Happy New Year's Greetings

Flicks Viewed in Japan

 

 2021

• 怪獣のこども - Children of the Sea. July 8
• 舟を編む - The Great Passage. June 28
• コーヒーが冷めないうちに - Before the Coffee Gets Cold. June 20
• スパイの妻 - Wife of a Spy. June 16
• Tuna Girl. May 1
• 記憶にございません！ - Hit Me Anyone One More Time. February

2020

時代劇

• Samurai Shifters
• Samurai Marathon
• An Actor's Revenge
• Kuroneko
• Bushido
• Hero of the Red Light District
• Samurai Spy
• Bushi no kondate
• Mugen no junin
• Daisatsujin
• Ame agaru
• Goyokin

ドラマ

• Onimasa
• Yokiro The Geisha
• Nakano Spy School

アニメ

• Tenki no ko
• Penguin Highway

SF/ファンタシー

• Tokyo Girl
• Dance With Me
• Bolt From the Blue

I Must Be an Idiot

Yes, I am officially and perhaps even legally an idiot. Why? Because I believe that words are unstable and meanings can be easily displaced. I have mentioned this many times, here and elsewhere. Words and texts can change given different contexts and circumstances. I've done this before, I think, but just for the heck of it, let's do it again.

Look at the words to the right. At the bottom you'll see a group of words that form the sentence "For goodness sake" but on the very right highlighted in orange you'll see another grouping of words forming the list "Beer Wine Sake". It's obvious that the word S-A-K-E is found in both groupings, but did you notice anything else?

Of course you did. I'm sure most of you pronounced the last word, "sake", differently, depending on the grouping despite it being the exact same four letters. Now think about it. Did the word itself change? No. Did you change? No. Did the words around it change? Yes. But that isn't why you pronounced it differently. What changed is the context.

You might think: Don't the different words provide the different context?

No, Little Grasshopper, it is not the words that provides the context. It's you, the reader. Let's say there is a hick who lives in the sticks who thinks that Japan is a province of China and has never heard of rice wine. Do you think he would know how to read and understand the word "sake" in the list of beverages? Of course not. He'd be scratching his head wondering, What the heck is this word doing here. He would be unable to apply the appropriate context to grasp meaning.

The upshot of this is that you, the reader, are providing the context. Or in a larger context, people--conscious, experienced people--provide context. And if people are the constituents of a society--any society--then it is the greater society that determines how to read and interpret the meaning of all texts. And as the collective experience of society changes, then the interpretation of texts will change as well. And texts include all manner of documents, literary, political, legal. That's why words such as "All men are created equal" meant one thing to a slave owner such as Thomas Jefferson than it would to us today. Same words, different context, new interpretation. (Note: This is not a knock on Jefferson, who was, after all, a product of his own time.)

Unfortunately, not everyone holds to this very simple, very basic, and dare I say, very obvious concept. Take former Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia. He criticized those who believe in what he refers to as the "living Constitution."

"That's the argument of flexibility and it goes something like this: The Constitution is over 200 years old and societies change. It has to change with society, like a living organism, or it will become brittle and break."

"But you would have to be an idiot to believe that," Scalia said. "The Constitution is not a living organism, it is a legal document. It says something and doesn't say other things."

I am not about to contradict a Supreme Court Justice. I think I'll just accept his ruling and leave it at that.

I'm an idiot.

But I suppose I'd rather be an idiot than a hardened, inflexible, unchanging fossil.

Edited version of a post originally published on 2006 Feb 16 at Onigiriman: Nice to Bite, Hard to Swallow

What's up!

"What's up"はカジュアルで気さくな挨拶語。"元気？"と言ったような意味合いで主に男性が使う。場合によって女性も。相手との親密関係を指すけど目上の人に対して使ったらタメ口のようで投げやりな態度を表す恐れもある。本当に親しい仲間とだけ使おう。

"What's up"のupは"something's up"のupと同じくて"出来事"や”事件”に近い意味なので"いかがですか"のような気持ちも含む。頭に"hey!"を付ければより自然に聞こえる。”Hey! What's up!”

