Urban Planning

The whole affair spread out over the table like a thieves’ ransom; plates of reds, greens, browns and golds stippled the table with color, enshrouding the room in a rich, enticing fragrance. And while the meal was hardy and bountiful, it did not leave us feeling heavy or overindulgent.

The central feature was finely fried tonkatsu (トンカツ) over a soft bed of pearlescent rice, nestled against a shallow hill of slivers of cut-cabbage, accompanied by sides of aromatic, cloudy miso (味噌) and crisp, refreshing takuan (沢庵

¹Interestingly named after a famous Buddhist philosopher/monk, Takuan Soho.

¹). The meal was served in classic 和風 fashion, on lacquered trays and Japanese clay-work bowls with hand-shaped chopsticks, whose richness paled in comparison only to the marbled, succulent cuts of meat.

While famous for their choice pork, まい線 (Maisen) is also renowned for their impeccable fry-timing, making the breading on both their filet and roast cuts light and savory, with only the slightest hints of oil lingering on the lips. Meaning that by the time the dessert sorbet arrived, the light, barely noticeable essences of orange rind and vanilla were not lost in a glaze of grease, but offered a subtle contrast that helped ease us in our descent from the heaven of the pork-gods.

It was by no small chance that we happened upon Maisen for dinner. Enshrined across the internet by locals and tourists alike, this bath-house-turned-restaurant lost in the winding alleys of Omotesando (表参道) has become the go-to exemplar to illustrate the proof of value the Japanese put in process to guarantee results. How, through painstaking exaction and attention to detail from farm to table, even the lowliest, most common of foods can be raised to sublime levels.

The lightness of the meal lent itself handedly to the conversation around the table. "This was so much fun," we agreed. "How come you don't come out to Tokyo more often? We could do this every week," my friend continued.

Well, besides the fact that such "attention to detail" also includes an attention to the "bottom line," with a starting price of around ¥$35 per basic prefix set.

"I don't know," I mused, fully knowing why. "I suppose it's because I've already done so much in Tokyo that I'm running out things on all of those 'must-see' lists to must-see."

"Oh, okay," he assented. "Do you think you're done with exploring The City, then," he asked genuinely, while still managing to fully emphasize the capital letters in both words.

While I am sure that there are still an infinite number of things to find and do in Tokyo, I find it entirely impossible to conceive of randomly wandering around The City in the hopes of finding something to explore. It's already impossible enough to find places when I have the address and a smartphone to help me navigate the city.

It's not that there is nothing to do or find. But rather there is so much to do and see in the miniscule that it becomes overwhelming to try to find it by chance. I mean, all it takes is just one quick glance down any urban street in Japan and you'll see for yourself how a proliferation of information makes finding any relevant information possible. Which also seems to be the Rakuten design model, suggesting that it is a persistent feature in the Japanese conception of liveliness and commerce (akin to how shopkeepers, chefs and waiters alike yell at their customers when coming and going: 「いらしゃいませ！！」anyone?).


Even in Kashiwa, it is virtually a drowning-man's game in trying to find a worthwhile restaurant on a whim. Not for a lack of available storefronts, but rather because each and every four-story building is crammed full of izakaya (居酒屋), nabe (鍋) or gyudon (牛丼) shops, complete with a wall of neon signs and billboards, whose vague and poetic kanji leaves even the most academic of Japanese experts confused and unclear. Which does not even speak to the proliferation of shops with dubious provenance and a general lack of rigorous cleanliness standards. Any tourist who walks into a shop blind must expect to be brave on any number of levels.

That and the fact that Japanese people tend to line up for restaurants just because there was the makings of a line to begin with. Literally, I have asked people lined up in front of a restaurant what they were waiting for only to be told that they weren't particularly sure.

But this is how I ended up at a little hole-in-the-wall karaage (唐揚げ) place after wandering around down by the station while running some errands

²

². No sooner had I poked my head through the smoke-covered glass sliding doors than I found myself drinking a plain, piss-yellow Japanese lager over what may have been one of the more delicious pieces of chicken I had yet tasted in Japan.

I suppose for any store that has been around for more than 25 years, and this shop and its keepers looked it, you’d think that they must have been doing something right. And this karaage was all right.

Except that the yakitori was a wash. A real, hard, disappointing wash. Though the iced-cucumber was refreshing, if not as salty as bar-counter cucumber should be.

