Tai Tanaka
GSE
News Talk
11/29/05

Schools for foreigners in Japan


According to the author Gaouette et al. in “ In Japan, schools struggle to serve foreign students”, it is said in Japan that the nail that sticks up gets hammered down. This means those who are different from the majority are treated as strange persons. When foreign students come to Japan, they have a difficult time. They are different from Japanese students and some of them can’t speak Japanese. There is no system like “English as a second language (ESL)” in Japan. Though Japan opened their gate for foreigners in 1990, Japan doesn’t have ESL programs. Instead of ESL programs, more than 60 % of elementary schools and almost 50 % of junior high schools have a staff who can teach Japanese to foreign students. Each school has their own system to help them. Yotsuya No.1 Middle School has ministry-sponsored language education and counselors. It’s hard to accept foreign students but it brings benefits for the schools, said the president of the school, Ohashi. They can learn different cultures, values, and ways of thinking. Students can get used to the schools life though they may have a difficult time at first.

In Alex’s case.
He was born in Japan as a child of British and Australian parents. He used to speak Japanese outside the home and speak English at home. Even though he can speak English, he was bullied because his appearance is definitely different from Japanese. After he entered a college in Australia, he found another difficulty. He didn’t know many vocabularies. But he felt there was nothing that he could not catch up with. Now that he has overcome both difficulties and he can understand both aspects of Japanese culture and outside of Japan, he has a confidence that he won’t lose his career.

We Japanese have a homogeneous society and tend to avoid being different from others. I think it is difficult for foreigners to live in Japan. We don’t have a program like “ESL” so children have to go to the same school as Japanese students go. It’s easy to imagine that some of them are bullied. But after they get used to Japanese life, their abilities can become assets. They can know two cultures and speak two languages. In addition, they can help Japanese understand different cultures. It’s important to understand the other cultures because we are all involved in globalization. So we should accept more people from different countries and should learn the other cultures.

Tai Tanaka
GSE
11/01/05

My hero


My hero is Hideki Matsui, who is Japanese MLB player in New York Yankees. The reasons why he is my hero are that he is very modest, kind, and his way of speaking is polite. He never speaks ill of others. Whenever reporters ask him, he is willing to answer them even if his feeling and records are not good. He is very professional. I really like his character.


Title of the article i read : The anti-Ichiro. Why Hideki Matsui will make a perfect Yankee.

This article is about a comparison between Matsui and Ichiro, and Matsui's baseball life before he came to America.
Matsui is tall, muscular and not genious but hard working while Ichiro is small, thin, and called a genious.
Matsui always thinks about his fans and team, so when he decided to go to the MLB, he thought he might betray his fans and team. On the other hand, Ichiro pursue only what he wants to do. He always goes his way.

Problem of World Bank

EAP2
10/04/05
Tai Tanaka
Research paper


Abstract

The World Bank had corruption. They underestimated their interest and they kept the money. In addition to that, they loaned a lot of money to developing countries without good projects. In this research paper, I suggest three things that should be done to protect the World Bank from corruption and help them contribute to eliminating poverty. First, the World Bank should retrieve their reputation. Second, they should make new laws to eradicate corruption and to relieve employees from the pressure that they have to loan a lot of money. Last, the World Bank should change their strategies that help developing countries eliminate poverty.


According to web page, The World Bank, the World Bank was established on July 1st, 1944, during a conference of 44 countries in Bretton Woods, New Hampshire, during World War II. They initially helped rebuild Europe after the war. Its first loan of $250 million was to France in 1947 for post-war reconstruction. The World Bank supports developing countries in the world in terms of a vital source of finance and techniques. They are not a real bank in the common sense. They consist of two unique development institutions which are owned by 184 member countries - the International Bank for Reconstruction and Development (IBRD) and the international Development Association (IDA). Each institution plays a different but supportive role to reduce poverty which is their mission and the improvement of living standards. The IBRD focuses on middle income and creditworthy poor countries, while IDA focuses on the poorest countries in the world. “Together they provide low-interest loans, interest-free credit and grants to developing countries for education, health, infrastructure, communications and other many other purposes”(The World Bank, about us). They manage the World Bank with money collected by each nation as tax.

