJ is likely to focus on expanding its asset purchase program by ¥10 trillion to ¥90 trillion in total to demonstrate its resolve to bolster the economy and reverse years of deflation, the sources said Thursday.

The one-day Policy Board meeting is also expected to discuss whether to expand the program to allow the purchase of riskier assets, including exchange-traded funds, they added.

Article 3

This summer, while most of the rest of the world was watching the Olympic Games, dozens of Japanese students were mesmerized by the world of computer viruses and bugs.

Some locked themselves in a room and spent six hours analyzing a malware worm called Gumbler that had tampered with the websites of Japanese companies like Honda in 2009. Others spent hours writing code to check the vulnerability of websites.

"When I ask the instructor to attack my website, he immediately spotted the vulnerability," said Yoshihiro Ura, a 19-year-old student at Osaka Prefecture University College of Technology. He was one of 40 participants at the cybersecurity camp in August, selected from some 300 candidates.

The Information-technology Promotion Agency has been sponsoring the security camp since 2004 to raise awareness about computer security among potential IT experts under age 22 and to nurture their talents.

Some people might call the participants geeks, or worse, potential hackers if they should go astray. But they also could be the foot soldiers fighting on the side of good in the wars of cyberspace.

Oct 22

1. Make a new account at lang-8.
    a.  Write one English diary entry (日記を書く）
    b.  Correct one Japanese entry. (from あなたの添削を待っている最新日記）
2.  Anki (151-160)
3.  Japan Times Summary and Comments
4.  Homework

Article 1

BATON ROUGE, Louisiana — The mother of Yoshihiro Hattori, the Japanese exchange student who was accidentally shot dead in Baton Rouge just over 20 years ago, recently attended a gun control meeting in the city to appeal for the removal of firearms from U.S. homes.

The United States should work toward creating a society in which people do not feel the need to possess guns for self-defense, said Mieko Hattori, 64. Hattori's 16-year-old son was gunned down on Oct. 17, 1992, by a local resident when he mistakenly walked up to the man's house in search of a Halloween party.

Mieko addressed the meeting after a documentary film about the incident was screened.

Mieko said she and her husband, Masaichi, 65, have been pushing for stricter gun control measures in the United States in the hope that their son will not have died in vain. But she also said she's shocked by how the situation surrounding gun control has changed.

She was referring to the fact that more than 30 U.S. states have adopted so-called stand-your-ground laws, which allow people to use deadly force in self-defense when there is reasonable belief of an unlawful threat.

Article 2

YOKOHAMA — The Kanagawa Prefectural Police apologized Saturday to a 19-year-old youth for his wrongful arrest over a threatening message sent from his PC to the website of the Yokohama Municipal Government, admitting their investigation had been insufficient.

After visiting the teen's home, Takashi Fukui, head of the Hodogaya Police Station, told reporters he offered apologies to him and his parents. Fukui, who headed the investigation, said the family made requests concerning the investigation but was asked not to reveal any details of their discussion.

The charges against the youth were dropped after police began to suspect that his personal computer had been infected with a virus that enabled a third party to remotely operate it and send out the menacing message. Fukui said the youth, whose name has been withheld, was visibly angry about his arrest.

A senior official of the Yokohama District Public Prosecutor's Office also stopped by the youth's home later to apologize for the incident.

The Hodogaya Police Station was put in charge of examining the message in question, which claimed an elementary school within the jurisdiction of the police station would be attacked.

Article 3

FUKUOKA — A knife-wielding attacker injured six men at JR Hakata Station in the city of Fukuoka early Saturday morning, causing five to be taken to a hospital, firefighters said, noting their injuries did not appear to be life-threatening.

Rail scene investigation: Police probe a series of stabbings Saturday at JR Hakata Station in Fukuoka. KYODO

The Fukuoka Prefectural Police subdued and arrested Kimitaka Nakano, 26, on suspicion of breaking the Sword and Firearm Control Law after he allegedly attacked six men at the station using a kitchen knife with a 17-cm blade.

Three of the five hospitalized victims are in their 30s, while one is in his 20s and the other in his 40s, the Fukuoka Municipal Fire Department said.

The police believe Nakano, a Fukuoka resident, did not know any of the victims. They quoted Nakano as saying he "wanted to stab people."

"The man had a knife in his right hand. A police officer knocked it out of his hand and subdued him," a 42-year-old taxi driver who witnessed the incident in Hakata Ward said. 

Oct 15

We are finished with the textbook.  You will study units 7-12 next year.

1.  Today we will take the TOEIC Reading Test.  This test is very long (75 minutes), so we will only take it once.  If you want to study by yourself at home, I have more reading tests, so just ask.

Reading Test

Answers

2.  Anki (141-150).

3.  Homework

Article 1

Prime Minister Yoshihiko Noda on Friday congratulated scientist Shinya Yamanaka for sharing this year's Nobel Prize in physiology or medicine, telling him the news brought "great joy all over Japan."

During his meeting with Yamanaka, Noda said his wife, Hitomi, has personally contributed funds to help the Kyoto University professor conduct his research.

