Archive for April, 2007

English Teacher – A Day in the Life

Here’s a cool and very informative video about a day in the life of an English teacher in Japan. It was created by YouTube user Posatrocible, who had the following to say about it:

This was a video I shot and put together to show to the fam and friends a few years back illustrating an average day teaching English in Japan.

It all takes place in the city of Oita, about a 90 minute flight south west of Tokyo, on Kyushu island.

This is LONG, about 37 minutes, but will show what teaching English overseas, particularly in Japan, is like.

Lots of folks have asked how one can get over to Japan to teach English. One fantastic way(with a B.A. of any variety) is JET: http://www.jetprogramme.org/

Check it out:

Big Brain Academy: Wii’ed Up (Video)

One of my favorite DS games, Big Brain Academy, has hit the Nintendo Wii. Here’s a commercial featuring a family as they train their brains:

Bulletin board supervisor faces charges for not deleting message calling girl ‘ugly’

Just a reminder: it seems that you can be charged with defamation of character in Japan if you aren’t timely enough when deleting an insulting message posted by a third party on your bulletin board:

OSAKA — A company executive who supervised an online bulletin board has been reported to prosecutors for allegedly failing to delete a message that called a junior high school girl “ugly,” police said on Friday.

The 26-year-old executive of an Osaka lumber wholesaling firm, whose name is being withheld, stands accused of abetting defamation of character.

Sometime around Aug. 20 last year, a junior high school girl wrote on a bulletin board that another junior high school girl was “ugly.”

The student who was called ugly came to learn about the message in October after a friend informed her. The girl’s mother emailed the provider of the bulletin board and asked them to delete the comments. The provider told the mother to file a request with the bulletin board’s supervisor.

[...]

The supervisor of the bulletin board reportedly deleted the message soon after the mother of the 13-year-old victim talked with police.

“I knew that what was written was slanderous,” he said. “But I thought it was not serious enough to delete immediately.”

Watch out, forum/blog administrators!

PBS interview with Sankei Shinbun editor about the comfort women issue (Video)

Yoshihisa Komori of Japan’s conservative Sankei Shinbun newspaper was interviewed on the comfort women issue for the PBS series Foreign Exchange with Fareed Zakaria on March 29. Although Abe has since made additional statements of apology since that date, many continue to insist that the Prime Minister is denying history. In this interview, Yoshihisa Komori is pretty clear in giving more context to the viewpoint Abe has been expressing, so it’s definitely work watching if you’re interested in the comfort women debate. This is a video of the interview, with both Japanese and English subtitles:

For more of Foreign Exchange with Fareed Zakaria, check out the official website of the show: it has links to google videos of entire episodes!

Swimming Bones Sashimi (Video)

Here’s a cool bit of Japanese TV that the Digg-ers dugg up. It features a dish called “swimming bones” sashimi. Basically, the sushi chef fillets the fish nice and quick, and drops its quickly diminishing self back into the tank. Like Anthony Hopkins dining on Ray Liotta’s brains while he’s alive, this is partly disturbing and partly awesome. Enjoy.

Freaky, cool, and tasty. This dish is now on my list of things to try. Anyone else interested in partaking of this gastronomic spectacle?

Japan Photo of the Week: Hana Matsuri

Golden Week, a week of national holidays and festivals is just about to start here in Japan. So I decided to share a festival photo with you this week. Festivals occur all over Japan throughout the year, but really start to pick up during the spring and summer. This photo is from a festival called Hana Matsuri (Flower Festival) and is held in Shiogama, a city in Northern Japan. Hana Matsuri is actually one of the oldest festivals in Japan and the process has not been changed since it started.

Basically, in the weeks prior to the festival, men take place in a ritual to cleanse their soul and purify themselves so they can carry around a shrine. This shrine weighs about 1 ton! It is believed that for the one day of the festival, God will enter this shrine, so that is why they must purify themselves. The shrine is carried around the city starting and ending with Shiogama Shrine, where they carry the small heavy shrine up and down over 200 stairs!

This photograph was taken by Evan Pike. If you would like to see more photos of Hana Matsuri or buy this photograph, check out the gallery.