According to Emad Mekay (2005), The World Bank, which lent 20 billion dollars for many products last year, was exposed in that they underestimated the total expense. They controlled the accounting system and offset the gap by using special adjustment. As a result of that, they got much money, tens of million dollars, which is paid by each nation as tax. In addition, they retaliated against whistleblowers by cooperating with the Department of Institutional Integrity (INT). One employee was mistreated without an appropriate reason. In order to eliminate World Bank corruption, a senator suggested a new law (Lugar, 2005). The new law is as follows: People who have authority should show their finances to us; employees don’t have to care about the total money that they loan. They focus on the events’ quality and effects; and the law has strict punishments for offenders. Though the World Bank has been corrupt, they have a lot of special knowledge about poverty. So they are still needed to eradicate poverty.

I think three things should be done to eliminate the World Bank problems and to make it work well.

First, they should reflect on and regret what they did in order to recover their reputation. I think if the World Bank doesn’t recognize their faults and keeps their attitude strong, people will be angrier against them. The most important thing to manage a corporation is trust. Corporations can’t do anything without trust. If they lose their trust completely, who will pay money for them? The World Bank is the same as a corporation. I asked my classmates whether they want to pay money for the World Bank. Most of them don’t want to pay money for it because the World Bank had corruption and we can’t see the improvement in the developing countries. My opinion is the same as that of my classmates. If one of your friends tells some lies, do you believe him next time? You probably have suspicious about what he says. But from that time, if he never tells a lie for a long time, you will forget that he was a liar. So what the World Bank can do to retrieve trust is just work honestly and to show us the improvement in the developing countries. It takes a long time to retrieve trust.

Actually I don’t know how the World Bank helps developing countries improve their economy and industry because these kinds of programs are not often broadcast on television. And I think many people don’t know what they are doing, either. That is one of the reasons why the World Bank offered poor plans and had corruption. They didn’t have to care about the consequence of the plan, because few people criticized them, even if the plan had failed. It was the same with corruption. Not so many people checked their account system. In terms of showing us what the World Bank is doing for the developing countries, the plans that they offer developing countries entail responsibility. They will feel that they can’t fail on the plan, so they will spend much time to make a good plan. As a result, they will be able to retrieve their reputation without notice.

Showing us the progress of developing countries’ situation and working honestly are the best ways to retrieve their reputation.

Second, the World Bank should eliminate corruption. “Corruption is one of the challenges. Eliminating corruption is a major challenge” (Hindustan Times, 2005, par. 1). Corruption is now a serious problem. Hindustan Times (2005, par. 1) also said, “this problem is for all the developing countries.” I think this means that no matter when and no matter where the World Bank loans money, some of money is spent for corruption. Developing countries can’t improve with corruption. The project must not go well with corruption. Dan Johnson (2002, par. 2) said, “Corrupt behavior reduces economic growth and can destabilize governments. It results in over-invoicing and substandard work by contractors and reduces tax revenues.”

A new law is needed to eliminate corruption. Richard G. Lugar (2005), who is a senator, proposed ideas of a new law. The new law covers strict punishments and makes executives have to show taxpayers their finances. I think these ideas work to eliminate corruption. When strict punishments are enacted, people will hesitate to do something which is against the law, so they can overcome their greed. In addition, because people who have authority have to show their finances to the taxpayers, they don’t have a chance to have corruption. Mainly, corruption is caused by executives. To prevent executives from having corruption will lead to a world without corruption.

Certainly those ideas I mentioned above will work well against corruption. But in the next decade or so, I wonder if the same problem may be going to happen because somebody may be going to find the way to have corruption. Every law has a bypass. If people find a way to get money illegally, can they keep their mind? Someone may yes, but someone may not. Some people can’t control themselves in front of big amounts of money. People are not perfect. Such are people. Even strict punishments will not work. So I suggest that the law should be changed slightly along with social flow and the World Bank system. To keep the same law is not good idea. Some day the same law will not work in the future.

