Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi respectfully places his hand on the Wailing Wall, one of Judaism’s most sacred sites, in Jerusalem on Thursday during a trip to the Middle East that takes him to Israel, the Palestinian territory and Jordan. (AP)
(From Nikkei)
Who will stop Koizumi from continuing these perverse, random acts of worship?!
Seriously, I am just so sick of this crap:
Are people still interested to see what else the Sanrio people can put Hello Kitty’s face on who else signs up to beat the dead horse that is licensed Sanrio merchandise? If so, get over it! Please! A Hello Kitty guitar simply does not deserve to be front page news these days (as of now it’s the top image at MDN). Last I checked, Hello Kitty merchandise was the Snakes on a Plane of 2 years ago. That is, it all of a sudden started appearing everywhere online, only to spark a quick backlash once it became overexposed.
“Enka” is a term referring to a particular genre of Japanese music. It is similar in spirit if not in style to US country music – in other words it sings about the traditional downhome values of Japan and beatifies the past to a certain extent. Here‘s an example of it on YouTube “The Red-bean Camelia is the Flower of Love”. Similar music is popular in most of Asia (including Vietnam, China, and North and South Korea).
What many people don’t know, however, is that enka was not always the music of the status quo (from Wikipedia):
History
Enka was originally a product of the Freedom and People’s Rights Movement. The songs were used as a way to put political statements and messages criticizing clan politics into song. In other words, they are songs that satired politics, and the word “enka” (literally “speech song”) is said to have had its roots the late 19th century when public speeches were harshly repressed, causing speeches to be replaced by singing songs. Even prior to that, there were songs that satired politics, but afterward the name “enka” stuck. However, as time passed the meaning of the word evolved and “enka” is no longer used to refer to songs including political content. From the latter part of the Meiji Era, enka singers came to sing socially satirical songs with emotional themes. In the Taisho era, some enka singers began to incorporate elements of Western music. This was the time of Shunyo Tottori‘s debut (listen to a cover/karaoke of Tottori “Caged Bird” here). His “Caged Bird” captivated a generation of Japanese. In the Showa era, foreign record labels opened operations in Japan, and a new era came to Japan in the form of the recording system. At that time Western-style performers came into fashion and enka gave up its top position in pop culture.
Consider these two phenomena:
1) Athletes endorsing products that supposedly help their performance; and
2) Exploitive marketing of second language learning products that offer a specific pattern of drills as a purported secret to learning the language.
By themselves, they are typical, if somewhat sleazy parts of everyday consumer life. But put them together and you get this nugget of infotainment from the ethically-challenged Daily Yomiuri:
Bobby Valentine learns the joy of Japanese
Yoko Mizui Daily Yomiuri Staff Writer
“The most exciting thing that ever happened to me was not winning the Asian Championship and the Japan Championship last year. Nor was it winning the Major League. It was not even winning koryusen this year,” said Chiba Lotte Marines baseball team manager Bobby Valentine. “The most exciting thing was that at the age of 50 plus, I could discover Step Up Nihongo and learn the language.”
Valentine talked about how he learned the Japanese language and utilizes it in managing his team at a seminar to introduce a new e-learning system, “eSUN,” in Tokyo on June 26.
Step Up Nihongo (SUN) is a set of textbooks for non-Japanese to study the Japanese language, written by Shigekatsu Yamauchi, who also writes the monthly column “Japanese in Depth” for the Language Connection page of The Daily Yomiuri.
That’s right, just when you think Chiba Marines manager Bobby Valentine is going to give us some insight into ups and downs of his attempts to learn the language of his adopted home (which he incidentally lives away from in the off-season), BAM you get a sales pitch. There is nothing indicating that this article is an advertisement meant to promote a specific product. And adding insult to injury, there’s next to no info about how good Valentine’s Japanese actually is or how he really learned it. I guess it’s up to us to try eSUN and find out, right?
