This is my presentation about the Dutch colonizing Indonesia.

For the start of humanities we had to design our own coat of arms. A coat of arms is a shield that represent something. For example, long time ago when knights were in war they would have pictures on their shield. That picture is the picture that represent the team they’re fighting for. In old japanese time they only had a small picture on a flag that’s attached to their back. So we had to make a small shield that represents our personalities. To do that we had to draw somethings that represents our hobby, family, important place, personal strength, goals/future plans and other things like favorite color.

That book on the top left represents one of my hobby which is reading. I like reading different kinds of books so I consider that is one of my hobby. The top right music which also represents my hobby and my personal strength: piano. I like to play instruments so I consider the instruments that I can play as a personal strength. Listening to music and making music is also my hobby. The one on the bottom left is a taiwanese flag which represents my family and one important place of mine. It represents my family  because my mom comes from Taiwan. It’s one of my favorite/important places because I used to live there when I was in pre school so I have some good memories there. The bottom right represents my hobby and my goal.It’s a piece of paper and pen meaning writing. I like writing stories so it sort of counts as my hobby and it’s also a goal because I want to get better at writing stories. The scroll on the bottom also represents my hobby because it’s in greek and I like greek mythology. It says my name in Greek so I put it on the bottom just to mark that it represents me.

What I thought was hard was finding all the different things that can describe me and putting them all in just one single place while still trying to make it small enough to have other small drawing next to them. I think that the music note was a good to be put in so I think that went well during the process. I’m proud of the scroll on the bottom because it represents me very well. What I think I could have done better was to put some more things that describe me on the sides instead of just leaving the sides blank.

We went to the Tokyo National Museum for a field trip. First we took a train to the zoo that was next to the museum. After we finished our lunches at the zoo we walked to the to the Tokyo National Museum. We split into groups and went into the main museum and looked around together. We had to choose three things that were in the museum that we thought was interesting.

One of the things that I researched was a small halloween decoration. It is made out of amber. The little sign there said that it was made by Toun Shishido. It was shaped like a pumpkin and has a face at the front. It was made in 2000 in Japan. I don’t know why or how because it didn’t say the reasons or how they made it. Why I chose this object to study was maybe because I thought it was unique. I thought it was unique because it was just like a jackal lantern but it’s much smaller than that it’s a little decoration. I think this object has some connections to humanities class because we are studying the silk road. It is related to the silk road because amber (which is what the decoration is made of) is from europe but the decoration was made in Japan. So that means that it travelled all the way from Europe to Japan.

The second things I researched about was the  Backgammon Board. It is a old game board that they used to play in the past. It was made out of wood. I didn’t find out who made it but I found out that it was made during Azuchi Momoyama period. It was also made in Japan. I think that it was made so that people could play with it when they were bored. I think that it is related to the silk road because some people say that it’s dated back to 5,000 to an ancient civilization Egypt, Mesopotamia. Even though it is very old people still play the game when they have time. I chose this object because I thought it was interesting that even though the game is very old they still play it now.

I think it was a fun field trip

These few weeks in humanities we have been working on writing about a long lost civilization. However we had to make up the lost civilization and pretend that we were writing for National Geographic. In the article we had to have seven different categories: Division of Labor, Social Class Structure, Arts and Architecture, Writing and language, Government and Laws, Beliefs (Complex Religion) and Economy and Trade.

The thing that that for me I did good was, the translation of their language. I am proud of that because I did it on Doozla. It took sometime but I think it turned out great. I used different colors because I thought it would be easier to see the difference. For example for the original I used blue and the made up language was in bright red. What I liked about this project was that it was very fun to make up a civilization and make all the rules. I thought it was fun because I could make up everything about the civilization.

What I think I should improve on next time is when I did the Art and Architecture. I think I need to improve that because it was not very descriptive. I also I have to put more effort into my work next time because when I did it I forgot to put somethings into the article. I am kind of disappointed at the part where I had to show their language because it did not turn out the way I imagined. Something were different from my imagination for example I expected the map on the front to be more clear and wasn’t that small.

If I had a choice I would love to live in my civilization. Even though they sometimes sacrifice lives I think it is still a good civilization. I would  like to live there are learn to hunt fro food and sell them to people who need them. If I was the queen of Augria (My civilization) I would like to be in charge and to help other people when they need them. If I was a priestess I would respect the religion of Augria and I would organize all the offering and/or sacrifices for the gods and goddesses. If I lived there I would also want to go and visit Greece since it used to be right next to Augria. I would also like to learn how to speak Greek and Augrian. There are lots of things I could do in Augria so in conclusion I would love to live in Augria.