This paper is about 50 books from Random House's STEP INTO READING series, which consists of 5 steps or levels: Step 1 for preschool-kindergarten through Step 5 for grades 2-4. Because students' abilities vary, younger students can access each step according to their level and eagerness.
 Step 1 books are actually picture books with one or two simple sentences on each page. Children who have learned the alphabet begin to learn to read with these books, likely guessing the story from the colorful illustrations and reading aloud the rhyming, patterned sentences. The Poky Little Puppy, for example, contains the following fun-to-read sentences. “Run, run, run! Roly-poly. Pell-mell. Tumble-bumble.”
 Although Step 1 books may seem light on content, there are impressive masterpieces like Margaret Wise Brown's I Like Stars and Raymond Briggs' The Snowman . Even Aesop's The Lion and the Mouse is included in this beginning level. The editors' priority, however, is to get the young reader interested in reading whatever the book is. Using famous characters such as the Snowman, Sesame Street characters, and P.J. Funnybunny (who appears in Step 2) seems to be an effective way to encourage. The results are The Snowman and the Snowdog, I Spy: A Game to Read and Play, and P.J. Funnybunny Camps Out .
 Step 2 is characteristic of nonfiction books like Bones (which explains how bones work in the body), Feeding Time at the Zoo (which describes a zookeeper's job and what animals eat at the zoo), Planet Name Game (which teaches about the sun and the 8 planets in the solar system), and The Statue of Liberty (which tells how the iconic statue in New York City was created). While this may sound academic to young readers, thanks to the authors' techniques and the illustrators' colorful pictures, these books are sure to spark a lot of interest in unfamiliar things.
 If students are interested enough, they can read Step 3 books on their own: Recommended fiction includes Deborah Hautzig's Little Witch series (of which Little Witch Goes to School is the best) and Leo Lionni's masterpieces (Alexander and the Wind-Up Mouse, Fish is Fish, and Frederick, the latter of which explains the usefulness of being a poet). The nonfiction counterparts are Dinosaur Days, Truth or Lie:Dinosaurs!, Trains!, Hungry, Hungry, Sharks! and Dolphins! , all of which are undoubtedly most children'sfavorites.
 The person who has reached Step 4 can read Hans Christian Andersen's The Little Mermaid, but for some intelligent learners, history readers must be even more enjoyable: For instance, Discovery in the Cave, Ice Mummy: The Discovery of a 5,000-Year-Old Man, Pompeii...Buried Alive! , Tut's Mummy: Lost...and Found, The Titanic: Lost...and Found, all of which deal with great discoveries in human history. And the true human stories of the Titanic are well worth reading, as is an amazing biography of Helen Keller:Courage in the Dark.
 Students who have reached Step 5 can choose whatever they like by reading the advertisement on the back of the cover. For example, “One false step can send you hurtling down a ten-thousand-foot drop. One wrong move can bury you beneath an avalanche of snow. You are climbing Mount Everest! Here is the true story of Edmund Hillary and Tenzing Norgay―the first people ever to reach the highest spot on the planet!” To the Top! : Climbing the World's Highest Mountain is one of the best Step 5 books that avid readers cannot miss, as is Moonwalk: The First Trip to the Moon both of which showcase the greatest feats of human achievement in history.

