Japan

Japan /dʒəˈpæn/ (Japanese: 日本 Nihon or Nippon; formally 日本国 Nippon-koku or Nihon-koku, "[the] State of Japan") is an island nation in East Asia. Located in the Pacific Ocean, it lies to the east of the Sea of Japan, China, North Korea, South Korea and Russia, stretching from the Sea of Okhotsk in the north to the East China Sea and Taiwan in the south. The characters that make up Japan's name mean "sun-origin", which is why Japan is sometimes referred to as the "Land of the Rising Sun".

Japan is an archipelago of 6,852 islands. The four largest islands are Honshu, Hokkaido, Kyushu, and Shikoku, which together comprise about ninety-seven percent of Japan's land area. Japan has the world's tenth-largest population, with over one hundred and twenty-seven million people. Honshū's Greater Tokyo Area, which includes the capital city of Tokyo and several surrounding prefectures, is the largest metropolitan area in the world, with over thirty million residents.

Archaeological research indicates that people lived in Japan as early as the Upper Paleolithic period. The first written mention of Japan is in Chinese history texts from the 1st century AD.

Akihito (明仁) is the current Emperor of Japan. He was born on 23rd December 1933 and he is the 125th emperor; Naruhito, Crown Prince of Japan, stands as next in line to the throne.

Japan consists of forty-seven prefectures, each overseen by an elected governor, legislature and administrative bureaucracy. Each prefecture is further divided into cities, towns and villages.

                        Japan's population is estimated at around 127.3 million, with eighty per cent of the population living on Honshū. Japanese society is linguistically and culturally homogeneous, composed of 98.5% ethnic Japanese, with small populations of foreign workers. Zainichi Koreans, Zainichi Chinese, Filipinos, Brazilians mostly of Japanese descent, and Peruvians mostly of Japanese descent are among the small minority groups in Japan. In 2003, there were about 134,700 non-Latin American Western and 345,500 Latin American expatriates, 274,700 of whom were Brazilians (said to be primarily Japanese descendants, or nikkeijin, along with their spouses) the largest community of Westerners.

 

Kérdések:

 

Mi Japán japán neve?

Melyik óceánban található Japán?

Mely országok Japán szomszédai?

 

Hány szigetből áll Japán?

Mi a négy legnagyobb sziget neve?

Hány százalékát teszi ki ez a négy sziget Japán területének?

Hány ember lakik Japánban?

Mi Japán fővárosa? Hányan élnek ott?

 

Melyik ország említi először Japánt a világtörténelemben? És mikor?

 

Ki Japán jelenlegi uralkodója?

Ki a trónörökös?

Hány éves Akihito?

 

Hány prefektúrára oszlik Japán?

 

Melyik szigeten él a legtöbb japán ember? Hány százaléka a lakosságnak?

A japánok mellett még milyen nemzetiségek élnek az országban?

The Harry Potter adventures (Class 9)

Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone is the first novel in the Harry Potter series which was written by the English writer, J. K. Rowling. She tells the story of a boy – his name is Harry Potter and he is a young wizard. The story describes how Harry discovers he is a wizard, how he makes close friends and a few enemies at the Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry. His friends are ordinary children: Ron, a red-haired boy and Hermione, a bushy-haired clever girl. Harry Potter is an ordinary-looking boy too, with black hair and glasses. The three friends fight together and they stop the evil wizard Lord Voldemort to come back. Lord Voldemort is the man who killed Harry's parents when Harry was one year old.

The book, J.K. Rowling's debut novel, was published on 26 June 1997 by Bloomsbury in London. In America, you can buy the book with a different title: Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone. It was the best-selling book in August 1999 and it received a lot of awards. It has been translated into several other languages and has been made into a long film of the same name.

The book has the influence of Jane Austen, J.K. Rowling’s favourite writer and the ancient Greek stories.

