Archive for November, 2006

“Korean Wave” Expo opens, female Japanese fans go wild!

The “Hallyu [Korean Wave] Expo in Asia” opened this week on the Korean island of Jeju this week:

Titled “Hallyu Expo in Asia,” the exposition is a high-tech multimedia event to promote Korean culture to outer regions by providing participants with the chance to experience dramas, movies and pop music.

“The expo is to highlight the cultural pride of Koreans by expanding Korean pop culture to other Asian countries. Also with the participation of many ‘hallyu stars,’ we would let the people in other nations realize the infinite value of hallyu,” said the Hallyu Expo Committee in a statement.

Here’s an example of how the Japanese news media covered the opening day of the expo:

Highlights:

An example of one of the 2500 Japanese tourists who traveled to the beginning of the event. Her reason for coming? A chance to see Bae Yong-joon (Yon-sama)!

Before or after seeing Yon-sama, his Japanese fans can enjoy one of the Bae Yong-joon meals that local restaurants are offering. This pictured meal feeds four Yon-sama-hungry old ladies for a price of 12,000 yen (about 103 US dollars).

When Yon-sama arrived, the ladies in the crowd went wild. As the Chosun Ilbo reports:

When he finally showed up during Jeju City Mayor Kim Tae-hwan’s opening address, Bae, his hair tied up in a ponytail for the filming of the new drama “Taewangsasingi”, waved and smiled. It was his first official appearance since promoting the movie “April Snow” last year. Chaos ensued. The fans, mostly women between 30 and 80 who had come to Jeju by charter plane, shouted for joy, drowning out the mayor’s speech. Bae laid a finger on his lips to quiet down the excited crowd, but it took 10 minutes before Kim was able to wrap up his address.

Fans braved sharp gales in the island to get a glimpse of their idol. Digital camera in one hand, binoculars in the other, they hung on Bae’s every little gesture. A 57-year-old Japanese fan who gave her name as Kiyoko said she made the three-night visit to Jeju only to see Bae and was satisfied to get a look at him even from a long distance. Asked why she likes Bae so much, she answered the Korean actor was graceful and gentle, qualities rarely found in Japanese men.

Show us your signature grace and your gentle smile, Yon-sama! Oh, if only other men could keep a stupid smile on their faces for so long!

The sight of Yon-sama’s beauty brought this woman to tears.

The economic effect of the “Korean Wave” might be fading fast, but these die-hard Japanese fans don’t care!

News for November 30, 2006

Some news/links for this morning:

-An Englilsh school in Yamanashi has run an employment ad for a new teacher at their school. The requirements:
“blonde hair blue or green eyes and brightly character“.

-The New York Times has a feature on the CLAMP manga authors. [Link via Dark Diamond Network]

-Japanese police have raided four locations connected to an employment company believed to have dispatched workers to transfer manufacturing technologies to North Korea.

-Are Japanese companies intentionally producing low-quality TV programs? Judging from just about every dramas I see on TV, I’d have to say yes…

-U2 frontman Bono thinks Shinzo Abe is “cool.”

-Expedia Inc, the world’s largest online travel company, has launched a Japanese language version of its service at Expedia.co.jp!

-Russian 18-year-old Wakanoho has become the youngest-ever foreigner to be promoted to sumo’s juryo division.

-Hokkaido is afraid that a trade deal with Australia will lead to agricultural losses.

-A weird foreigner with long hair talks about figures on episode 8 of Tokyo Eye.

-What Japan Thinks has translated the Top 100 goo searches of 2006. Everybody loves 2-channel!

-Edible squid-flavored postcards!

-This is what happens to foreigners who leech images from Japanese sites [they are given a Takeshima propaganda version of the original image].

-Japanese researchers have created an ultradense carbon nanotube. Neat.

Afternoon update:

-Yet another junior high school student suicide. No word yet on whether she had been bullied.

-The Yankees have 2 Japanese players now? Well, the Red Sox can match that.

-Japan’s Prince Akishino, the father of Japan’s recently born male heir, turned 41 today.

-JASRAC, the copyright enforcement association for Japan’s music industry, has had a man arrested for distributing ring tones on his website.

-The Yomiuri Shinbun has an article on the reluctance of schools to suspend bullies.

-Rooting out Japan’s woes, an editorial from the IHT.

-You thought the students in your English class sucked? Check out Lindsay Lohan’s writing abilities.