But what this story really is about is how I was out running some errands in the city

³Not “The City,” but “the city.”

³, found a hole-in-the-wall, got a little drunk, went grocery shopping, and somehow came home with ¥$20 worth of crushed red peperoncino, bottled salsa, and 飲むYogurt.

On a whim.

So let it not be said that urban adventuring is dead.

Show Me the Logo

A while ago, way back when I was living in Boston, a friend of mine introduced me to the blog of a trainer (applied kinesiology and biomechanics) named Eric Cressey. Of all of the things his research has shown, I have found the things he has written about coaching theory to not only be helpful in exercise, but in my teaching methodology as well

¹Perhaps, over the years, the only thing I've found more useful in figuring out how to deal with high school boys has been the work of Cesar Millan, the Dog Whisperer.

¹.

One of the things that Cressey has written about at length is the value of having effective "Focus Cues" for coaching. That is, when an athlete is preparing to perform (or in the process of performing), what sort of verbal instructions should a coach offer to his/her athlete as either instruction or reminder that would lead to proper execution. Cressey, himself, has suggested various combinations of direct, explicit instruction (“tuck your elbows”) to the more memorably poetic (“imagine your hips are being pulled by a rope”). But recently, while attending a Nick Winkelman training conference in 2013, Cressey had taken note of the importance of creating a distinction between internal and external focus cues.

While internal focus cues orient the body relative to itself--where the elbow is in relation to the body, or how the hips should be positioned relative to the trunk--external focus cues instruct the athlete relative to the space around them. Rather than reminding the lifter to “keep his chest up,” Cressey suggests that, “Show me the logo on your chest,” is a much more effective cue in obtaining the proper posture on a deadlift.

Unsurprisingly, this change in emphasis from internal to external cues has been beneficial in how we approach teaching speech mechanics to our students.


Over the past two years, Kashew and I have been trying to develop our Oral Communication class to be more relevant to the students’ assumed academic needs (both in terms of the international-course and general-course content). But regardless of our expectations of use, pronunciation ability remains a highly rated perceived-need among students and administrators, despite the fact that most ESL students we encounter already speak with a satisfying degree of articulation.

Fortunately, for us, we found in the back of our textbook an extensive

²And useful, which is surprising because these two things are not always mutually inclusive.

² collection of pronunciation assignments that we could easily adapt and supplement. From those basic assignments, we created an outline that would take the students from listening and speaking to writing and speaking, and then to reading and speaking with mechanical instruction (oral first, in terms of hearing and speaking, and then phonetic second, in relation to the reading and writing) as the transition between sections.

Up until recently, most, if not all, of our mechanical cues had been internal: where the tongue needs to be in relation to the palate to create the r versus the l sound, or where in the throat or nose the utterance should originate.

We carried these indiscriminate cues, which had seen palatable success among the high school students, into an intensive color-pronunciation lesson we taught at a couple elementary schools we were assigned to appear at last week.

Our goal was to teach them some basic pronunciation tips for a very specific set of words that they could carry into their continued acquisition of vocabulary, so they do not become trapped in or limited by their understanding and experience of English solely as Katakana-English.

Our cues primarily focused on internal pronunciation mechanics such as the placement of the tongue relative to the r and l of purple and the mechanical use of the lips in the production of the plosive-b in words like blue. However, it was very apparent from the very first lesson that such cues were minimally effective. However, cues such as the “sound of a dog’s growl” in producing the correct r in words like red proved highly effective.

As such, after our initial review, we dramatically shifted our focus from a mechanically heavy, internal-cue-based instruction to external cues like that above, especially cues that could incorporate hand motions for emphasis and would improve retention.

We began teaching the o for orange with a big “O” motion of the arms and then focused more on the popping motion of the lips like the flicking of fingers rather than the placement and timing of the tongue for the b in blue. We used a slow-drawing hand-motion to simulate the location for the production of the softer sounds for purple, and a smiling face to emphasize the long-iː of green.

We saw results almost immediately upon these corrections to the lesson plan.

In 2001, Gabriele Wulf and Wolfgang Prinz argued that external focus cues were more effective than internal focus cues in the improvement of motor-skill performance due to the “Constrained-Action Hypothesis.” This theory suggests that internal focus cues are psychologically constricting because they cause the learner to pay too much attention to the mechanics of his or her performance.