Finally, the World Bank should contribute to eliminating poverty because it was built for it. They have a lot of expertise in poverty. They have to use it for poor people. Expertise is not for corruption. They can manage much money that is paid as tax. They betrayed the taxpayer as well as developing countries. People pay money for the World Bank because they hope poverty will be eradicated. So I think the World Bank has an obligation to eradicate poverty. What they can do now is to make a good project that leads developing countries to a bright future. They have to think of the countries’ benefit rather than the World Bank’s.

In the past, employees loaned a lot of money to developing countries without a good project. They had to loan money to promote their position or to keep their position. They had to achieve the workload that was imposed by superiors. That was why a lot of projects that the World Bank offered to developing countries failed. It was more important for employees to get good evaluation from their superior than to improve developing countries’ condition. Their job was not to succeed the project but to loan money.

New concepts that employee can make good projects for developing countries are needed. The new law that Richard G. Lugar (2005) proposed covers this need as well as eliminating corruption. The new law relieved the employees from loaning money without a good plan. In other words, they don’t have to feel pressure to loan money, they don’t have a strict workload, and they don’t have to worry about demotion which is only evaluated by amount of money they loaned. Due to the new law, they can spend a lot of time to make a good plan. They can afford to think about only developing countries. By using the new law, the number of failed plans will be reduced, and the economies economy in developing countries will progress.

Then, what kind of projects will help those countries? The Pakistan Newswire (2005, par. 1) said, “Balance between economic growth and social programs are key to successful poverty reduction.” This means that when the economy is not high enough, it has no meaning to adopt high technology from foreign countries because they neither need nor use such a high skill in daily life. They need just skills which match their life. So the World Bank should make a project which matches each developing country. Certainly, this is a good way to reduce poverty, but not enough. I have heard about the strategy of the International Monetary Fund (IMF). They lent a lot of money to developing countries with short-term contract and high interest rate. But it takes a long time to get profit from the new project. So many developing countries could not pay back money and have suffered from the debt and high interest rate. So in addition to the balance between economic growth and social programs, long-term contract and low interest rate are needed.

I think the World Bank will change their system and work well for developing countries. Personally, I want to see the progress of the developing countries through the World Bank contribution after I had researched about it. I also pay a little money for it as tax. When poverty is reduced, I will be happy. But I still have a little suspicion whether the World Bank will not have corruption. If the same mistake occurs, it will be time to collapse the World Bank.


Bibliography

Hindustan Times (2005, Aug. 18). Corruption is biggest challenge before Pak, says World Bank chief. USA Today. Retrieved from Lexis-Nexis, Sep. 27, 2005.

Johnson, D. (2002, Mar./Apr.). Progress Against Corruption. In Maidment F. (Ed.), International Business (pp. 101,102). Dubuque, IA: McGraw-Hill/Dushkin.

Lugar, R. G. (2005, July 1). Loan corruption control. USA Today. Retrieved from Lexis-Nexis, Sep. 6, 2005. p. A19.

Mekay, E. (2005, Mar. 14). Congress to probe World Bank accounting ‘problems’. USA Today. Retrieved from Lexis-Nexis, Aug. 30, 2005.

The Pakistan Newswire (2005, May 25). Balance of economic growth, social programs key to successful poverty reduction. USA Today. Retrieved from Lexis-Nexis, Sep. 27, 2005.

The World Bank. Retrieved from http://www.worldbank.org/ Oct. 4, 2005.