 

1. What is Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone?

a, a cat                                                b, a book                            c, a song

2. Who is Harry Potter?

a, a cat                                                b, a boy                               c, a witch

3. Harry Potter has got…

a, red hair                           b, bushy hair                     c, black hair

4. Harry Potter has got

a, a stone                            b, two friends                  c, five friends

5. Who wrote Harry Potter?

a, Bloomsbury                  b, Jane Austen                                c, J.K. Rowling

6. When did Harry’s parents die? When he was…

a, 1                                         b, 3                                        c, 26

7. Who is Hermione?

a, Ron’s sister                   b, an evil wizard              c, Harry’s friend

8. Who has got red hair?

a, Hermione                      b, Harry                               c, Ron

9. Lord Voldemort…

a, has got glasses            b, wants to come back c, received a lot of awards

10. The novel was published…

a, in August                       b, in June                           c, in April

 

Complete the sentences with AM, IS, ARE, DO or DOES.

 

1. Where _______ Harry and Hermione from?

2. _______ you like Harry Potter-novels?

3. Harry _______ not Chinese.

4. _______ you have any HP-books?

5. Hermione _______ very clever.

6. _______ J.K. Rowling write books?

7. Ron _______ not like cats.

8. _______ you a Harry Potter-fan?

9. _______ Harry have a sister?

10. Hermione _______ not Irish.

11. Harry _______ not wear a beard.

12. I _______ love Harry Potter-books.

13. _______ Harry and Ron have any cats?

 

Angelina Jolie

Actress, humanitarian. Born Angelina Jolie Voight on June 4, 1975 in Los Angeles, California, to actor Jon Voight and French actress Marcheline Bertrand. She rose to stardom in the 1990s. She began acting at a young age, studying at the Lee Strasberg Theater Institute while in her early teens. Jolie later attended New York University.

In the 1990s, Angelina Jolie became a popular actress. She gave a star-making performance in the 1998 television film Gia based on the short, tragic life of model Gia Marie Carangi, which won her a Golden Globe Award for Best Actress.

Another great dramatic role in Girl, Interrrupted (1999) brought Jolie her first Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress. She has continued to take on a variety of interesting roles, such as an adventurer in the Lara Croft films, a FBI profiler in Taking Lives (2004), an assassin in Mr. and Mrs. Smith (2005), and a neglected, troubled socialite wife inThe Good Shepherd (2006).

In 2007, Jolie gave a brillant performance as Mariane Pearl, the pregnant widow of Wall Street Journal reporter Danny Pearl, in A Mighty Heart. The film was based on Mariane Pearl's account of her husband's abduction and murder.

Jolie has drawn Oscar buzz for Clint Eastwood's missing-child drama Changeling, due for release October 24, 2008.

A devoted humanitarian, Angelina Jolie was made a Goodwill Ambassador for the UN Refugee Agency in 2001. She has made headlines for her work to obtain aid for refugees in Cambodia, Darfur and Jordan, to name just a few.

In 2005, Jolie received the Global Humanitarian Action Award from the United Nations Association of the USA for her activism on behalf of refugee rights. She continues to travel the world to drawing attention to global issues.

Famous for her off-screen romances, Angelina Jolie has been married twice. She married Hackers co-star Jonny Lee Miller in 1995. The couple divorced in 1999. The next year Jolie married Academy Award-winning actor Billy Bob Thornton. That union lasted until 2003.

In 2002, Angelina Jolie adopted a son from Cambodia and named him Maddox. Three years later, she adopted a daughter, Zahara, and later in 2005, actor Brad Pitt filed paperwork to adopt both of Jolie’s children.

Jolie and Pitt met during the making of Mr. and Mrs. Smith in 2004. The couple’s first biological daughter, Shiloh, was born in the African country of Namibia in 2006. Jolie, Pitt, and their children had traveled there to avoid the media frenzy that seemed to follow them wherever they went.

After the joy of welcoming her third child to the world came great sadness for Jolie. She experienced a great personal loss in the beginning of 2007—her mother died of cancer after fighting the disease for many years.