“An internal attentional focus constrains the motor system by interfering with natural control processes,” they argue, "whereas an external focus seems to allow automatic control processes to regulate the movements." Internal cues, it is suggested, affect their change by asking the learner to “stop” one action in favor of another, meaning the learner is more likely to become “frozen” in an attempt to control their movements, as this San Diego State University study (Effects of Attentional Focus on Oral-Motor Control and Learning) exemplifies.

Internal cues, it is hypothesized are akin to asking a subject to "not imagine an elephant," while external cues are more along the lines of instructing the subject to think about a strawberry, instead, to achieve the intended result. This same study finds a half-reduction in the amount of “absolute errors" committed during an Iowa Oral Performance Instrument test between the group instructed using external focus cues versus internal.

Wulf and Prinz go on to find that, "The effectiveness of instructions could be enhanced by manipulating the learner's focus of attention" away from their body to focus on the effects of their movements (649). In fact, "by increasing the distance of the movement effects from the body, the advantages of an external, relative to an internal focus, seemed to be more pronounced," in both result and retention (651). They theorize that an external focus point too spacially close to the body may be psychologically indistinguishable from the body, and therefore indistinguishable as an external focus cue. Much like how beginner drivers are instructed to cast their vision farther down the road in order to drive straighter.

However, observing a coach model the same mechanics (and, potentially even seeing a video of themselves performing the same mechanics) seems to qualify cognitively as an external focus cue by removing the mechanical instruction away from their body as they are more able to clearly see and focus on the effects of the mechanics.

These hypotheses make a lot of sense to me as internal focus cues require an advanced level of body-awareness and discipline, while external cues replace such control and awareness with spacial recognition. I would be interested in seeing whether or not external cues were more- or just-as- effective as internal cues among advanced learners/athletes, or people with much more body-mechanical awareness and control.

It would seem much easier, anecdotally, for an experienced athlete to respond efficiently to simple internal cues such as, “Keep your elbows tucked when you’re under the bar,” because his/her experience set indicates that they would be familiar with the formal image and proper feeling of the technique without getting caught up in processing the individual mechanics.

And then, while much more advanced, when understood in relation to their eventual effect, internal cues lend themselves much more to abstraction and broader application, whereas external cues, themselves, are already metaphorical abstractions of the internal principle and must be tailored to the learner and become constrained by the context.

Regardless, I look forward to testing the effectiveness of making conscious distinctions between the types of cues I use in class and in my own studies.

The Way This Wheel Keeps Working

Yo, Nick!

Before we begin, Kashew says that John Mayer is going to perform at 武道館 relatively soon. Tickets shouldn't be too expensive. I figure that if tickets to see Fleet Foxes at AgeHa ran ¥$70, slapping down one or two Fukuzawas for a couple of tickets to bask in the radiant countenance of #MayerFace wouldn't be unreasonable.

So, let's do this.

Every year since 1995, the Japanese Kanji Proficiency Society (財団法人日本漢字能力検定協会) hosts a national ballot to select an annually representative Kanji of the Year (今年の漢字). Over the last 18 years, kanji depicting everything from major disasters and war (災 - sai, 2004; 戦 - sen, 2001) to life (命 - inochi, 2006), love (愛 - ai, 2005) and relationships (絆 - kizuna, 2011) have been chosen.

This year, among the nominees were kanji representing the celebration (楽, 喜) of the return (倍) of the strength of the Japanese economy (富) and the Japanese way (東, 風). However, by a narrow 0.56% margin, the committee selected 輪 (rin/wa)

¹Source: 47news

¹—wheel—to epitomize the spirit of 2013.

Voters noted the cyclical nature of economics and the completion of large-scale building projects and the consolidation of corporate programs as images of oneness and wholeness, as well as the eventual reward for patience and diligence as best typified by a simple wheel.

But overwhelmingly, respondents pointed to the kanji's second reading of ring and Tokyo's successful bid to host the 2020 Summer Olympic Games—a parallel to its symbolic five, interlocking rings—as representative of Japan's return to the international stage.

As a critical, end-of-the-year exercise, I particularly enjoy this one. With all New Year's activities, this activity helps create space in which we can look back on our year and place ourselves, contextually, within a larger understanding of growth and change, personally and socially. But by anchoring the self-assessment to a tangible product, the goal of writing kanji becomes a focal point that gives the exercise direction and creates a touchstone for reflection from which to begin to think about the coming year.