Tai Tanaka
EAP2
10/05/05
Practice Final

Copy Right

Where does globalization lead the music industry? The form of selling music is now changing, from compact disc to downloading. Nowadays many people try to download music throughout internet for free. And these people don’t buy CDs that they have already downloaded. Silverstone (2005) said that this fact does not affect music sales scene so much because they are “money-poor but time-rich”. His opinion is that they are poor so even if they don’t download music, they don’t buy a CD. He also said that some people buy CDs after listening to a sample which is downloaded. So Silverstone thinks internet music even boosts sales. I disagree with his opinion. In Japan, total CD sales have been decreasing for the last few years. In the past, constantly 5 or 6 single CDs were being sold at more than 1 million every year. But recently, no single CD exceeds over 1 million. This is due to the download. Many people stopped buying CDs and started downloading. People hesitate to buy CDs because they can listen to music with computer. And they even don’t have to go outside to buy it. Dolfsma (2000, par. 1) said, “Such developments pose a threat to existing intermediaries in this industry such as music publishers, record companies, and retail outlets.” This is true. If many people download music or buy via internet, some publishers and retail outlets will be bankrupt. Porter (2005, par. 2) said, “The downsides of globalization are very similar to the downsides of capitalism.” So this internet business can lead the world economy to serious problem such as fraud and corruption. Then, certain regulations which nobody can ignore are needed to make sure of the copy right and to protect music companies. For example, a company which allows music to be downloaded for free is fined. And the download price should be increased. If the price between download and CD is not so different, CD sales will improve because CD has a jacket. Many people are attracted by the CD jacket.

It is inevitable to be an internet society and to download music. The key is to make appropriate rules which make this society better.

Reference:

Dolfsma W. (2005 May). How will the music industry weather the globalization storm? Retrieved from http://www.firstmonday.dk/issues5_5/dolfsma/ Oct. 5, 2005. par. 1

Porter K. (2005). The Pro-and Anti-Globalization labels just don’t fit. Retrieved from Global Envision http://www.globallenvision.org/library/8/559/ Oct. 5, 2005. par. 3

Silverstone S. (2004 June 21). Music Download: Pirate– or Customers? Retrieved from http://hbswk.hbs.edu/item.jhtml?id=4206&t=innoation Oct. 5, 2005. par. 1, 3

Tai Tanaka
EAP2
09/19/05
Argumentative essay

Problem of World Bank

I am researching problems of the World Bank because I don’t like injustice and dishonesty. According to Emad Mekay (2005), The World Bank, which lent 20 billion dollars for many products last year, was exposed in that they underestimated the total expense. They controlled the accounting system and offset the gap by using special adjustment. As a result of that, they got much money, tens of million dollars, which is paid by each nation as tax. In addition, they retaliated against whistleblowers by cooperating with the Department of Institutional Integrity (INT). One employee was mistreated without an appropriate reason. In order to eliminate World Bank corruption, Richard G. Lugar (2005), who is a senator, suggested a new law. The new law is as follows: People who have authority should show their finances to us; employees don’t have to care about the total money that they loan. They focus on the events’ quality and effects; and the law has strict punishments for offenders. Though the World Bank has been corrupt, they have a lot of special knowledge about poverty. So they are still needed to eradicate poverty.

I think three things should be done to eliminate the World Bank problems and to make it work well.

First, they should reflect on and regret what they did in order to recover their reputation. I think if the World Bank doesn’t recognize their faults and keeps their attitude strong, people will be angrier against them. The most important thing to manage a corporation is trust. Corporations can’t do anything without trust. If they lose their trust completely, who will pay money for them? The World Bank is the same as a corporation. I asked my classmates whether they want to pay money for the World Bank. Most of them don’t want to pay money for it because the World Bank had corruption and we can’t see the improvement in the developing countries. My opinion is the same as my classmates. So what they can do to retrieve trust is just work honestly and to show us the improvement in the developing countries. It takes a long time to retrieve trust.

Second, the World Bank should make a new law based on Richard G. Lugar’s (2005) idea. The new law covers eliminating corruption and reducing low quality projects. I think corruption will be eliminated by using the new law. When strict punishments are enacted, people who have authority have to show their finances to the taxpayer, so people can overcome their greed. In addition, employee don’t have to feel pressure to loan money, so that they could attain the goal that was imposed on them. Because of this pressure to loan money, many plans failed. By using the new law, the number of failed plans will be reduced.