Government panel on educational reform releases a list of proposals to combat bullying

Mainichi Shinbun and Japan Today have posted articles on a a list of anti-bullying proposals released today by a government panel. Let’s take a look at the proposals mentioned in the article:

-Clarify the standards for warning and punishing children who bully schoolmates. Seems reasonable, but how exactly are bullies supposed to be punished? In most schools, teachers simply have no means of punishing students: there is no detention, there is no option to send an unruly student/bully to “the office,” suspension does not exist, and physically beating some sense into the bully is obviously out of the question. So I guess they can keep warning bullies over and over, with no actual means of punishing them?

-Convince children that those who turn a blind eye to bullying are also perpetrators. An interesting idea, but how can they seriously expect students in the silent majority to stand up and oppose bullies? They would only make themselves targets for bullying, and as we already know, teachers have no effective means of actually punishing bullies when such a thing happens.

-Teachers who turn a blind eye, spur or get involved in schoolyard bullying should be subject to disciplinary measures. It is simply amazing that a panel had to meet to decide such a thing. You mean to say that teachers who actively bully students should be subject to some sort of punishment?! No way! In the case of turning a blind eye, teachers will simply be able to claim they honestly did not notice the bullying, which should keep such teachers safe.

-’The proposal emphasized that “schools that solve bullying problems are excellent schools,” thereby warning teachers against covering up such incidents.‘ I would think this would have the opposite effect. If schools with no bullying problems are to be viewed as excellent schools, won’t that encourage schools to continue their practice of covering up bullying and avoiding the use of the term “bullying” when talking about problems? If a school honestly reports that it has a bullying problem, it would reflect badly on the school and it’s teachers. I suspect a huge number of schools will continue to not report bullying, since such an action only receives media attention when a student commits suicide, and in most cases bullied students put up with their situation and live on in misery.

-The panel said that schools could make bullies engage in social service activities and study separate classrooms. This appears to be the closest thing to a useful suggestion the panel made. It seems like a good idea to isolate the bullies from their peers, which could humiliate them and encourage them to straighten up their act. Will teachers actually stand up to the bullies and force them into “special” classes? I expect that such a measure would only be employed in the most extreme cases of bullying.

-The panel, however, has dropped the idea of suspending bullies from school, saying that no student should be excluded from an education. I suppose that, as an American, I simply don’t “get” the Japanese ideal of not excluding any student from an “education.” From my own personal experience as an assistant teacher, I can say that unruly students and bullies seem to spend a considerable amount of their class time disrupting the education of the majority of students through their bullying and general “assholery.” Is it unreasonable to conclude that current system, in which “good” students go to private cram schools most nights of the week, is partially due to the fact that their daytime schools cannot provide them with a proper education because the sad state of discipline in this country has made many classrooms more like the Los Angeles of “Escape from LA,” than a safe place of learning?

-The panel called on schoolteachers, boards of education and parents of schoolchildren to cooperate closely in eliminating schoolyard bullying, and recommended that education boards set up teams to support schools’ efforts to prevent bullying. Yes, we need more bureaucratic action to solve bullying, more meetings and panels. How about some actual results?

-Schools and education boards should notify the parents of schoolchildren that students are allowed to move to another school to avoid schoolyard bullying. Wow, sounds like a solution to me! Thanks, education reform panel! I never thought of that one!

I’m not going to claim that I have all the answers to the bullying issue. This is clearly a very complicated problem, and bullying cannot simply be eliminated by stricter anti-bullying measures in schools. However, I do think that Japanese schools could certainly improve the situation by borrowing a few tricks from foreign countries. A few big ones are:

-the ability to give after school/recess detention
-a system in which teachers could immediately send unruly students to a detention room during class
-the ability to suspend/expel students

Teaching in Japan has taught me to appreciate the “zero-tolerance” disciplinary system in place in many American schools, in which students are dealt harsh punishments for even the slightest bullying/harassment-related offenses. It might be a bit extreme to adopt the same system in Japan, but somebody needs to start dealing out strict punishments to unruly students and bullies. The old system in which Japanese teachesers were allowed to deal out corporal punishment might even be superior to the current situation…

Wife of ‘No Surrender’ soldier becomes president of conservative women’s group

Today’s Mainichi WaiWai column reports that Machie Onoda, the wife of Hiroo Onoda has agreed to take over as the head of the Japan Women’s Association, a conservative group that strongly opposes gender free education and the right for women to retain their maiden names after marriage. For those of you who don’t know, Hiroo Onoda was a Imperial Japanese Army Second Lieutenant who hid in the jungles of the Philippines for 29 years until finally surrendering and returning to Japan in 1974. Kind of interesting that the wife of a man who was refused to believe that Imperial Japan had been defeated for so many years has become a champion of traditional values, isn’t it?

