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satsu_jin
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QUOTE:

Originally posted by persimmon at 2009-1-27 16:24
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1UtHysDSSAo&feature=related

Thanks Persimmon,

I just enjoyed watching the pictures and listening to the lyrics.

2009-1-27 07:00 PM

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satsu_jin
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QUOTE:

Originally posted by persimmon at 2009-1-27 16:24

Thanks Persimmon,

I just enjoyed watching the pictures and listening to the lyrics.

2009-1-27 07:01 PM

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710 A.D. the Japanese capital moved from Fujiwara-Kyo 藤原京 to Heijoukyou 平城京 (present-day Nara 奈良 and the Nara period (奈良時代 710-794) began. The new Japanese capital was modeled after the Chinese capital of Chang'an 長安 (Japanese Chouan ) It was the period when Chinese influence reached its peak. Todai-ji (東大寺) was built and the Great Buddha was created under the order of Emperor Shoumu 聖武. This was also the time of great poets and Waka writers. One of the greatest was Yamanoue no Okura (山上憶良). He wrote a choka 長歌, titled 貧窮問答歌, Hinkyū mondōka. An exerpt from this choka is the below listed Tanka 短歌.

Yononaka wo
Ushi to yasashi to
Omoe domo
Tobitachi kanetsu
Tori ni shi arane ba

世の中を
憂しとやさしと
おもへども
飛び立ちかねつ
鳥にしあらねば

I feel the life is
sorrowful and unbearable
though
I can't flee away
since I am not a bird.

2009-1-28 05:57 PM

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satsu_jin
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QUOTE:

Originally posted by persimmon at 2009-1-28 18:09
This famous Japanese folksong Lau Guan Kim introduced in his forum. He wrote:

Akatombo, Utsunomiya girls choir
Japanese traditional folksong, concert in Langenbogen, May 2006
[url]http ...

This is in a small town in Eastern Germany. Must have been an attraction for the locals.

Thanks for posting it.

2009-1-28 09:56 PM

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QUOTE:

This is in a small town in Eastern Germany. Must have been an attraction for the locals.

Thanks for posting it.

2009-1-28 09:57 PM

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An highly interesting auction is comong up in Hongkong. Japanese Emperor’s Chinese Box May Fetch More Than US$5 Million.

From Sotheby

An 8th-century tortoiseshell vanity box, said to be a gift from the Tang Dynasty palace to Japan’s Emperor Shomu, will be auctioned in Hong Kong and may fetch more than HK$40 million ($5 million) for its rarity, said host Sotheby’s.

The octagonal box, measuring 35.6 centimeters across and embedded with mother-of-pearl and amber in shapes of flowers, is the highlight of Sotheby’s planned sale of antiques, gems and paintings on April 8, the first of its biannual auctions in the city this year that set benchmark prices for Asia’s art market.

Most Tang Dynasty artifacts are exhumed. Not so the tortoiseshell box, which is valuable also because it had stayed above ground. The item, consigned to Sotheby’s by an undisclosed Japanese individual, had once resided at the repository of the Todaiji, or Great Eastern Temple, in the southern Japanese prefecture of Nara.

Todaiji, founded by Emperor Shomu (reign: 724-749), was his government’s temple and received most of his cherished personal belongings after he died, donated by the Empress Dowager Komyo as a sign of her devotion, according to a Sotheby’s statement.

The box is one of three identical items, one still at the Todaiji repository and the other at the Museum Yamato Bunkakan, also in Nara,

2009-2-4 04:31 PM

#154

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From various sources we've heard quite often how badly Chinese do speak English. Here is a view from Prof. Gregory Clark who, among other languages, is fluent in Japanese, Putonghua and Russian, about the situation in Japan. Maybe one or the other English teacher over here can comment on it:

What's wrong with the way English is taught in Japan

By GREGORY CLARK
The good news is that Japan's education bureaucrats realize that despite six years of middle and high school study many Japanese are still unable to speak English well. The bad news is that the bureaucrats plan to solve this problem by giving us more of what caused the problem.

True, there is nothing wrong with the move to have primary schools provide two or more years of basic English, mainly simple conversation, writing and songs. However, qualified teachers are few and the primary school curriculum is already crowded. But the main problem, teachers say, is that any benefits gained disappear rapidly once students move on to middle school. Children are bewildered by the sudden shift from living English to textbook English.

The bureaucrats focus on high school teaching. They say they want more English vocabulary to be taught, and will require Japan's large army of middle and high school English-language teachers to speak more English in the classroom. But is making Japan's children listen even more to the poor accents and pronunciations of their English-language teachers likely to improve things?