In the interest of fairness, there are dozens of press releases put out and promotional events held every single day in Japan announcing the arrival of some great new product. Every one of them claims to be newsworthy, making it up to the reporter/editor’s judgment to know what is really worth printing. If we give the Yomiuri the benefit of the doubt, “Bobby Valentine endorses Japanese study method” could be newsworthy in and of itself. He’s yet another success story of a foreigner in Japan, so people want to hear just about any tidbit of information that’s available. I mean, color me ignorant, but I didn’t even know Valentine was seriously studying Japanese, although I’m not about to start believing it now (Question: is his Japanese any good? According to this Nov 2005 interview it’s “a major problem”). Unfortunately, the article is not exactly written to emphasize the newsworthy aspects of the event. Again and again the writer emphasizes the benefits of eSUN.
Keep in mind that in the Japanese media, product placement passed off as news (i.e.: with no mark denoting that you’re looking at an ad rather than actual news) is rampant (for example, Nikkei has an entire Saturday supplement for just such a purpose). Marxy has some good coverage of that phenomenon on his blog.
I would say this article fits snugly into that tradition of unannounced advertising. Especially since after about 10 minutes of the most cursory research, I was able to unearth a good bit of info to that makes it unlikely that Valentine is merely a volunteer supporter of this learning technique.
First let’s consider: are we really expected to believe that the discovery of this product was the most exciting moment ever in the life of the Bobby Valentine, the only foreign manager (except for Sadaharu Oh I guess but he doesn’t count) in Japanese baseball to ever win the Pacific League and Japan Series championships and, coincidentally, the inventor of the “wrap” sandwich?
If it is, he’s been quiet about it up to now – he only mentions the product once on his official blog (which in turn is a marketing gimmick for a different site) in the form of a brief non-sequitur in a February 2006 post explaining how the blog works:
It is very interesting to note that David, who is bilingual in English and Japanese, learned his Japanese from the same teacher I am currently learning mine! Our teacher is Shige Yamauchi-sensei of ICI, a foreign language school in Tokyo. Using Step Up Nihongo (SUN), which is a wonderful teaching tool for those that want to learn Japanese, students can not only learn it by book and tape form but also interactive internet lessons as well.
But that brief endorsement was enough to warrant ICI, creator of the Step Up method and the company featured in the article in question, to include a full-on graphic logo (linked to the above blog post) on their website to let potential students know that Valentine endorses their methods:
And I’m sure he does – but I have a tough time believing he’s doing this simply as an uncompensated advocate. The article claims that Valentine was hooked on eSUN after someone handed it to him on a plane. Sure, and James Bond drives a BMW to impress chicks. Valentine is a businessman. Look at the way he’s doing his blog: some secretary is recording his thoughts while he’s on the road, and then transcribing them onto a blog that links directly to a major Valentine investment. Pretty shrewd!
And from the get-go, the seminar that constitutes the “where” of the article was held by a company run by a Yomiuri contributor. Considering that the very existence of his column is a convenient way to drum up business, sneaking in a cheap promotion of a celebrity endorsement of his product doesn’t make for much of an intellectual stretch. And being a part of the Yomiuri establishment must make it easy to cut in line ahead of other, less-connected Japanese learning methods.
So we’ve got a) An article that is clearly pushing a specific product but does not identify itself as an ad; b) a subject who in all likelihood is a paid (but unannounced) spokesman for the product; and c) The company offering said product has personal and financial connections to Yomiuri. In my own amateur opinion, such an article violates the “newspaper ethics” that the Yomiuri supposedly subscribes to as a member of the Japan Newspaper Publishers and Editors Association (NSK). Here’s the relevant excerpt of the NSK’s Journalistic Canon, Newspaper Advertising Printing Standards (for some reason these standards are left out of the English version of the NSK website):
[Newspapers] shall not print advertisements that correspond to the following:
[omitted]
3. Falsehoods or items for which there is a danger of misinterpretation.
“Items for which there is a danger of misinterpretation” refers to the following:
(1) [Advertisements] that use formatting and expressions that look ambiguously like editorial matter, making the fact that it is an advertisement unclear.
[rest omitted]
So as long as the journalistic canon applies to online articles (at least it seems to in the US) the DY might consider sticking the word “advertisement” above articles that serve little purpose than to sell us something. Until either that happens or I get definitive proof that Bobby Valentine has no endorsement deal with Step Up Nihongo, I will continue to be properly offended.
