Pixar movies: Remember Me Today I was watching Remember Me of Pixar. Since I had been busy with my school assignments recently, I wanted to treat myself to have time to be relaxed. Every time I watch Pixar movies, I’m always amazed by the dedication of the creators. Each movie tells a specific message consistently, however, the story of a movie is well organized so that it won't lose the audience's concentration until the end. Thus, all generations can enjoy their movies. In the case of remember me, the message was "family." There are many scenes characters emphasized the importance of family during the movie. In addition, the setting of Pixar movies comes from a variety of different cultures and they use the local language in the characters' sayings. They give us a scope to see the world through movies. Not only entertain but also educate us to tolerate different cultures. Watching their movies, I can see such huge efforts and messages from creators and it always inspires me.

Cleaning challange The other day, I cleaned my room's wall which was hanged a bunch of postcards. I used to decorate the wall with postcards that I got from my trip and my friends abroad. Sometimes I indulged my old memories by looking at those postcards. However, I found out that these items occupied most of the place in my room so I decided to wipe up all postcards from the wall. Looking at a white wall hid by numerous postcards, my room looks completely different. Every morning I wake up, I don't feel like that I'm in my room. It feels nice and helps my concentration on work. I still have many things in my room so I have to deal with them too such as old CDs, books, electric items, and decoration papers.....! I feel cleaning let me face to one of my weakness points: indecisiveness(mottainai mind) Well, but I will take this as a good opportunity so try to clean the rest of parts until June. The final goal is to surprise my brother and boyfriend who told me that my room is messy!

What makes your presentation better? The other day, I was talking with my friend about what is a point to be considered for a good presentation. What I found interesting from my friend's idea is "you have to know the person who cannot understand your idea the most". She always tries to put herself in the shoes of those who cannot understand the presentation and she keeps asking questions to herself. I think this approach hits a critical point when it comes to delivering a good presentation. Because people sometimes believe in themselves that they understand own topic the most. This subjective confidence allows people to tend to explain too much or use specific terminology during the speech. Therefore, in order to avoid creating a gap in comprehension, we have to consider the viewpoints of the audience and modify the way you speak. For example, how you can explain your idea with easy vocabulary so that even elementary students can understand? I guess eventually this method, thinking of the person who can understand the worst, will help you to understand your idea more deeply.

What is your favorite mom's food? After coming back home a week ago from abroad and being in quarantine, it indulges me to be fed by my mom's food every day. Oh boy, there is nothing can beat mom's food. They are all delicious without exception. It is just so different food experience from going out to nice restaurants. The food of mom is touching on the bottom of your heart called "stomach" and it gives you a sense of home to be relaxed. Maybe, home food also brings some old memories and it makes you feel nostalgic. Overall, mom's food comes with plenty of emotions that you cannot buy. One of my favorite recipes from my mom's food is "Chikuzen-ni(筑前煮)." In Japanese food, we have a lot of Simmered Food. I guess "simmering" is a unique cooking style in Japanese food and my mom is good at it. Chikuzen-ni(筑前煮) is simmered vegetables and chicken with dashi. I can taste different texture and taste from the number of these ingredients. Since it is difficult to find most of the vegetables used for this dish oversea, I can only eat it in Japan but specifically at my home. Because only my mom knows the most about the balance of seasoning and how long to be simmered. Cooking is great knowledge and it takes a village to reach mom's level. I hope, in the future, that I will be able to give people have the same feeling and experience from my food. Finally, what is your favorite of your mom's food? (BTW, I have started watching Ugly Delicious, hehehe)

The Sensory Table Currently, I'm reading a book called The Sense: Design Beyond Vision. This is the collective book of the exhibition which was held in Cooper Howitt. In the section of this book, I found interesting statements. "Nothing revives the past as completely as a smell that was once associated with it." "Yet, smell is evasive. It lake a vocabulary. To describe a smell is to dance around it. We borrow words from other sensations like taste(sweet), tactility(sharp), or vision(bright)" This contradictive but co-existing idea is really thought-provoking. And it gets a point well. For example, when you imagine the smell of cake, you will probably say "something sweet." But the term "sweet" comes from the sensation of your mouth, not nose. Also, when you smell wasabi closely and the smell is coming inside of your nose, you will say "hurt!!" But again, "hurt" is the expression of touching. So, we do not have enough language to describe our smell. However, if you smell cake or wasabi, you can clearly capture the image of it. In this way, the smell is quite an informative sensation. Personally, it is even easier for me to remember people by their smell more than their names. Normally, when it comes to thinking of hierarchy in sensation, people are afraid of losing vision or listening. Yet, what if we cannot smell of our meals at all? Does it make less our satisfaction with meals? We might step in a toxic place without noticing? (Or does it help us remove anxiety to hug homeless people?) It might be an exciting experiment to explore our sensations to see how these functions enrich our lives.