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 The term “supercar” is proper English, but it was in Japan in 1977 that the word gained widespread recognition and unique cultural significance. It all began when manga artist Satoshi IKEZAWA (born in 1950) featured beautifully designed Italian high-performance cars—such as the Maserati Bora and Lamborghini Countach—in his street racing manga Circuit no Ookami (The Wolf of the Circuit ), referring to them as “supercars.”
 Supercar shows sprang up across Japan for children eager to see the real thing, captivating nearly every upper-grade elementary school boy. Rooms overflowed with supercar books, posters, trading cards, toys, and stationery. Armed with old, worn-out cameras handed down from their fathers or grandfathers, these children wandered through downtown streets in search of cool cars.
 Of course, encountering a true supercar was rare. More often, they were drawn to photograph not only mass-produced American icons like the Chevrolet Corvette, but also cult favorites like the Lotus Europa beloved by the manga’s protagonist, the BMW 2002 Turbo driven by the hero’s lover in the film adaptation of Circuit no Ookami, and affordable mid-engine cars like the Porsche 914 and Fiat X1/9. This is why the Japanese concept of a “supercar” differs from the English definition, often encompassing sports cars with relatively modest performance.
 The popularity of supercars also had a significant impact on Japan’s automotive industry. Although sports cars faced official disapproval during the oil crisis triggered by the Fourth Middle East War, Mazda launched the RX-7 in March 1978. With its retractable headlights—a feature children considered essential for any true supercar—it became a global sensation. Unfortunately, Japan’s true supercar, the Dome Zero, unveiled at the Geneva Motor Show around the same time, never reached production. However, the 1980s saw the emergence of various Japanese cars featuring retractable headlights. Among them was the stylish Mitsubishi Starion, which appeared in Cannonball Run II and stepped in to showcase supercar credentials in place of the Lamborghini Countach.
 The Japanese automotive industry's dream of creating a car to rival Italy’s Lamborghini and Ferrari faced setbacks, notably with Nissan’s MID4 project, which failed to progress beyond two prototype unveilings at the Tokyo Motor Show. However, Honda ultimately fulfilled this ambition by launching the NSX in 1990. Satoshi IKEZAWA, who had personally owned numerous Italian supercars, immediately purchased one. In Ken of Modena , the sequel to The Wolf of the Circuit , he gave the NSX his seal of approval, declaring it a “Japanese supercar” capable of rivaling Ferrari.
 Japanese people, who cherish democratic values, held the relatively affordable Lotus Europa in high regard as a beloved supercar. As a result, Japanese automakers began producing numerous “supercars” in the Japanese sense—meaning vehicles that were accessible to anyone who desired one. The Toyota MR2, for example, featured a Ferrari-like appearance. Accessible and popular Japanese cars like the AE86— featuring retractable headlights and an iconic role in Initial D , the manga that gained popularity across Asia—emerged as a direct result of the 1977 supercar boom.

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 Fuyuko KAMISAKA (1930-2009) was born the year before the Manchurian Incident and experienced Japan's defeat at the age of 15, so she was well aware of both the excitement and the misery of the Sino-Japanese War and the Pacific War. After graduating from high school, she joined the human resources department of Toyota Motor Corporation in her hometown, where she observed labor union activities firsthand and wrote Portraits of My Workplace, making her debut as a writer. Initially, she wrote many books targeting unmarried female office workers, but in 1975, the International Women's Year, she could no longer keep up with Japan's radical women's liberation movement, which she believed was destroying traditional Japanese culture and family values. She then shifted her focus to non-fiction, interviewing those involved in the war to uncover its hidden stories. 　Ms. KAMISAKA traveled not only in Japan but also in the United States, Australia, Russia, South Korea, China, Indonesia, and other countries around the world, interviewing many people and writing many books. Among them, she shed light on historical figures of interest to readers, such as Iva TOGURI,known as “Tokyo Rose,” who conducted propaganda broadcasts targeting American soldiers during the Pacific War; Yoshiko KAWASHIMA, known as “the Mata Hari of the East,” who was a princess of the Qing Dynasty and became a spy for the Japanese army; and Wang Jingwei, who worked tirelessly for peace with Japan as the head of the Nationalist Government in Nanjing. Additionally, she conducted numerous interviews with Haru Reischauer, the Japanese wife of Edwin Reischauer, who served as U.S.Ambassador to Japan under the Kennedy administration in the 1960s, and with Lee Teng-hui, the former Japanese-born president of Taiwan who democratized the island, crafting vivid biographies of these figures. 　Fuyuko KAMISAKA was a renowned nonfiction writer who could converse on equal terms not only with the president of Toyota Motor Corporation but also with Japanese prime ministers such as OHIRA,NAKASONE, and OBUCHI. However, she did not only interview famous people. She also met with and listened to many unknown individuals who had endured hardships during and after World War II. These included former Japanese soldiers who contributed to Indonesia's independence, Japanese women who had married Koreans and were then living out their retirement in the Japanese-only nursing home in South Korea, and Japanese people who had survived the atomic bombing of Hiroshima but were still battling the fear of atomic bomb-related illnesses in places like Amami Oshima Island or the United States (Seattle, Hawaii, Los Angeles, etc.).
 This article is an attempt to introduce 50 books by Fuyuko KAMISAKA, who longed for marriage but remained single, created these books as “her own children.” While all of her books are noteworthy, the most outstanding are the three volumes she wrote after interviewing the families of Class B and C war criminals who were executed by hanging at Sugamo Prison after being separated from their loved ones following the end of the devastating war: Sugamo Prison Gate 13 (1981), The Wives Left Behind (1983),and The Atonement Is Complete (1995). After seven years of occupation by Allied forces, Japan signed the San Francisco Peace Treaty and regained its independence as a peaceful nation. As a foundation for this, over 1,000 former soldiers were ruthlessly put to death, not to mention the well-known execution of the 7 Class-A war criminals, including General Hideki TOJO, who was the prime minister at the outbreak of the Pacific War. By the 50th anniversary of the war's end, even the Japanese had forgotten this fact.The atonement for the war was completed through their sacrifices. All Japanese people deeply felt the tragedy and folly of war and vowed never to wage war again. Fuyuko KAMISAKA wanted this fact to be known not only to the Japanese but to people around the world.