今年の漢字 has become one of my go-to topics for English conversation classes and one reflective exercise that I genuinely enjoy participating in and doing for myself. It is also one that we started making our third-year students do in January, their last month at school before they begin their two-month 'college preparation' period. We require them to brainstorm about the three most important events over the past school year and then pick the kanji that best represents their experience as seniors.

For their 今年(度)の漢字, many students pick 恋 or 愛 to signify newly founded relationships borne out of club retirement. Some go with 全 or 最 as the culmination of their years of work, or 自 or 選 for the hard fought freedoms that come with graduation. And some select 働 or 進 to signify the perpetuity of a body of work not yet finished.

To describe her senior year, Izumi picked 戦, battle, while Kayo went with 頑 because gan represented the firmness and stubbornness required to survive. Similarly, Yuka opted to go with 疲—exhausted, tired or weary—to illustrate the overall stultification of senioritis. "It pains me even to think of it," she writes.

On the other hand, Masahiro chose 初, beginning, because 2013 was the year he caught his first fish and set a new personal record in track-and-field, which allowed him to compete in the Takeyaryou Tournament for the first time. Sho also signified a new beginning for him, as he was able to pass his entrance exam to Dokkyou University.

Yuki selected 大 for all of the big things he did and Shunya picked 成 because of the ways he felt he grew throughout the year.

For me, I would probably choose 挑

²ちょう 【挑】 - chou
［常用漢字］　［音］チョウ（テウ）（呉）（漢）　［訓］いどむ
相手に行動を仕掛ける。いどむ (itomu)。「挑戦・挑発」

², challenge, to summarize the way we approached and accomplished unexpected presentations and speeches at work, the 頑張れ-spirit of new hobbies and extra-curricular activities, and the mindset with which I will approach the last few months of this school year before I start wrapping up my final term here at Ichikashi.

At which point I hope to have a whole different set of kanji to choose from.

My Favorite Sport (SJ: 12/02)

三年生 - Elective

My favorite sport is swimming.

Come summer, I swim in the pool every day.

But I don't watch a swimming races on TV. I am not interested that much.

But I like to play in the water. When I swim, I feel that the flow of the water feels good and I can forget about my daily life because, in the water, I don't hear the noisiness around me. It heals me.

An important thing, though, is not to drown. Because the first thing, living is important.

The Other's Other

A few months ago, after the gold medal match of the World Cup of Softball between USA and Japan, ESPN commentator, Michelle Smith, was heavily chastised for a stereotypical "rice and sushi" joke about a Japanese fan in the stands dressed in a happi coat, which, to be fair, is the standard uniform for men in traditional 和風 related fields, today most commonly found in Japanese dining.

While I actively advocate for the necessity of pointing out individual behaviors and complex systems that perpetuate racial assumptions, I wondered how the dynamic is altered if the appropriated culture, itself, participates in the perpetuation of its own stereotypes.

Because stereotypes have the power to flatten cultures into homogeny, Japanese culture, which has a history of eschewing roughness in favor of uniformity, has become a society which happily trades and is heavily invested in its own stereotypes. It is no accident that ideas of "sushi" and "samurai," "geisha" and "ninjas," robots and technology are quintessentially "Japanese." Even though many households still lack computers, the Japanese, themselves, would say these things to you, even without your asking. Much of the uncritical, national-personal identity is tied up in ideological "samenesses," not limited to appearance, taste or personal philosophies.

But then, of course, such broad, sweeping statements as the one above are flattening and problematic as they don't take into account individual dynamics.

But when those self-same individuals appear invested in these stereotypes for their identity, especially ones that create and perpetuate differences from other local cultures, how much are we to blame as outsiders for participating in those artificial binaries?

Japanese Americans have long benefitted in trading in traditional American-minority stereotypes. As a secondary group of non-indigenous "others" in an otherwise standard majority-minority binary, Asians come out ahead of blacks by merely being a contrasting difference

¹Simply by not being first, but also, importantly, as non-diasporic, financially and culturally affluent expatriates

¹. Like trying to locate a third color in a binary gradient, "yellow" fits fluidly between similarity and dissimilarity because while it is not "pure white," it also passes as definitely "not black."

Taking advantage of the existence of a contentious white-black binary, Asians submitted themselves as an accommodating “model minority"; a triangulating pole against which blacks are judged as a problematic, failing minority group; “proof” that the hegemonic system worked.