Finally, the World Bank should contribute to eliminating poverty because it was built for it. They have a lot of expertise in poverty. They have to use it for poor people. Expertise is not for corruption. They can manage much money that is paid as tax. They betray taxpayer as well as developing countries. People pay money for the World Bank because they hope poverty will be eradicated. So I think the World Bank has an obligation to eradicate poverty. What they can do now is to make a good project that lead developing countries to a bright future. They have to think of the countries’ benefit rather than the World Bank’s.

I think the World Bank will change their system and work well for developing countries. If the same mistake occurs, it will be time to collapse the World Bank.

Reference:

Lugar, R. G. (2005, July 1). Loan corruption control. USA Today. Retrieved from Lexis-Nexis, Sep. 6, 2005. p. A19.

Mekay, E. (2005, Mar. 14). Congress to probe World Bank accounting ‘problems’. USA Today. Retrieved from Lexis-Nexis, Aug. 30, 2005.

Tai Tanaka
EAP2
09/13/05
Research Proposal

Problem of World Bank

I am researching problems of the World Bank because I don’t like injustice and dishonesty. According to Emad Mekay (2005), The World Bank, which lent 20 billion dollars for many products last year, was exposed in that they underestimated the total expense. They controlled the accounting system and offset the gap by using special adjustment. As a result of that, they got much money, tens of million dollars, which is paid by each nation as tax. In addition, they retaliated against whistleblowers by cooperating with the Department of Institutional Integrity (INT). One employee was mistreated without an appropriate reason. In order to eliminate World Bank corruption, Richard G. Luger (2005), who is a senator, suggested a new law. The new law is below: People who have authority should show their finances to us, employees don’t have to care about the total money that they loan. They focus on the events’ quality and effects, and the law has strict punishments for offenders. Though the World Bank has been corrupt, they have a lot of special knowledge about poverty. So they are still needed to eradicate poverty.

I plan to write three above things that the World Bank should do. At first, they should reflect on and regret what they did in order to recover their reputation. I think the most important thing to manage a corporation is trust. Corporations can’t do anything without trust. If they lose their trust completely, who will pay money for them? The World Bank is the same as a corporation. What they can do to retrieve trust is just work honestly. It takes a long time to retrieve trust. Second, the World Bank should make a new law based on Richard G. Lugar’s (2005) idea. I think corruption will be eliminated by using the new law. Because strict punishments are enacted and people who have authority have to show their finances to the taxpayer, people can overcome their greed. Employees don’t have to feel pressure to loan money so they can think carefully about events’ quality. The number of failed plans will be reduced. At last, the World Bank should contribute to eliminating poverty. They have a lot of expertise in poverty. They have to use it for poor people. Expertise is not for corruption. They can manage much money that is paid as tax. People pay money for the World Bank because they hope poverty will be eradicated. So I think the World Bank has an obligation to eradicate poverty.

I have read two articles about the problems of the World Bank. I think those solutions I mentioned above are useful. But I am still looking for an article that says other ways that the World Bank should be going to do.

Reference:

Lugar, R. G. (2005, July 1). Loan corruption control. USA Today. Retrieved from Lexis-Nexis, Sep. 6, 2005. p. A19.

Mekay E. (2005, Mar. 14). Congress to probe World Bank accounting ‘problems’. USA Today. Retrieved from Lexis-Nexis, Aug. 30, 2005.

Tai Tanaka
EAP2
09/07/05

To eliminate World Bank corruption

According to Richard G. Lugar in “Loan corruption control”, there should be a new law to eliminate the World Bank corruption. The new law suggested by author, who is senator, is below. People who have authority should show their finances to us. Employees don’t have to care about the total money that they loan. They focus on the events’ quality and effects. And the law has strict punishments for offenders. Since the World Bank has a lot of special knowledge about poverty, it is needed to help the poor countries. The author believes that this law will work well and the new leader of the World Bank will exclude the corruption from the World Bank.