In March 2007, Angelina Jolie added a new member to her family. She adopted a three-year-old boy from a Vietnamese orphanage. Her son is named Pax Thien.

Jolie gave birth to twins, Knox Leon and Vivienne Marcheline, on July 12, 2008, in a seaside hospital in southern France. The rights for the first images of the twins were sold to People and Hello! magazines for $14 million. The photos are the most expensive celebrity pictures ever taken.

In October of 2008, Jolie appeared in the Clint Eastwood-directed thriller,The Changeling. Jolie played Christine Collins, a mother whose son reappears after his kidnapping. Collins is sure the returned boy is not the one to which she gave birth, and her fight reveals a police conspiracy. In 2009, Jolie received an Oscar nomination for Best Actress for the role.


Source: http://www.biography.com/articles/Angelina-Jolie-9356782

Excerpt - Harry Potter and The Sorcerer's Stone

Nearly ten years had passed since the Dursleys had woken up to find their nephew on the front step, but Privet Drive had hardly changed at all. The sun rose on the same tidy front gardens and lit up the brass number four on the Dursleys' front door; it crept into their living room, which was almost exactly the same as it had been on the night when Mr. Dursley had seen that fateful news report about the owls. Only the photographs on the mantelpiece really showed how much time had passed. Ten years ago, there had been lots of pictures of what looked like a large pink beach ball wearing different-colored bonnets - but Dudley Dursley was no longer a baby, and now the photographs showed a large blond boy riding his first bicycle, on a carousel at the fair, playing a computer game with his father, being hugged and kissed by his mother. The room held no sign at all that another boy lived in the house, too.

Yet Harry Potter was still there, asleep at the moment, but not for long. His Aunt Petunia was awake and it was her shrill voice that made the first noise of the day.

"Up! Get up! Now!"

Harry woke with a start. His aunt rapped on the door again.

"Up!" she screeched. Harry heard her walking toward the kitchen and then the sound of the frying pan being put on the stove. He rolled onto his back and tried to remember the dream he had been having. It had been a good one. There had been a flying motorcycle in it. He had a funny feeling he'd had the same dream before.

His aunt was back outside the door.

"Are you up yet?" she demanded.

"Nearly," said Harry.

"Well, get a move on, I want you to look after the bacon. And don't you dare let it burn, I want everything perfect on Duddy's birthday."

Harry groaned.

"What did you say?" his aunt snapped through the door.

"Nothing, nothing . . ."

Dudley's birthday - how could he have forgotten? Harry got slowly out of bed and started looking for socks. He found a pair under his bed and, after pulling a spider off one of them, put them on. Harry was used to spiders, because the cupboard under the stairs was full of them, and that was where he slept.

When he was dressed he went down the hall into the kitchen. The table was almost hidden beneath all Dudley's birthday presents. It looked as though Dudley had gotten the new computer he wanted, not to mention the second television and the racing bike. Exactly why Dudley wanted a racing bike was a mystery to Harry, as Dudley was very fat and hated exercise - unless of course it involved punching somebody. Dudley's favorite punching bag was Harry, but he couldn't often catch him. Harry didn't look it, but he was very fast.

Perhaps it had something to do with living in a dark cupboard, but Harry had always been small and skinny for his age. He looked even smaller and skinnier than he really was because all he had to wear were old clothes of Dudley's, and Dudley was about four times bigger than he was. Harry had a thin face, knobbly knees, black hair, and bright green eyes. He wore round glasses held together with a lot of Scotch tape because of all the times Dudley had punched him on the nose. The only thing Harry liked about his own appearance was a very thin scar on his forehead that was shaped like a bolt of lightning. He had had it as long as he could remember, and the first question he could ever remember asking his Aunt Petunia was how he had gotten it.

"In the car crash when your parents died," she had said. "And don't ask questions."

Don't ask questions - that was the first rule for a quiet life with the Dursleys.