Orthodox in Netflix I woke quite early today and was wondering what to do before breakfast. I just remembered the other day that one of my friends posted about a new Netflix original drama about Orthodox Jewish. As there was a big Orthodox Jewish community in Willingburg which was near to my neighborhood in Brooklyn, I had interested in that drama. And to my surprise, the place used for the drama was actually Willingburg! The story is spectacular and the actoress was amazing. It is great to learn about their culture because I did not know anything about them although I had seen those on the street many times. In the drama, I was shocked that the heroin, who is only 18 years old, had to get ready to have a baby with her partner even though they have not known each other. The family of the partner had been putting pressure on her to have a baby not caring about their married lives. It seemed like the goal of the marriage was to bear a baby, not emotional commitment. In Japan, most Japanese are non-religious and we have the freedom to have a relationship and choose a partner. Thus, the fate toward the heroin made me think about how women will be treated differently depending on their communities. Of course, we cannot measure any religion by right or wrong, it is just surprising how powerful religions are. Too interesting to keep some episodes for watching later. I already binge-watched 3 of 4 episodes. I'm looking forward to that they will release a new episode soon.

Quarantine life #1 These days, we are facing something unprecedented that compellingly influenced our lives. After coming back from NY on the 1st of April, I have been in quarantine at my home. And today I took myself outside after 4 days! I was so surprised how immediately my mood got positive once your skin got access to a dose of the sun’s rays!(although it was only 5mins..) Since I will continue self-quarantine for a further week, I start revising my daily routine. First, I decided to turn off my iPhone all-day to make the best use of my time because I noticed that I spent many hours on social media. Although I'm forcing myself to keep a distance from the device at the current state, I'm thinking to add some fun activities I can enjoy instead of my phone. (Any recommendation is welcome!) Second, I have got round to do mindfulness before and after sleep as I was struggling to keep my concentration. I started thinking of multiple things simultaneously and ended up everything in the middle. That is the reason why I started having mindfulness to train me to concentrate on one thing. The practice does not promise quick results so I'm still learning from it by trying to embrace some tiny changes on my body. Under the circumstance, it has given me a chance to communicate with my body differently from before. This is kind of interesting and helpful to reflect on myself and the daily habits I used to.

if you are ahead toward nature Please check my mistakes and give me more useful or interesting vocabulary!:)) 　I happened to see an old article talking about a Japanese climber, Nobukazu Kuriki while I was scrolling my timeline on Facebook today. He was one of the famous climbers (or he could be called "an artist who express himself through his mountain climbing.") He lost 9 fingers of his hands in his previous climbing and the article reported his death in Everest in this May. 　As his words that he was fascinated by its splendid beauty of mountains , I'm pretty sure there is something only in nature that artificial technique cannot take a place. But at the same time, I also feel scary sometimes when I am in nature such as an ocean and a mountain because there is no guarantee that you can be saved by someone, of course no insurance too. So this article hit me and I started wondering about the feeling through my memories. 　Probably, the time I realized the feeling is when I was swimming with my friend in a small lake in my 18. There was no one except us in the lake and at the first time when I went in water, there were some scary and emergent moments came up in my mind. Yet after going into water and then I saw a bunch schools of fish, my feeling turned into being amazed and excited. The excitement was not anything else that I'd ever experienced in my entire life and I found out the scary I held can be called as "awe." 　As long as I'm living in the Japanese society and surrounded by internet technology, I do not have often the same feeling of that time. I unconsciously believe in the comfort that I must be safe due to these security and technology that human beings created. But once I come in nature where I cannot use these artificial methods, I have to admit that what I can is so small unlike the vastness that nature brings us. Still, the way of mine to look at nature is only in the context as tourists not adventurers like Kuriki and other climbers yet the fact makes me be aware of their bravery toward nature.