Posts Tagged ‘gaming’

Japanese Middle School English comes to the DS in April

If you’ve taught middle school in Japan before, you’ve seen this book: New Horizon. Coming April 24th, from Paon, Japanese schoolchildren will be able do textbook activities sans paper and pen, on their DSes. Even more interesting, is that kids will be able to do listening practice, in addition to writing practice, without the need for CDs or a dedicated portable audio player. I’ve taught in middle schools here, and what I hear from kids is that they don’t typically own iPods or the like.

It makes me jealous. When I was young, technology hadn’t yet advanced to the point where we could do anything this cool with our studies. Hopefully, since a lot of children don’t usually enjoy studying English, putting it on a DS and giving it the illusion of being a game, they’ll give it a try, possibly learning more than they normally would.

Japan Boom in East Asia

Here’s a pretty interesting FTV news report on the current popularity of Japanese language and culture in East Asia:

A quick summary of the Shanghai portion of the video:

• -The couple interviewed at the beginning of the segment says they are buying anime stuff because they’ve watched and enjoyed anime since they were children.
• -We are shown a Japanese anime/game store in Shanghai, which is usually crowded with young people on the weekends.
• -A 22-year-old Chinese guy allows the reporters to come to his apartment, which he shows them his love of Japanese culture by playing Wii and singing along with some popular Japanese songs. He also likes Samurai-era Japanese history, talking about Tokugawa Ieyasu in Japanese.
• In addition to the anime/gamer scene, events where Chinese people studying the Japanese language and Japanese residents of Shanghai gather in parks to practice what they have learned and socialize.
• A Japanese language school in Shanghai is shown, with individual classrooms named after areas of Tokyo [Odaiba, Roppongi, Ikebukuro, etc.]. Sometimes classes involve one-on-one conversation with Japanese teachers, but the school also has its students watch anime for listening practice. Many of the students interviewed mention anime and games as their motivation behind studying the Japanese language.

And a summary of the second half of the video, which takes place in Taiwan:

• A narrator mentions that about 55,000 Taiwanese people took the Japanese Language Proficiency test last year.
• Apparently there is a Japanese language study boom going on in Taiwan, and many mothers are signing their children up for private language schools like the one shown in the video. We are shown some of the typical lessons held there, which include playing karuta (a game in which players attempt to slap and capture cards representing certain words or phrases), singing, and dancing. As part of the total immersion environment, the kids all pick Japanese names for themselves. The school claims it can teach kids to read and write Japanese within a 2-3 year period.
• The mother of a little girl studying Japanese says that it is not uncommon for Taiwanese children to study both Japanese and English these days.
• Interest in Japanese culture and work/business are given as the two major reasons for the current Japanese language boom going on in East Asia.

Harpooned: Japanese Cetacean Research Simulator

Some anti-whaling activists have made a satirical computer game that simulates Japan’s research whaling program. Here’s the YouTube video trailer for the game :

The “Harpooned: Japanese Cetacean Research Simulator” is being distributed under a Creative Commons license, so it’s free to download at Harpooned.org.

[via NeoSamurai/Kotaku]

Greenpeace Attacks Nintendo

Greenpeace has released scorecards on the Eco-friendliness of electronics companies, and they have given Nintendo a zero:

Adding the four companies to its quarterly environmental rankings, Greenpeace listed all the newcomers at the bottom of the list of 18, with Nintendo becoming the first company to score zero out of a possible 10 points.

The most nature-friendly companies under the criteria were Sony Ericsson and Samsung, each scoring 7.7 points.

Greenpeace punished Nokia, the former leader, and Motorola for failing to live up to their pledges to take back used hardware in five of six countries where it conducted spot checks.

Since Greenpeace launched its scorecard in August 2006, some companies have complained of unfairness, but few have ignored the ranking.

Note: As pointed out by a commenter, if Greenpeace could not find the information it requested about certain companies’ environmental practices, it automatically gave that company a zero. In many cases, spokesmen for the companies didn’t have information on hand to give an adequate response, so their companies suffered in the rankings.