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 In the 1970s, short children's films produced by Toei Educational Films were shown in Japanese elementary schools as part of moral education. Makio's Solo Journey , directed by Takejiro ONISHI, was one such film. I was deeply impressed when I saw it in the school gymnasium as a fourth-grade student.
 Toei's educational films are available only on 16mm reels in a few libraries across Japan and have never been released on DVD or Blu-ray. As a result, they are difficult to access today and have become “phantom films” that exist only in the memories of those who saw them in the past. Fortunately, a few years ago, I came across a rare handwritten screenplay at a used bookstore in Tokyo.
 The original novel, Makio's Solo Journey (1973) by Haruko SHOGENJI (1914-2015), is widely recognized as a masterpiece of children's literature. During spring break, Makio, a shy elementary school student from Nagoya, visits his aunt's house in Tokyo. Due to the sudden illness of her baby, he ends up staying home with 5-year-old Chiaki.
 How does the film depict this five-day adventure? This article compares the film’s script with the original novel to reveal how the 35-minute film movingly captures Makio's emotional and personal growth.

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 Gotoba-no-in-Kunaikyo (後鳥羽院宮内卿) was born and died at an unknown date. She entered the Go-Toba-in Imperial Poetry Club around the age of 16. She was highly acclaimed as a waka poet of the Shin-Kokin period, tracing her poetry composition activities reveals only four years of composition activity from 1200 to 1203 AD. Her waka poems, which were under the influence of the Shin-Kokin period, are characterized by a rich sense of color.
 The Sendō Kudai Gojisshu (仙洞句題五十首) is a poetry contest organized by Emperor Gotobano-in（後鳥羽院）,consisting of fifty poems. It is presumed that the poems were submitted sequentially starting in September of the first year of the Ken'nin first year (建仁元年 1201), and that the results were announced in December of the same year.
 The Sendō Kudai Gojisshu is a poetry contest planned immediately after the establishment of the Waka Office in July of the first year of the Ken'nin first year between Emperor Gotoba-no-in and Fujiwara-no-Yoshitsune (藤原良経). The themes comprised fifty subjects: twenty on “Flowers,” twenty on “Moon,” and ten on “Objects of Longing.” The themes were primarily drawn from the sections “Spring,” “Autumn,” and “Love”—the sections with the most poems in the eight imperial anthologies—and each poet composed fifty waka poems on each theme.
 Furthermore, the Sendō Kudai Gojisshu comprises a total of three hundred waka poems, twelve of which were included in the Shinkokin Wakashū (新古今和歌集). This makes it a highly unusual poetry contest for its time.
 Within the Sendō Kudai Gojisshu, Gotoba-no-in-Kunaikyo composed fifty waka poems. This study will focus primarily on the twenty poems composed on the theme of “flowers”.

