Quiz

What English word does each of the following sentences explain?

Q1, Obtaining something by paying money for it. (VERB)

Q2, The salty water that covers about three-quarters of the earth’s surface. (NOUN)

Q3, Putting something into your mouth, chewing it, and swallowing it. (VERB)

Q4, A round fruit with smooth green, yellow, or red skin and firm white flesh. (NOUN)

Q5, A large ball of burning gas in space. They appear to us as small points pf light in the sky on clear nights. (NOUN)

Q6, A wild animal that looks like a dog and has reddish-brown fur, a pointed face and ears, and a thick tail. They eat smaller animals. (NOUN)

Q7. The natural state of rest in which your eyes are closed, your body is inactive, and your mind does not think. (VERB)

Q8, Doing something that you were not doing before and you continue doing it. (VERB)

Q9, The part of something that is furthest from its edges, ends, or outside surface. (NOUN)

Q10, Finding a solution or an answer to a problem or a question. (VERB)

(From COBUILD English Dictionary.)
11*-* shallowfield

Quiz3

Do you know logical quizzes? A “Logical Quiz” means that the quiz needs to be solved logically. Here is an example.
The Jet Crash
Fifty persons died in a jet crash between Japan and New York. Which place is better to perform the survivors’ funeral?
What do you think about it? Didn’t you really think about whether you would have to perform the survivors’ funeral in Japan or New York? The answer is that we don’t have to perform the survivors’ funeral because the survivors are still
alive! Not dead! This is the key word of the story.
Another question follows.

The Card Game
There are 52 cards in trump. By the way, how many cards don’t change when you reverse them?
I’ll write the answer in next SHABUKUST.
116-2 Nabeta Saki

What It Is To Be a Foreigner

If you happen to see the random person speaking another language fluently or with a different shade of skin, you’ll probably be thinking “Oh, a foreigner!” But as you use this word, have you ever thought about what exactly a ‘foreigner’ is? Or rather, have you ever thought if you yourself are foreign to Japan, or if the person sitting next to you is a foreigner to Japan?
When considering the definition of a ‘foreigner’, there are a several aspects you can look at this from. These aspects all have some association with at least one: aesthetics, laws, or culture. The most common way to recognize one to be ‘foreign’ at first sight is obviously the person’s ethnicity. If the person has fairer skin or darker skin, lighter hair or curly hair, lighter eyes or thicker lips, you generally assume he or she isn’t the same as you and your usual environment. But then again, a Korean or Chinese that has never cared so much about Japan could look as Japanese as one could possibly appear.
Another way to recognize is by one’s legal nationality. You could just pull the border line according to the internationally accepted law that governs our society all together. In this way, all you need to do to know if someone is foreign or not is to take a look at their passport. But in this way, even those who have never known what Japan is like maybe counted Japanese. Since Japanese
tend to wed within us, this maybe hard to understand, but China for example, has many so-called citizens that have never been to China, can’t speak Chinese, and might even be thinking there are panda’s all over China.
The last of the three groups is they’re culture. In this categorization, people who think panda’s live anywhere and everywhere in China aren’t Chinese. A darker skinned person descended from South Africa who has lived in Japan since they can remember is Japanese. A person who has a completely mixed lifestyle is a cross between whatever he or she mixed into their lives.
The one problem left is that these three aren’t consistent with each other. You can’t apply all three on one person – but that doesn’t mean they’re astray of their heritage. The big “categorizing” of whether or not one is ‘foreign’ –thus not one of the same categorization- or not can’t really do much. What really do matter are that person’s feelings, whether he or she has pride and a sense of belonging to that country. After all, what is the meaning of being a certified-non foreigner when your whole heart is calling for your motherly country? As the world loses borderlines day by day, it is crucial that we can tolerate other people’s home to there souls, and find our own pride.

117-2 Shifumi Nagase

The best season for...

The leaves have been turning red. Autumn has come. I think that autumn is the best season for doing something. It is said that autumn is the season for reading books, playing sports, eating and so on.
I think that autumn is the best season for playing sports because the temperature is neither too hot nor too cold. Recently, I have been practicing tennis hard. The other day I had a practice game. In the game I realized that tennis wasn’t as easy as I think. I wasn’t strict with myself. Since then I have changed my attitude toward tennis and club activities. I want to be stronger and stronger. I also like volleyball. World volleyball games are being held now. I watch them on TV. I never see them on TV without feeling as if I want to play volleyball. If I have free time, I’d like to play it.
My friend told me that autumn is the best season for eating because there are a lot of foods in autumn. For example matsutake mushrooms, chestnuts, sweet potatoes and so on.
Another friend told me that autumn is the best season for reading books. The reason is the same with playing sports, it is neither too hot nor too cold. I remember that I wrote an article “the best season for reading” at this time last year.
I thought that I have to eat for playing sports. So for me, autumn is the season for eating and playing sports. I wish I could put a great deal of effort into studying too.:-P
What would you like to do in autumn? Please find something and I hope that you live a full life.
116-2 Yuki Fujita