Yamanaka, who shared the prize with John Gurdon of Britain, a professor emeritus at Cambridge University, won for his work on artificially derived multipurpose stem cells.

Yamanaka reiterated his appreciation for the government support his research has received.

"Not only I, but Japan as a whole, received the prize" for the discovery that mature cells can be reprogrammed to become pluripotent, or iPS, cells, he said.

Noda emphasized the government will make efforts to support research of the iPS cell so it will be put to practical use.

Article 2

Since arriving in Japan in 2008, Apple Inc.'s iPhone series has won the love of many Japanese cellphone users long accustomed to phones heavily customized for the domestic market.

The iPhone shock could have even more repercussions, as the September debut of the iPhone 5 appears to be changing the landscape of Japan's telecommunications industry.

Softbank Corp. made a surprising move last week to acquire eAccess Ltd., the country's fourth-largest carrier and operator of the Emobile brand, to reinforce its network infrastructure and gain a competitive edge over its rivals, especially KDDI Corp. The competition between Softbank and KDDI — the two iPhone providers in Japan — has been escalating.

Article 3

Rakuten Inc. plans to expand in India and Australia as the likelihood of slowing economic growth at home hurts demand at its online shopping malls.

"We're making very steady progress in terms of expanding our global presence," Chief Executive Officer Hiroshi Mikitani, 47, Japan's third-richest man, said Thursday in Tokyo. Japan's top Internet retailer aims to have 70 percent of sales transactions abroad by as early as 2020, he said.

The retailer in the past three years announced more than $1.6 billion worth of purchases, such as stakes in social network Pinterest and digital bookseller Kobo Inc., as part of its strategy to catch up with Amazon.com.

Mikitani, whose company's revenue is about one-tenth that of his U.S. rival's, has a T-shirt that reads "Beat Amazon."

The move to expand abroad has yet to contribute to earnings, said Tokyo-based analyst Justin Weiss, who is ranked second in one-year performance among 17 analysts tracking Rakuten.

"It hasn't disclosed country-by-country numbers showing what progress has been made to date and what it expects going forward," said Weiss, who recommends selling the firm's stock.

Mikitani, a Harvard Business School grad who requires employees to learn English, said he plans to expand to 27 countries and regions from 13 at present.

Oct 8

1.  Textbook Chapter 6

6.1 Listening 1,2,3
6.2 Listening, Speaking 2,4
6.3 Listening 2,3
6.4 Speaking 2 , Listening 1
6.5 Listening 1

2.  Anki  (131-140)

3.  Japan Times

4.  Translation homework

Article 1

Japan Petroleum Exploration Co.'s test extraction of oil from deep underground shale rocks, a first for Japan, has raised hopes of improving energy security in a nation that relies on imports for almost all of its fossil fuel needs.

But newly tapped"unconventional"resources, such as shale oil and shale gas, require complicated methods of extraction that also raise environmental concerns.

Because it also entails relatively high drilling and extraction costs, it doesn't appear likely to become a primary source of energy in Japan, where the need for different resources has grown acute since the Fukushima crisis shut down nuclear reactors across the country.

Oil was confirmed Wednesday at the Ayukawa oil and gas field in mountains in the city of Yurihonjo, Akita Prefecture.

Officials at the company, known as JAPEX, appeared more preoccupied with the challenges of commercialization than feeling the joy of achieving a "first" for Japan.

"This oil is costly, in part because we need to pay heed to the environment," said Keisuke Inoue, the head of the company's Akita mining office who oversaw the test exploration project.

The extraction process required pumping a large volume of hydrochloric acid into rock layers about 1,800 meters deep to dissolve limestone that clogs cracks through which oil can be obtained.

Article 2

Everywhere a visitor turns at this year's CEATEC, Japan's biggest high-tech exhibition, smartphones are being used to connect to everything from TVs and microwaves to air conditioners and automobiles.

At your service: NTT DoCoMo demonstrates a robot that recognizes voices and provides personalized assistance at the CEATEC electronics trade show at Makuhari Messe in Chiba Prefecture on Tuesday. AFP-JIJI

Not to miss out, NTT DoCoMo Inc. is adopting this strategy in a big way. Japan's largest cellphone carrier is introducing a robot concierge that communicates verbally with its master in addition to plucking personal data from the user's smartphone.

The prototype, called Shabette Robo, is designed to provide helpful everyday information and entertainment, such as recommending what music to listen to or the fastest way to get somewhere and tourist information before leaving, based on the user's smartphone data stored on the Internet.

Article 3

Former Bank of Japan executive Eiji Hirano says Japan should take advantage of the annual meetings next week of the International Monetary Fund and World Bank Group to play up the country's resilience following the March 11, 2011, quake and tsunami.

Hirano, a former executive director of the central bank, said in an interview that the events in Tokyo will be "a great opportunity" for Japan to demonstrate that the country has achieved recovery and regained stability by overcoming the devastation from the disasters.

Japan should also tell the world how seriously it is tackling energy issues, the aging of society and low birthrate, and massive fiscal deficits, all of which are common problems among developed nations, he said.

The IMF and World Bank meetings will run six days starting Tuesday.