This tension between minority "brotherhoods" grows even more when, because of the aforementioned fluidity of their otherness, Asians access and perpetuate culturally flattening black-stereotypes as emotional shortcuts to signify toughness, non-conformity, and, most heinously, solidarity, all of which exists outside of the Asian American reality because of their willful submission to the patriarchy.

It is no surprise, then, that Asian culture groups are in no hurry to overturn systemic racism, lest they put at risk the benefits they reap from being the other's other. And it is no wonder why other minority groups that suffer less favorably have little patience with their Japanese (and Chinese and Korean) counterparts.

But, regardless, cultural appropriation stings equally across races, as Katy Perry's performance at the November 2013 American Music Awards reminds. Appropriation, here, is when aspects of cultural customs and heritages are ripped from their cultural contexts in the service of pandering to larger stereotypes. In this instance, Katy Perry, in order to communicate the beauty of unconditional devotion and self-sacrificial submission, took from the Japanese the Maiko/Geisha, the embodiment of the Yamato Nadeshiko, the delicate floral metaphor of the ideal, pure female beauty, demure and unobtrusive, as codified in the Heian period as part of the 大和魂, the innate, indigenous aspects of true Japanese spirit, the traits that make up the very soul of Japan.

Perry's appropriation of Maiko and the Yamato Nadeshiko is problematic because it subjects Japanese (nee, Asian) women to a sexist, patriarchal submissive ideal, reducing their value to servility and beauty.

But to accuse Perry of appropriation feels a bit disingenuous when Japan still readily trades in such stereotypes. In thinking forward to the 2020 Tokyo Olympics, I have a hard time imagining that their Opening Ceremony wouldn't be much different than what was shown here. After all, famous in Japan

²"Japan-famous."

² is Christel Takigawa's "Omotenashi" speech, used as the centerpiece of Tokyo's Olympic bid package, which, itself, has become more famous here because it is a pandering, pan-Asian mish-mash of koans (公安) and hand-gestures

³Spoiler alert: nobody bows like that here. And Christel does it twice in her 2 minute speech.

³ that spoke more to the orientalist constructs the IOC expected to see. In many ways, the entire Tokyo Olympic bid was a formal presentation of the post-apocalyptic, simulacrum-Tokyo that Tokyo (and its people) doesn't just aspire to be but actually believes itself to be. These images become powerful unifying forces that help give Tokyo (and all of Japan) a sense of grandeur, of purpose. But also smashes everybody into a seemingly faceless one-ness and interchangeability.

In many ways, it is easy to see how japan benefits domestically by perpetuating these stereotypes. But more importantly, as Japan has historically been afforded the unique position to control the terms of substantial portions of its own international image through exclusion and mystery, by investing and targeting specific stereotypes to emphasize, Japan has colored in its own paint-by-numbers narrative to positively contrast with the countries in its area.

Though the Japanese drink as much if not more than their closest neighbors, it's the Koreans who are seen as wild partiers. Though Japan heavily squanders energy on inefficiently recycling waste plastics for packaging and wrapping, they are thought of as clean and environmentally friendly in contrast to the Chinese. And while the mob-run gambling and sex-trade flourish throughout Japan, it's Tokyo, not Bangkok or Manila, that's "safe" and "free from corruption."

By holding tightly onto monolithic, hegemonic institutions, Japan has established itself as a stable cultural state, the icon of thousands of years of history and tradition, despite actually being much younger than its Chinese, Korean and even Southeast Asian neighbors. This despite the fact that many of the images we have of Japan weren't established until the Meiji Restoration in 1868.

On the one hand, it seems perfectly reasonable for people, like Perry, to reiterate the narrative pieces she hears, especially when they appear to come from credible sources

⁴i.e. the Japanese themselves.

⁴. And, when lacking in exposure, ignorance is understandable. But at what point do we start holding people accountable for their ignorance?

The other day, a friend and I met an international student over coffee. Over the course of normal conversation we came to find out he was from Senegal. In a later debriefing about our interaction, it came to light that my friend had plenty of questions he wanted to ask the international student about his home life and his family, but my friend was unsure about whether the questions he wanted to ask were insensitive or ignorant because of our general American unfamiliarity with all-things-Africa.

I affirmed that this was probably the best course of action in this situation. But that, were we to meet our new friend a second time, such persistent ignorance could be seen as nothing short of willful and offensive in its indifference.

Everybody deserves at least that much, right?