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 This paper elucidates how to teach English effectively to engineering students at a Japanese College of Technology under the influences of generative AI. More students, particularly those of a technological college tend to employ generative AI when they study English in their busy academic schedule. What seems considered important in this era of generative AI is time-efficiency for those students who would like to acquire comprehensive skills of English with limited amount of time. This study questions how much time can be saved when learning foreign languages, by explaining an approach taken in teaching basic English classes to 2nd year students at National Institute of Technology, Gunma College in 2025-2026. This is not an approach to teach students a time-efficient way to learn English by using generative AI, but an effective way to do so by using ones’ abilities to analyze English sentences. Using their abilities to analyze English sentences and to perceive them precisely, they proceed the path to become fluent in English with their knowledge of it built and integrated inside them.
  Both authors employed this approach in teaching English to 2nd year students there in 2025-2026 English courses. “English A,” instructed by Takeshi KUMAGAI, is usually focusing on developing English reading skills while “English B,” instructed by Yuriko KUMAGAI, is focusing on having students master the basic grammar of English. Twice a week throughout the year, those students analyzed many English sentences on texts closely, using this approach, thus gradually acquired some level of English comprehension skills to read English sentences correctly and to produce English sentences decently.
  First, we describe the purpose and background of this study. The next chapter explains the English teaching approach using“sentence analysis using symbols to distinguish part-of-speech in English sentences.” Chapters 4 and 5 describe the actual teaching methods used in “English A” and “English B” classes at the school. Finally, we analyze how this approach helped the students acquire effective English learning methods.
  Some of the 2nd year students, mostly 16 or 17 years old, among the students provided this English study method have already taken the TOEIC, and many of them achieved high scores of more than 400. The average score all the Technological college students achieved in 2024 aged 15-22 is 386, according to TOEIC Association; This is the outstanding result of this approach after comparing the two figures.

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  This paper presents the Project-Based Learning (PBL) initiatives conducted in the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering at the National Institute of Technology, Gunma College during the 2025 academic year, with a particular focus on the activities implemented by each student group. The program was designed with the aim of providing practical education that addresses real-world and socially relevant problems.
  During the PBL activities, students worked with external facilitators to define project themes and develop solutions. Through this process, they acquired—albeit with individual variation—skills in identifying problems and selecting appropriate approaches to address them. Interaction with the facilitators also offered students opportunities to learn about the significance of professional work in society and to gain an understanding of workplace etiquette expected of working professionals. In addition, the process of engaging in group discussions and consolidating project outcomes is considered to have fostered essential competencies required in the construction industry, such as teamwork and consensus-building skills.

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  This paper presents the activities of the “Gunma Level-Up Project☆” that participated in the KOSEN GCON 2025 contest, together with an overview of the competition. The project focused on two experimental themes: (1) verification of the improvement of concrete properties, (2) verification of improvement effects on high-water-content soil. With respect to the improvement of concrete properties, laboratory tests were conducted focusing on compressive strength. The results revealed that the compressive strength decreased as the amount of tobiko (konjac processing by-product powder) added to the concrete increased. In the investigation of improvement effects on high-water-content soil, tobiko was added to muddy soil, and it was confirmed that the soil strength improved to a level of unconfined compressive strength sufficient to support a person standing on it.
  During the final round of KOSEN GCON 2025, the team primarily presented their dust control measures, and this project won the Grand Prize and the Corporate Award.

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