After returning to Japan, Hiroo Onoda as treated as a hero and an oddity by the Japanese public. He eventually wrote an account of his experience in the Philippines, which has been published in English and sold under the title ‘No Surrender: My Thirty-Year War’. I read it a few years ago, and I recommend it to anyone and it was quite interesting. Even after being discovered and contacted by a Japanese student, Onoda refused to admit the war had ended until the student went to Japan, found Onoda’s former commanding officer, and brought him to Onoda. After Onoda surrendered, he was given a pardon by the Philippine government and allowed to return to Japan (Onoda had killed about 30 Philippine inhabitants of the island he was hiding on; in his eyes they were enemy combatants).

Polling Japanese Students #6: Is your mother a housewife?

For this edition of Polling Japanese Students, I asked 31 junior high school students what their mothers did for a living. Here are the results:

1. Is your mother a housewife?

2. If your mother is not a housewife, what is her occupation?

I can’t say I was shocked by the results of this poll. Feminism hasn’t exactly caught on in Japan, so few women are out there fighting to escape their traditional roles. While a majority of mothers were not housewives, most of their occupations seemed to fall under traditional female jobs such as teaching and being an “office lady.” I guess it’ll be a while before students start saying their mother is an executive, lawyer, or lawyer…

As always, I am looking for new questions to ask the kids and I am open to your suggestions. Please post some in the comments!

Previous editions:
-Polling Japanese Students #5: Smokers in the family
-Polling Japanese Students #4: What foreign country would you like to visit?
-Polling Japanese Students #3: PlayStation 3 vs. Nintendo Wii
-Polling Japanese Students #2: What’s your favorite country in Asia (aside from Japan)?
-Polling Japanese Students #1: PSP or DS? China or South Korea?

-To be featured in future editions: Ideal marriage age, geography test results, future dreams, toilet preference, and more!

News for November 29, 2006

A few Japan-related links for this morning:

-More than half of Japanese people reuse their bath water, according to recently translated poll at What Japan Thinks.

-An Asia Times editorial places the blame for Japan/China history disputes squarely on Japan [and completely ignores how the Chinese government cultivated and exploited anti-Japanese nationalism, not to mention Japan's 21 apologies to China].

-Discover magazine speculates about a possible Japanese moon base.

-A firm has been accused of pressuring elderly people into paying ridiculous sums for “lucky” seals. Apparently their sales staff included a fortune teller who would warn the old people that the only way to avoid a horrible fate for their children would be to buy one of their seals. Anybody up for starting a magic bean business?

-Monta Mino is the world’s busiest TV host.

-Japan’s growing public debt is one of the 4 Great Risks to the World Economy.

-TAMIFLU SUPPLIES ARE TOO LOW TO HANDLE A MAJOR OUTBREAK OF BIRD FLU! PANIC NOW! Or, you can just hope you’re one of the lucky 25 million who get some Tamiflu.

Afternoon update:

-A junior high school student hung himself yesterday in Hokkaido. In his suicide note, he wrote, “I will die not because of bullying, but because I’m tired of living.”

-The New York Yankees have purchased the right to negotiate a contract with Japanese pitcher Kei Igawa from the Hanshin Tigers for roughly $26 million.

-The Asahi Shinbun offers more details on the dumb woman who got her car smashed by a train.

-Seiko Epson Corp has reached a settlement with six firms in Germany, Hong Kong, the United States and South Korea over the U.S. ink cartridge patent infringement case.

-According to recently released statistics, ‘Brain Training’ games were incredibly popular in 2006.

-Captain Japan reports about Deep Impact’s victory in the Japan Cup.

-A Nagoya man has been arrested for burning down his own house.

-Check out the beatiful bento art at Tigers and Cranes.

-Digital Tokyo has photos of the Pirates of the Caribbean Cafe that was recently opened in Tokyo.

-Korea and Japan will hold working-level defense talks on Friday. The talks had been delayed for 16 months “as Japan angered South Korea by laying claim to the South Korean islets of Dokdo in the East Sea”[Takeshima/Liancourt Rocks in the Sea of Japan].

-Screw Memoirs of a Geisha: the Asahi Shinbun reports on a maiko blogger.

-The winners of the Hochi Movie Awards have been announced.

-54 dogs died in a fire at a pet shop in Ibaraki prefecture last night.

-Has Shinzo Abe returned to the LDP of olden days?