Land of Opportunity

I always intend to go to bed as early as possible. Sleeping may just be one of my favorite things in the world, followed closely only by things like "eating" and "pooping."

But the best-laid schemes o' mice an' men, as they say, gang aft agley. And with the likes of Maru, Stack-cat and Nya-Suke on YouTube, I really have no chance of getting to bed before midnight.

Things never go quite as planned. This is especially true when you’re relying on other people’s motivation for success.

A few weeks ago, 2A-Oral Communication left for their Language Training excursion in Torrance, CA. And every week leading up to that since mid-spring, Kashew and I were tasked to provide the students with conversational and cultural instruction that would be beneficial to their experience in America. And though, early on, because the trip seemed so far off in the future, they would struggle to pay any attention to what we had to say, by the time it dawned on them that they would actually be flying to America, they felt under-prepared and overwhelmed by the burden of international travel and cross-cultural interaction.

Over and over again, the students would tell us that they were embarrassed that they could not speak English like a native speaker, that they were afraid that the Americans would think that they were dumb and ignorant about many facets of American culture.

We would listen patiently, nodding in understanding, having shared acutely our own daily experience with the very stress they dread, from shopping at the convenience store, to ordering dinner, to getting haircuts, or trying to schedule weekend activities. No matter how much Japanese we learn, no matter how Japanese we may feel, there are always aspects of Japanese culture that we are not yet privy to, in a way that makes cross-cultural understanding seem more like sifting through quicksand than checking off lessons listed in a textbook.

But, on the other hand, I want to yell at them. What they were dreading was the prospect of being uncomfortable, the mere "likelihood" of misunderstanding. Firmly rooted in their fear of unknowing, I want to shake them out of their risk-adverse hesitancy because, guess what: Surprise!, they aren't native English speakers and, double surprise!, they don’t know anything about American culture. And double-plus surprise!, their host families already know that.

But, as such, we tell them that this is their golden opportunity to 遠慮しない, to act without reservation. That while international travel is scary and cross-cultural exchange is intimidating, a study-abroad trip is the time to explore those scary and intimidating things with as little risk as possible because everyone there knows you came to learn. So there is no shame in ignorance. There is no shame in not knowing. Because you came to learn.

So if they have a question, they should feel free to ask it. If they have a curiosity, they should feel free to explore it. Ask freely, explore freely: the host families sighed up because they want to share their culture as much as they want to learn about Japan.

So that should be our target framework.


One thing that I wanted Kashew to be conscious of as we designed our 2A prep classes is that our goal should be to remove the barriers that the 2A students may face when going to America. We want to facilitate the cultural exchange experience. So whether that be by lowering stress levels by teaching students how not to get lost or "randomly selected" for inspection by TSA at the airport, or teaching them about refrigerator rights or how Americans join the toilet room and the shower room in one, all-encompassing mega-room called the "bathroom," our target is to prepare them for their stay with their host families, because it is their experience with their host families that will teach them more about culture and the value of exchange than we ever could.

We want to facilitate the cultural exchange experience, not replicate it or replace it.

Rather, I believe that if we teach them everything there is about American schools and American eating habits before they leave for America, we're taking valuable exchange experiences away from our students and their host families.

I don't care so much to give them the answers to all of the questions about America before they get there. What I want to teach them before they go is how to ask those questions of their host families and then have to be asked those same questions of themselves.

So we teach them how to talk about their opinions and express their desires. We have them practice how to ask and then listen to the answers. We show them some of the things they will see and do in the hopes that they will start thinking about what they will experience and what they can talk about. All in an attempt to reframe their approach to the exchange program from "risk" to "opportunity."

But no matter how many times we yell at them not to be afraid to take the chance and use their English, that is a decision that they have to make. One we hope they decide to make before they go to America, and not on their way back.

Advice to 2A (SJ: 10/29)

三年生 - A(1)

Hello 2A,

I heard you are going to Torrance soon. I am [Takuya] in 3A. I want to share some advice.

At first, be careful with your baggage and valuables in travel because I lost my hotel key at Griffith. So you should always care for your baggage and valuables.

Second, [Akira], you are a playboy so you shouldn't pick up a girl. You must defend this rule. If you break this rule you can't come back to Japan.

Finally, when you go to Torrance, you should talk with many people. And then you can make many friends and have the best time. God bless you!

I hope my advice can help you. Please enjoy your travel.