The new rules will help the World Bank eliminate corruption and use money more efficiently in poor countries.

In the past, employees of the World Bank tried to loan money without being concerned well about the project so that they could promote their position. I think that in order to make a contract with a country, they gave some money to the people who have power in their country. Since they can get money, they make a contract with the World Bank without thinking so much about the project. As a result of that, the project would fail and big debt leaves the country. Because of the graft, these countries may be poorer than before. Of course it is difficult to reject the offer of graft because the people who are at the top of the country can get money only by accepting the project.

Corruption prevents countries from development. Graft makes people’s decision pointless. A company may choose certain contractors to get graft, not because of their quality. So they can’t see the plan equally. In addition, it costs more money to carry on the event because of graft. I think corruption leads the place where a few people get money and a lot of people lose money.

The author proposed a new law to control the corruption. For example, people who have authority should show their finances to us, the employees of the World Bank don’t have to loan if they don’t have a good plan, and the law punishes offenders strictly. These rules bring employees, poor countries, and the taxpayer relief. And the World Bank will be trusted. The World Bank is needed to eliminate poverty because they have special knowledge about poverty. If they use their money and knowledge appropriately, those are going to be helpful for poor countries.

I think the World Bank will not make the same mistake to recover the trust. If the same mistake occurs, nobody will trust them and it will be time to collapse.

Reference:
Lugar, R. G. (2005 July 1). Loan corruption control. USA Today. Retrieved from Lexis-Nexis, Sep. 6, 2005. pp. A19.

Tai Tanaka
EAP2
09/01/05

Problem of World Bank

According to Emad Mekay in “Congress to probe World Bank accounting ‘problems’”, a problem of the World Bank, which lent 20 billion dollars for many products last year, was exposed by their employees. They alleged that the World Bank underestimated the total expense. But the World Bank denied the allegation and said they use high technique to control accounting so they must not have made a mistake. After the exposure, one employee was mistreated without appropriate reason. The whistleblowers have figured out that the Department of Institutional Integrity (INT) cooperates with the World Bank in terms of retaliation. As far as an internal corruption system works, financial corruption and fraud will overgrow.

I think the World Bank is needed for helping poor countries but they did what they must not do. According to the article, the World Bank hasn’t accepted the facts yet, but definitely they lost trust after they were revealed. In my opinion, if the World Bank didn’t do such a fraud, this thing wouldn’t have become a big problem, so I will treat this problem as a fact.

The biggest problem is that the World Bank controlled the accounting system and offset the gap by using special adjustments. As a result of that, they got much money, tens of million dollars. They are supposed to use tax to help the poor people in the world. Tax is of course paid by each nation. They pay tax not to be used by private things. If almost all the people think that they don’t want to pay money for the World Bank, it will not work.

The World Bank hasn’t accepted the exposure yet. Furthermore, they retaliated against whistleblowers by cooperating with the INT. They should reflect and regret what they did in order to recover their reputation, or they are going to lose trust more. Trust is the most important thing to manage a company. Who helps the company that doesn’t have a good reputation? What they have to do now is not mistreat a person who researched the World Bank system. The Only place this treatment leads to is a bad situation.

I think poor countries need their help to live. If this problem isn’t solved, the World Bank will collapse. It means poor countries will lose one of their ways to get money. World Bank lent 20 billion dollars last year. Some people may think it is not such a big deal that they use a little money for their stuff. The human is greedy. Sometimes they can’t control their mind in front of a lot of money. But they have to keep in mind that money is for poor countries and is amassed by nations as a tax.

I hope the World Bank will work well without wasting money we pay as a tax and bring enough help to poor countries.

Reference: Mekay E. (2005 Mar. 14). Congress to probe World Bank accounting ‘problems’. USA Today. Retrieved from Lexis-Nexis, Aug. 30, 2005.