Project Space Reflection

Aguirre 1

Erick Aguirre

Professor Lawson

English 113B

28 March 2013

Project Space Reflection

I am a diverse person and don’t like to focus on one thing because I want to try new things and have knowledge of them too. I didn’t want to just go to place of my ethnicity, in which I am Mexican, because I wanted to challenge myself to go to a foreign place and try their food. Thus making it different for myself and being able to write about something that I don’t already know. I was surprise my Orochon about how it looked because I expected it be a big restaurant with a huge inside place to be seated, but it is one of the smaller restaurants and they earn hundreds of customers a day. Shin-Sen-Gummi on the other hand felt more authentic with because it had a less crowded in environment and I had to take my shoes off when being seated. None the less the ramen was great and Orochon is a great place to try ramen for people who have never tried it before. I did not have any connection to Orochon or Shin-Sen-Gummi (Hakata) because it was my first time and it was in Little Tokyo, which I have never been to either, thus making the whole experience foreign to me. Not only was going there all different to me, but I went with a mindset of having to be observant and had to take in the individual spices when eating versus going to a restaurant just to eat. Also this way I could write about a lot on my new experience and could tell it to people who have never been there.

 Project Space was a lot different because we had to go out and do first hand research rather than researching articles on a library database and other well trusted websites. Not only did we have to go to a particular area but we had to go with a fixed mindset of what was pointing to a person when being at the restaurant, the people, and the food. My writing definitely has improved in sentence structure and the use of more complex vocabulary. I also extended my vocabulary that way I could expand my ideas and make sentences flow better. I did not procrastinate because I like to my essays early that way I could edit/revise and make it to its true potential. The easiest part of the essay was talking about the fieldwork because I had a lot to say and had an easy flow when writing the fieldwork the first time. The hardest part was adding quotes to the fieldwork and making all of it sound connected. 

Field Work Report

Erick Aguirre

Professor Lawson

English 113B

14 March 2013

Fieldwork Report

In Little Tokyo, Los Angeles there is a ramen soup restaurant which goes by the name of Orochon Ramen, home to authentic ramen noodle soup and the hottest ramen dishes there are. Ramen is a Japanese noodle soup consisting of noodles, mixed vegetables varying from broccoli, peas, corn, celery, jalapenos and also includes, peppers and spices, boiled egg, thin strips of pork, broth, oil, stir fry sauce. Orochon has a special spice that is put in the ramen bowls that has a unique taste to it. Other people from other restaurants have tried to steal the spice from Orochon and take it for them, but only to fail. The flavors and ingredients differ for each dish and from the region of Japan.

Orochon is famous for their challenge which is to finish their hottest bowl of ramen including the broth under thirty minutes or less to win bragging rights and their picture on the Wall of Bravery. Out of the twenty thousand people that have tried their challenge only two hundred have successfully finished the bowl. Orochon feels and smells of broth, heat, and spices. Each dish at Orochon Ramen has a different level of spiciness, such as number seven where it is the most basic mild spices, descending all the way to one, one being the hottest ramen dishes in Los Angeles. There is also a special section of the menu where there are two dishes, special number one and special number two, where number two is the hottest bowl. The special number two bowl is what is attempted during Orochon challenge.

When first walking to the restaurant you may expect it to be big atmosphere with lots of seats, but it just so happens that it is a place crammed in a plaza on the second story where tables are ever so close to the stairs on the way up. The inside is not any more spacious, even though Orochon has a superb reputation for their ramen and having hundreds of costumers a day. The Japanese-American mixture appeals to not just regulars of the Japanese ethnicity, but also to the public to try ramen for themselves. However, this can be a problem for the Japanese people or regulars who do not feel they are not having their full experience such as the atmosphere, the people, and other elements. Orochon has to comply with other ethnicities, even though it is meant to be a place for authentic noodle soup. Unlike Shin-Sen-Gummi ramen, which it is a small local restaurant in Torrance filled with regulars, people like traditional Japanese people. It’s also filled with authenticity, meaning when entering the restaurant chefs yell out irasshaimase, which means welcome, having to take off your shoes if sat on a low table as waiters yell out orders versus, showing the chefs the papers of what the customers want, waiters being bilingual, and have a menu in two languages, Japanese and English. Only locals and a handful of people know of this place, keeping it authentic a Japanese ramen restaurant. At Orochon they have words written on flag like material in Japanese, drawings of samurais with no color, a menu is written in Japanese right next to the English translation, and their red curtains they put up to close off the consumer from the kitchen, all which make one feel as though they are in an authentic Japanese restaurant. They try to keep authentic as close as possible without drawing away tourists.