(Thanks to FG for pointing this article out to me)
Yukan Fuji learned on July 6 that a judge at the Sendai High Court ordered a man (66) of Kesennuma City, Miyagi Prefecture, to stop following 6 young girls and their parents and pay damages in a lawsuit against him brought by the parents of girl victims alleging that the man followed 3 girls the next day after receiving a guilty verdict for touching the same girls.
According to the July 4 appeal decision, the man was arrested in April 2005 for forced indecency for touching the bodies of 3 elementary school-aged girls, and in June the Sendai Regional Court sentenced the man to 2 years 6 months suspended for 5 years.
The man was released after promising in court that he would “no talk to them or anything anymore”, but he talked to 2 of the 3 girls the next day after the verdict and repeatedly followed the girls for 2.5 months.
The parents sued the man, demanding he cease following the girls and pay 6.6 million yen on allegations that “mental scars remain in our daughters that will last a lifetime.” In March 2006 the Sendai regional court fully accepted the accusations, ordering the man not to take any action that would cause grief to the girls or their parents, and the Sendai high court followed suit, ordering him to pay 5.1 million yen.
The man appealed, denying that he followed the girls.
ZAKZAK 2006/07/06
The diaries of the Columbine killers are at last online for the world to see. Here‘s a link to the PDF, and here’s the Smoking Gun site. While I of course condemn what Eric and Dylan did, as someone who also harbored misplaced resentment of the “popular kids” as a high school student I can’t help but feel a certain empathy toward them. Had I not found some positive encouragement and an outlet for my energy (studying Japanese of course) I could have ended up doing something similarly stupid. I think Matt Stone in Bowling for Columbine put it best when he said that if only someone could have told them that all the bullshit from high school ends almost from the day of graduation they might not have gone through with it.
My favorite part so far is the “Hell Dog” on page 79. He has two extra arms in addition to his four legs: one’s a chaingun, the other a rocket launcher. Sweet! Maybe we’ll see that monster in Doom 4.
If you’re like me 5 years ago, or like a good number of the folks at Crisscross, you are a young American, you’re learning Japanese, you’re enrolled in a liberal arts-focused university program, and you probably want to use your Japanese language skills in your future career. That’s great, and I commend your aspirations. But I am here to tell you that if you’re seriously looking to use Japanese in your career, good reading comprehension is absolutely crucial.
Most Japanophiles who make it to Japan for an extended stay are far less likely to pay attention to developing reading comprehension in Japanese as they are to speaking pidgin-slang Japanese with their gaijin-groupie friends (see tip #23 at the link), hooking up with the locals, and in general taking the path of least resistance. That is understandable, but there are numerous benefits of boning up your reading skills even while you are in Japan. Kate McArthur, a columnist for Japan job site daijob.com, summarizes them well: expanded menu choices in restaurants, ability to find coupons and other deals, using Japanese websites, and reading the ubiquitous subtitles on Japanese TV (Like her, I hold the irrational belief that “the written language is so intriguing with all the various looks and meanings that I can’t understand how it could possibly not be interesting to someone”).
Even among those who are interested in learning to (and in some cases already claim they can) read Japanese – the types who intentionally stay out of the gaijin bubble – many do not measure up when it comes to reading ability. This phenomenon I attribute to the gaijin complex, by which foreigners interested in Japan isolate themselves from others of their kind. They’ll stick with their girlfriends, host families, or whoever and seek out the so-called real Japan – the “Other” if you will. Without objective scrutiny or friendly competition (and with the entire population of Japan praising them for supposedly excellent Japanese abilities), these people start to think their Japanese is much much better than it actually is.
But the fact of the matter is, good reading skills are almost always an essential element if you want to make yourself useful in a quality Japan-related job, and most employers are not going to tolerate someone who cannot deliver no matter how entrenched his/her gaijin complex is. If you are otherwise lacking in specialized skills, companies that hire “Japan-friendly” university graduates usually put them to uses that stray significantly from what the employee would like to do – following developments on Capitol Hill or a specific industry, editing the English of superiors, coordinating between Japanese and foreign staff, website development, and so on. Not quite what you had in mind, right?