The bureaucrats plan to have these teachers take intensive spoken-English improvement courses. But if as an adult you speak a foreign language badly you tend to stay that way forever. In any case it will probably do little to cure teachers from their bias toward grammar and translation-based learning.

Japan seems not to want to realize the harm caused by having young students spend six years listening to bad English. Some say that if the world is happy with Indian or Singapore English then it should accept Japanese English. But these other varieties of English are standarized and fluent. Listening to them is no harder (sometimes easier even) than listening to the accents and dialects of British English.

Japanese English on the other hand ("Japlish" as some call it) is a hodgepodge of accents and pronunciations thrown together and spoken haltingly. It is hard on both the ear and the patience. More importantly, most Japlish speakers find it very hard to process English spoken at normal speed. Normal conversation is almost impossible.

Many blame problems on alleged differences between English and Japanese — grammar, word order, pronunciation, etc. But Korean is close to Japanese linguistically, and many educated Koreans can handle English well. Ironically, a major reason the bureaucrats are trying to improve English teaching in Japan is the sight of Koreans and other Asians, Chinese especially, able to handle the English of conferences and business negotiations far better than Japanese opposite numbers.

The bureaucrats think they can get the same results by meddling with the school curricula. But ask any foreign national teaching English in Japan and he/she will say the main problem is not curricula but the lack of student motivation. Unlike in South Korea, China and much of the rest of Asia, English ability is not as important for future careers. Motivation is bound to be weak.

Another reason could be the same island isolation and cultural self- satisfaction that makes the British notorious for their poor schoolboy French. For many Japanese, six years of forced English education simply produces the so-called English allergy — a determination to learn no more than is needed to pass exams, and an urge to forget everything once the exams are over. Even those who do try hard to learn can easily end up as damaged products.

Language learning is not like math or history — the mere accumulation of facts and data. With language the memory operates at two levels. One is what I call conscious memorization — mastering enough of the grammar, vocabulary, etc., to be able to translate and put sentences together. But at some stage the language has to be moved to the subconscious and that can only happen with strong motivation and good learning techniques — repetition, realistic conversation, good listening materials and so on. Only at this subconscious level can you retain vocabulary and speak the language naturally.

For most Japanese, however, the language remains at the conscious level, which guarantees permanent poor speaking ability, poor listening ability and poor memory retention. (As confirmation, some very interesting research by a Hamamatsu-based professor once showed that the part of the brain used by Japanese who had learned English naturally was quite different from that used by English speakers educated at Japanese schools.)

Japan should rethink the entire basis of its English education. Does every high school leaver really have to know English to university entrance exam level? A case can be made for having all middle school graduates (age 15) be able to read basic English and handle simple conversation. But at high school, English should be an elective, hopefully limited to only a motivated minority. Freed from the many hours now wasted on ineffectual English study, other students would be able to devote much more time to the many other subjects which teachers claim receive far too little attention — science, math and current history especially.

If Japan wants to match the best in the rest of Asia, English education should be concentrated at university level. Ideally university entrants should be given the chance to study English, or any other foreign language, intensively for four years as one leg of a double major or a major/minor combination. Those who do choose language study will by definition be motivated since they have done so either because they like the language or feel it will be important for future careers. Universities also have access to the best teachers and materials.

Many seem to think that languages have to be learned when one is young, well before university. But as someone who has spent most of his adult life learning foreign languages, three of them difficult languages, I disagree. Motivation and materials are the key. Concentrated study by motivated university students with access to good teachers and materials can give far better results than anything coming out of Japan's middle and high schools.

Graduates from these kinds of combination courses — business and Japanese for example — are coming out of Australian and U.S. universities with surprising ability. They quickly improve even more once they live the language abroad. Many had not even begun the study until they were 18. If they begin earlier so much the better. But it is not crucial.

Needless to say, this scheme would allow Japan's universities to provide combination courses using the other languages equally important for Japan's future but now badly neglected, Chinese especially.

Note: On an Education Ministry committee set up in 2002 to discuss ways to improve English teaching in the schools, myself and some others argued as above — that the focus should be on university rather than high school teaching of English. The bureaucrats not only ignored our ideas; they turned round and made a foreign language, mainly English of course, compulsory at the high school level. When will they ever learn?

2009-2-6 01:51 PM

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This is certainly something that does not help to promote better Sino-Japanese understanding. As it looks, both sides have to be blamed. Fake tourists and greedy hospitals.

China probes organ transplants for Japanese

China's Health Ministry says it will investigate alleged illegal organ transplants provided for visiting Japanese in China and punish the doctors and medical institutions involved.

Chinese media reports say that in the past year, 17 Japanese with kidney disease and other illnesses traveled to China as tourists, and then received illegal transplants.