 The head chef and owner of Orochon Ramen is Shigeki Matsuda, who was a mixed martial arts fighter, but it is unknown if he is still active today. Regulars at this restaurant usually are Japanese and greet as if they had been friends for years and proceed to order in Japanese without looking at the menu. This compared to a newcomer behavior, where one can take a while to pick which bowl they want and what additional toppings to add, one might ask if they can substitute the pork to beef or chicken to how spicy each level of ramen is. A regular or Japanese individual might think tourists do not deserve to go here because this is their place to come to for authentic ramen. The owner and waiters/waitresses however feel otherwise as they try to make the restaurant welcoming to all of its customers. This restaurant is a big part of the community because the new people who try it and like the food, may be willing enough to go to other Japanese restaurants in or around the plaza, making little Tokyo more known to the people of Los Angeles and tourists.

Project Web Reflection

Erick Aguirre

Professor Lawson

English 113B

7 March 2013

Project Web Reflection

Advertising is a big topic that one could use to talk about anything such as how they are mislabeling, misleading, the production that goes into a product, etc. At least once every two to three weeks the news reminds the people on how companies are deceiving a product that is not even what the company states it is or what supposed to do. So from there I decided to choose my topic on advertising and they mislead or mislabel their goods. That way I could find an enormous amount of articles, videos, and pictures to use for citations and posts. Personally I wanted to find out more on the scandals about ads, so I could tell other peers and use it for my own personal benefit.

My writing definitely has improved since last semester with vocab and sentence because I have been reading more. I would like to continue to read so I can extend my vocabulary and develop stronger sentence structure because it would benefit me and my future career and because English has always has been a weakest subject. Usually for writing assignments I like to do them as soon as I can because it takes me a while to start a well written paper. With the help of research such as articles, videos, and pictures I was able to write the body paragraphs a lot easier than expected. The one of the difficult part about this project was finding the right type of research that I could talk about for eight sentences or more and how to write my thoughts well. 

Free Write Reflection

In Project Web I have done a decent amount of research and I have about three outside sources. I would still like to to do more research because I want to have l lots of research when I start writing my essay. That way it can prevent me from writing a dull essay. I would like to do more research such as ways of advertisers are misleading, how much they spend annually on ads, and how psychologically they grab the consumers attention. My sources are reliable because they are essays written about advertisers that have been graded by a college professor, websites such as the CSUN library data base. The steps I need to achieve to have a great blog to do lots of research, write well, drafts from reliable sources and making the blog attractive.

These are a few outside sources I found that are related to my topic and I will be posting/discussing for Project Web. The gist of my sources are about economics and advertisements, more specifically how advertisers are deceptive when airing out their products, in which they tie the consumers money, even if they cannot afford it, and emotion. The marketers try to grab your attention with humor, sex, or the affection of a women (model) and use effective communication to make real of an individual's  fantasy will come true if you buy their products. They also advertise by using emotions by making the consumer think if you don't buy their goods you will stay ugly, keep a non luxurious/non sports car, or will live a mediocre life. Slipping this idea into your head without you knowing until these advertisements keep on pushing the idea if you buy their goods you will live a better and a happier life. Even when some of these ads have false advertising.  

http://newint.org/features/2006/09/01/culture/

http://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-mo-ftc-pom-wonderful-ads-20130116,0,1944280.story

http://www.cyberpat.com/shirlsite/education/essay2/jfowles.html

These are some words I have come across from reading that I did  not understand from all my classes.
inanity (n)- lack of sense, silliness
Panoptic (adj)- permitting the view of all parts or elements, inclusive
reptile (n)- despicable person, cheater, con artist
solemn (adj)- speech, tone, or mood
veranda (n)- porch
indigenous (adj)- innate, inborn, natural
ameliorate (v)- improve, make better

I appreciated "Mind Over Mass Media" by Steven Pinker view on the media because it tells people cannot take their eyes and hands off the internet, but because of this people have expanded their knowledge on a political issue, subject, disability, or research. Assuming the individual get their information from a credible website. In which I agree with the author Steven Pinker, because we are in the Information Age and scholars think we are kids surfing the web with no knowledge. I cannot speak for every young adult but I do speak for myself. All the knowledge I have gotten from the internet has been from reliable websites such as WebMD.com. Even not as scholarly websites such as tumblr, where blogs are strictly facts and statistics are websites you can learn information you couldn't find anywhere else. With knowledge of how the Internet works, an education, and other various information you have obtained you can see if the information is correct or false. If you do not believe this than you can use websites like eHow, your school database, or other scholarly websites.

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