Cornwall Holidays

Last May, just before I came back to Japan, my best friend, Looby, invited me to go on holiday with her family to Cornwall, which is in the southwest area of England. It is popular to spend holiday time there…the reason is that it is warmer than other areas of England!
It took us eight hours to get to Cornwall from Bromsgrove near Birmingham, where I stayed. But my friends and I were talking most of the way to get there while we were awake. In fact, we talked too much! It was midnight so we had got tired soon, and we tried not to sleep by counting cars on the same motorway. Finally, at two o clock in the morning we got there… we were so excited but we went straight to bed!!! The long journey had made us so tired.
The next day I could not believe the beautiful view from the huge window that the house had. We were staying at Looby's grandma's house. I enjoyed myself watching seagulls flying around just by the window in the beautiful sky. “ Cornish Pastie” is a traditional food in Cornwall. It is said that people who worked to dig tunnels ate them for energy. They could take and eat them very easily because of the shape. Cornish pasties are still popular nowadays. It was the lunch for us and we went out to the seaside after lunch. The sea was absolutely fantastic!!! I could not believe it was in England because I had been in the middle land for ages. I had assumed the English sea was not very clean but it was! My eyes can prove it to myself!! My favorite was St.Ives. The sea was very cold so we could not go in, however, we did wade in with only our feet. There is a small mountain in the sea and on the top of the mountain there is a castle! I did not get there but the view of the way to the mountain, which was hidden by sea water, was brilliant for me. This view stayed in my eye deeply.
I loved Cornwall very much. If given the chance, I would love to visit there again! If you fancy going on a holiday why don’t you choose to go there?
116-6 Yuma Mikumo

What Happened to Pluto?

Everyone should know that Pluto is no longer a planet of the Solar System. But maybe, some people have a question, ”Why was Pluto excluded from the Solar System?” This time, I would like to answer this question.
Pluto was discovered in1930 by C.W.Tombaugh, an American astronomer. But at first, we wrongly guessed the size of Pluto. There are two reasons.
First, Pluto is very far from the earth. It revolves 5.9 billion km away from the Sun. It’s about 40 times as far as the distance from the Earth to the Sun. Because of that, astronomers could hardly get any data.
Second, Pluto reflects light better than other planets of the Solar System. One of the reasons is that Pluto is covered with ice of methane. Moreover, Pluto has a satellite Charon, which was discovered in 1978. Charon is half as big as Pluto. So Charon makes Pluto much brighter.
The real size of the Pluto is much smaller than astronomers had supposed. The size is half of Mercury, which is the smallest of all planets of the Solar System! Besides, the orbit of Pluto is abnormal. The planets of the Solar System, except Pluto, have almost a circular orbit. Only Pluto has an elliptic and inclined orbit. Though astronomers knew these things through much observation, Pluto was not excluded from the planets of the Solar System because of the history with which we were familiar Pluto was thought to be one of the planets.
But since 1992, many planets have been discovered near the orbit of Pluto, and size differences between Pluto and asteroids became less and less.
In 2003, a planet named 2003UB 313 was discovered. It’s bigger and farther
from the Sun than Pluto. NASA announced that the planet was the 10th planet of the Solar System.
Through this situation, astronomers came to define what a planet is. So IAU (the International Astronomical Union) organized a committee. At first, they made a plan that defined that a planet is what can be nearly round for itself. But some astronomers disagreed because not only Pluto but also many other planets such as 2003UB 313 would become
planets. According to modern theory, planets were made by collision. A long time ago, little planets that were made from rock and ice were in collision with each other, and became much bigger than the others around it. Heavenly bodies like Pluto can hardly be defined as planets, as they’re not much bigger than the others around them.
At last, on August 24,2006, the IAU gave the definitions of “planets” and “Pluto” that are given below.

The IAU therefore resolves that planets and other bodies, except satellites, in our Solar System be defined into three distinct categories in the following way:
(1)A planet(*1) is a celestial body that
(a)is in orbit around the Sun,
(b)has sufficient mass for its self-gravity to overcome rigid body forces so that it assumes a hydrostatic equilibrium(nearly round)shape, and
(c)has cleared the neighbourhood around its orbit.
(2)A “dwarf planet” is a celestial body that
(a)is in orbit around the Sun,
(b)has sufficient mass for its self-gravity to overcome rigid body forces so that it assumes a hydrostatic equilibrium(nearly round)shape(*2),
(c)has not cleared the neighbourhood around its orbit, and
(d)is not a satellite.

(3)All other objects(*3),except satellites, orbiting the Sun shall be referred to collectively as “Small Solar System Bodies”.
*1 The eight planets are: Mercury, Venus, Earth, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, and Neptune.
*2 An IAU process will be established to assign borderline objects into either dwarf planet or other categories.
*3 These currently include most of the Solar System asteroids, most Trans-Neptunian Objects(TNOs),comets, and other small bodies.

The IAU further resolves:
Pluto is a “dwarf planet” by the above definition and is recognized as the prototype of a new category of Trans-Neptunian Objects(*4).
*4 An IAU process will be established to select a name for this category.
(From IAU website)

These definitions make Pluto one of the “dwarf planets”, not planets. This news made some people sad, but we don’t have to feel because this happening means that astronomy has progressed.
117-5 Schun Nagatomo