So now that you see why reading skills are important, the next question is how good do they have to be? For Americans, the general standard should be the ability to read any given written work in Japanese and precisely tell someone what it means in plain language (English or Japanese).
This should be obvious, but did you ever hear anyone tell you that in Japanese class? Perhaps because most students are only in the classes for the credit requirements and don’t have much serious interest in studying, Japanese as a second language classes at universities tend to hold their students to unacceptably low standards. On top of that, the most exalted goal for JSL learners who are somewhat serious is the Japanese Language Proficiency Test Level 1 (“ikkyu” in Japanese). As someone who paid the $50 and passed ikkyu in 2003, I can tell you from experience that while passing the ikkyu was a very helpful goal during my earlier studies, it was in no way the end of the journey.
The JLPT, sponsored by the Japanese government-affiliated Japan Foundation, tests listening, vocabulary, kanji, and reading abilities on 4 levels, 4 being the easiest and 1 the hardest. Level 1 requires knowledge of around 2,000 kanji and a corresponding vocab/listening/reading ability. It’s certainly not easy to pass the JLPT Level 1, but in fact Level 1 Japanese abilities often do not translate into the common-sense reading abilities mentioned above.
So if you’re not quite there yet, keep at it! The Internet provides an inexhaustible wealth of study materials at your fingertips free of charge. Read asahi.com, kikko’s blog, 2-channel, Bloomberg Japan, slashdot Japan, public-domain novels, or whatever floats your boat! The vast majority of material never gets translated into English, so if you have a blog you might consider summarizing or translating the more interesting bits into English for posterity and practice. And if you’re reading something and don’t understand a concept or the topic at hand, look it up on the ALC dictionary or read up on it at wikipedia Japan! Even if you don’t end up landing the job you want, it’s a wonderfully unfiltered way to learn about Japanese culture and society.
Taken outside the Washington Post building in DC with my camera phone.
I was just watching Korean TV from my posh executive digs here in Washington and a fun ad for a Korean-language emergency hotline came on. I’ll describe it for you:
There’s been a car crash. A besuited Korean man, bleeding but coherent, has called 911 on his cell phone. The music is urgent and dramatic. He speaks in slightly halting but proficient English:
“Hello my name is Park and I’d like to report an accident… no Park is my name! I have a rent-a-car… Hello? No, there has been an accident!”
Then an announcer begins speaking in Korean. The only word I can pick up is “hangukeu” (Korean language). Then an 800-number appears on the screen with some Korean text. End of commercial.
I can’t tell if the hotline is at all government-sponsored, but if there’s a real need for such services maybe it should be. I hope the 800-number doesn’t connect you to an ambulance-chasing lawyer or something.
I have a running bet with a former colleague that “man purses” will catch on among American men in the near future, similar to their popularity in Japan. For some reason, he thinks that American men, with their embrace of such tasteful fashions as pink polo shirts with the collar popped, have more dignity than to carry a purse. That I find to be a somewhat insulting view of the Japanese – Americans are just as capable of making horrible fashion decisions as any other people of the world. So it was with great joy that I saw this story from a British tech news site:
Rise of the manbag: Are gadgets to blame?
We’re carrying too many techie toys…
By Will Sturgeon
Published: Wednesday 5 July 2006
The number of gadgets we’re carrying around on a daily basis – from BlackBerrys and mobile phones to iPods and PDAs – means men in the UK may be forced to embrace the metrosexual phenomenon of the ‘manbag’.
Smaller than a sports bag and often more stylish to boot, the manbag is becoming a must-have item for all UK gadget fans keen to stow their multiple devices.
And while four per cent of men surveyed for a piece of research from business communications company Damovo still go for the ‘batman’ utility belt approach of clipping their gadgets around their waist, it seems that stereotypical image of the gadget fan at large is being killed off by the manbag.
A third of respondents (32 per cent) still manage to get their techie toys into a pocket but by far the most popular option is putting all the gadgets into a bag.
