Feeling after reading south of the border, west of the sun As a chinese girl who grew up with japanese literature and cartoon, I had a strong feeling of fanililarity when I pick up a book names south of the border,west of the sun. This afternoon I went to the biggest book shop in chengdu, and I find out a chinese version of this novel. I read it the whole afternoon in the coffee shop I always stay at. I have to say, if it's not because it is chinese version so that I can read quickly, I can hardly finish reading it. The life that Hajime has is so different from mine, I have a vage image of what it's like, and it's to obscure for me to bring myself in. During the hero Hajime's life, he is always finding something, which confused me. The relationship between Hajime and Shimamoto is also hard to understand. This kind of book reminds me of other Japanese novels, They are all not like a clear scenery. When you read the story, it's like you standing in a forest covered with mist. Maybe I should just remenber the feeling. Even though I still unable to understand, but when time is right, I will understand someday. I will read an English version again and find out if there is other interesting feelings~ 【I know there must be lots of errors in the journal! I am not a native English speaker, so if anyone can correct them I would be very thankful!】

what's the best education we can give to the children? Today there is an opinion about education impressed me, and I think the statement really make sense——"Instead of pumping time and money into exams, we should focus on wellbeing and encouraging children to connect with the natural world" . Nowadays we have so many kinds of exams. Whatever you want to do, generally you have to take an exam or test first——you want to go to a good high school? Take an exam. You want to become a member of team? Have a test……Groups, colleges, universities, and government, they all want better person who has some special skills or talents they need. Is it the best education we can give to our next generation? Just give them a booklist, ask them to remenber the knowledge, and have exams to measure their abilities in subjects that government determined? There are some basic questions that teachers seldom ask us ( maybe in other countries things are different) Should we learn these subjects like English, math, physics and music? Why? What a kind of person we should be? What do we want to be? Why do we have exams? What's the meaning of compitition? What should we do when we get a high score? How do we face a bad result?…… When children completely have no idea about the answers of questions above, how can they learn genuine knowledge?If a student don't want to study at a subject at all, he didn't make any effort to learn knowledge of this subject, It would be easy to imagine how worse the exam would be. A bad exam occurs at wrong time and in the wrong child, it just make a child feel worthless, desperate and self-abasement. Actually an exam that our society gives us is just a way to measure someone's knowledge or ability in a particular subject. The real exam in our heart is more important. To be a better person we want to be and pass the exam in our heart by our pleasant virtue, I think this matters most. I think usually the way you do one thing is also the way you do everything. The auther says," Feeling comfortable in the wild gave me the confidence to be who I am, not who others want me to be. There is a natural simplicity to nature, it is far more tactile and tangible than in the classroom……“. It's ture. The nature always gives us more inspiration, all the answers are in the magical recycle of the world. Spending some time in the nature, hanging around, making some stuff and solving some small problems, all of these activities may help our children to think about some basic questions.