Your completed journal will be reviewed with the following criteria in mind:   

• the intelligence with which the topics covered are addressed; 
• the thoroughness with which the assignments are completed; 
• the depth of insight expressed in your confrontation with the subjects considered;
• the thoughtfulness with which the assignments are approached. 

The result of this series of assignments is meant to be an informal JOURNAL, not a classroom exercise nor a series of answers to the specific questions posed.   

Don't merely "answer the questions" or "follow the directions" indicated; don't number your responses as if completing a "fill-in-the-blanks" exercise; don't try to complete any one series of assignments at one sitting -- instead DATE EACH JOURNAL ENTRY and proceed to tell me (at various intervals over the course of the coming semester) about what initially peaks your interest about contemporary Japanese civilization and culture; then consider how those interests change, grow and evolve as you think about them over time.

In essence the assignments posed below are meant to focus your attention on a particular stimulus, a topic for your consideration; in each instance, I am more interested in how that particular topic excites your interest in the broader subject matter, contemporary Japanese civilization and culture. The directions given and the questions asked, then, are merely meant to stimulate your thoughts about the topic or information source raised in the assignment.

Your may choose to ignore these questions or directions entirely (in many cases they are very repetitious anyway!), as long as you write about what the assignment asks you to consider.

This overall journal assignment grows out of a conviction that learning is an active (not a passive) process; that learning is remembering what interests you; and that learning is both goal oriented and concept centered.   

Therefore, to enable learning to occur, you, the student, must start with what you know, admit ignorance about what you don't know, identify interests growing out of that ignorance, then ask questions and seek to establish connections, building on current knowledge to achieve a new level of understanding.  

This series of assignments, then, is designed to give you the opportunity to describe your interests, to relate what you don't know to what you know already, to expand your interests, to refine and reinterpret them and ultimately to restate and formulate them into appropriate inquiry questions to guide your study of contemporary Japanese civilization and culture.

BE SURE TO ATTACH A PROPERLY PREPARED COVERSHEET TO YOUR JOURNAL BEFORE SUBMITTING EACH SERIES OF ENTRIES TO THE INSTRUCTOR FOR EVALUATION. The COVERSHEET must indicate a title for your paper (something more original than Essay Assignment or Book Review); do NOT enclose this title in quotation marks (centered oin the upper third of the coversheet). Also list on the coversheet (in the lower right hand corner) your name, the number and title of the course, the instructor's name and the submission date.

Approach the writing of your journal with these various criteria in mind and you should find the experience serves you well.

CLICK ON UNDERLINED TITLES BELOW FOR EACH SPECIFIC JOURNAL ASSIGNMENT

JOURNAL ASSIGNMENT ONE  
  
This preliminary assignment is to be completed in journal form and submitted for instructor evaluation on WEDNESDAY, SEPTEMBER 7, 2005.

JOURNAL ASSIGNMENT TWO  
  
This series of assignments is due for instructor consideration on MONDAY, SEPTEMBER 26, 2005.

JOURNAL ASSIGNMENT THREE   

This series of assignments is due for instructor consideration on WEDNESDAY, NOVEMBER 16, 2005. The assignments, however, should be completed as the course proceeds, not left until the last minute.

JOURNAL ASSIGNMENT FOUR  

This assignment is due for instructor consideration on WEDNESDAY, DECEMBER 14, 2005.