China banned transplant operations for foreigners in 2007 as it says more than one million of its own citizens are waiting, but only about 10,000 have been able to have organ transplants.

Last month, the World Health Organization's Executive Board approved new guidelines calling for countries to try to meet domestic demand for organ transplants.

2009-2-17 10:07 PM

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Hit China movie aids Hokkaido's tourism

A popular Chinese movie helps to boost tourism on the northern Island of Hokkaido:

By EIICHI SHIOZAWA
Kyodo News

BEIJING — A hit Chinese romantic comedy screened in movie theaters during China's New Year holidays is turning Hokkaido into a new tourism spot for Chinese travelers.

Chinese tour operators are already taking advantage of the latest Feng Xiaogang work, "If you are the one," offering weekly tours to locations featured in the movie, which immediately became a box office hit.

"We would like to use this opportunity to get more Chinese visitors to Hokkaido," said a Hokkaido prefectural official in charge of tourism promotion.

The movie, the latest in Feng's series of New Year's Celebration Films, is a love story involving two young Chinese and their romance that starts while they are sightseeing in Hokkaido.

Unlike Tokyo, Osaka and other tourist spots in Honshu, Hokkaido is known for its natural beauty and the pristine scenery of the eastern part of the island, including the Okhotsk Sea coast, the World Natural Heritage site of Shiretoko and the wetlands of Kushiro.

In "If you are the one," Feng takes his audience to Abashiri, a scenic fishing town in northern Hokkaido where the Okhotsk Sea appears magnificently blue.

Also featured in the movie are the little Catholic church on the plains of Shari on the northern shores of Hokkaido and the entry point to the Shiretoko heritage site.

In Kushiro, the main eastern Hokkaido city known for its wetlands, the movie features the small Japanese bars where many visitors, both foreign and local, spend their evenings after soaking themselves in the hot springs of the Akan spa town.

The movie was first screened in China just before Christmas and topped 300 million yuan (¥4.1 billion) in revenues in its first 19 days.

An estimated 6 million people saw the movie, and multiple pirated DVDs are now said to be circulating in China.

According to officials at the Beijing office of the Japan National Tourism Organization, the office has been flooded with inquiries about the tourist spots featured in the movie.
Some young Chinese said they want to have their weddings at the Shari church, while others have inquired whether the Akan bars in the movie are real or just sets.

"Hokkaido was presented in the movie as it naturally is. This is probably what has made Hokkaido popular," a tourism organization official said.

There are no official figures yet but it is believed that more Chinese visitors spent their Lunar New Year holidays in Hokkaido this year than in 2008.

Beginning Sunday, a Beijing-based tour operator will start weekly sightseeing tours to Hokkaido to visit the locations featured in the film.

Hokkaido tourism officials say they hope the movie will draw more Chinese visitors to the island and this will make up for the loss of visitors from South Korea and elsewhere as a result of the global economic crisis.

The Japan Times: Thursday, Feb. 26, 2009

2009-2-26 10:54 AM

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Japan, China to launch teacher exchange program

Japan and China are set to launch an exchange program for teachers as part of an effort to deepen mutual understanding.

Japanese Foreign Minister Hirofumi Nakasone and his Chinese counterpart Yang Jiechi are expected to conclude an agreement on the program when they meet in Beijing on Saturday.

About 1,000 Chinese teachers will visit Japan during the 3-year program to observe schools and exchange views with local teachers.

In their talks this weekend, Nakasone and Yang are also expected to discuss agreements for further cooperation in the criminal justice and maritime fields.

They will include rules to facilitate the handover of Japanese convicted of crimes in China and vice versa, as well as guidelines for how to search for ships lost in the East China Sea.

2009-2-27 02:52 PM

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Japan starts construction for Expo Shanghai

KYODO

Japan has started building its pavilion for the World Exposition in Shanghai, which opens in May next year.

A ceremony to mark the start of construction took place on Friday, attended by about a hundred Japanese and Chinese officials.

Former Prime Minister Yasuo Fukuda said in a speech that Japan will do its utmost to help make the expo a big success. Participants threw a scoop of sand over the cornerstone to pray for the safety of construction work.

Japan is spending about 132 million dollars on the construction of a dome-shaped pavilion with a floor space of 7,200 square meters. The pavilion will feature the most advanced environmental technologies, including systems for energy conservation, recycling, and water purification.

The Shanghai Expo is scheduled to run for 6 months, with participation from 231 countries and territories.

China sees the expo as the most important international event it has hosted since the 2008 Beijing Olympics, and is hoping to attract a record 70 million visitors.

2009-2-28 09:39 AM

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