Listen: Hey! What's up

#日常英語 #カジュアル英語

Something Different

米国に住んでいた時娘が遊びに来てよく通ってたスポーツバーへ連れて行ったことがある。その時ビール仲間には"What's up!"と僕が挨拶したのをなぜか娘がよく覚えていると言う。こんな簡単で日常的な英語が知りたいって。これだけで僕のツイートを読んでくれるなら今日からやってみようか。#日常英語

https://twitter.com/Onigiriman1215

Japanese Government Scholarship Program

Japanese Government (MEXT) Scholarship Program
For District of Columbia, Maryland and Virginia Residents

If you're an undergraduate student, a US citizen and want to study in Japan next year, check out the 2020 MEXT Scholarship for Japanese Studies.
　I went on this as a graduate back in the day, but apparently it s mostly for undergraduates now. There are a lot of hoops to jump through but the Japanese government will cover plane fare, tuition and a stipend. That's hard to beat. If you get it, you'll be--like me--regarded as a 国費留学生 (Japan government-sponsored overseas student)--and my 後輩. :-)
https://www.us.emb-japan.go.jp/english/html/mext-scholarship.html?fbclid=IwAR28sDpI_s1yQ2bZhx-mB2VZpj2KUCG0NNLaI1RWZxWbpRzhir0FnX8iBJY

Kakehashi Project: Day One

Left Dulles on time and arrived in Tokyo on time. Although getting everyone together after getting our luggage was a bit of work. This is the first time I'm meeting about half of the students and it is surprising what you can learn about a student by how they react to requests or instructions. Some listen happily 素直, some frown and show reluctance, some feign various levels of unawareness to establish in their own way a sense of (youthful, self-indulgent or naive) independence.
　Oh well. Variety keeps me on my toes.
　Anyway, after we gather our luggage and exit into the Narita Airport lobby. we met Ms. Yasuko Yagi, our coordinator for the Kakehashi program in Japan. She gave me a run down of the program and our schedule for the next seven days on the bus to the hotel. We arrived at Sunshine City Prince Hotel and checked in. Some students couldn't wait to explore Tokyo. The Kakehashi program prohibits drinking and sets up a curfew. But all I could do was tell them to be careful and "try" to be back by curfew. *sigh*
　My colleague, associate dean Elizabeth Chacko, and I got a bit of an orientation from the JICE group and we retired to our respective rooms. But my card key didn't work.
　Stuff happens, and a quick meet with the JICE coordinator and hotel staff settled the situation.

Finally, I can relax in my room! I try to open my suitcase but it wouldn't open. Upon closer inspection, I realized there was a three-number combination lock.
　Combination lock?!?
　Crap. Why didn't I notice this when I was packing? But no sweat. I was borrowing my wife's suitcase so I LINE her to ask her what the combination was.
　"What combination?" she said!
　Gulp...
　"Let's see," she chuckled. "Did you try 0-0-0? Or maybe 1-1-1 then..."
　"Ooooooh." I finally get to the right combination. Whew! Second complication fixed.

So I settle down and eat the box lunch they have prepared for us. It was a 9 compartment box that was quite delicious. Three different types of rice and proteins and veggies.
　After eating I get ready to go to sleep and do what I usually do, set up to recharge my computer and my tablet... but... but... my tablet won't recharge. At home, I usually plug my tablet into the wall but to save even a little bit of space/weight on this trip, I decided to recharge the tablet with a USB port. But it wouldn't work. "Did I bring my tablet just to not be able to use it after a day or two?"
　Thank God for Google. A quick search revealed that the Samsung Galaxy will charge on a USB port if the tablet is turned off--it has something to do with saving the battery. Or something. It's beyond my technical capabilities. As long as I can recharge. Anyway, three temporary setbacks, three quick fixes.
　Whew. What a way to start a trip. Hope things go more smoothly going forward.
#KAKEHASHI2018 #JICE #JAPAN

Samurai Fiction

Here's another installment. Sorry I couldn't do it everyday, Jeri. School is killing me. :-(
　#3 In Harakiri, the facade of Bushido is underscored by the insinuation that the samurai of the Iyi clan were no longer warriors. When Tsugumo reveals that he went after Omodaka, the best swordsman of the Iyi clan and the ring leader of Chijiwa's demise, he admitted that Omodaka's use of the wind was clever, but in a fight he was still no match for Tsugumo who had fought in actual battles, lecturing those who would listen to his admonition that swordsmanship practiced only in the dojo and not in actual battle was like "learning to swim on a tatami mat." 
　This attitude led to movies in the 1990s that revisioned the samurai. They were less warriors and more bureaucrats, and the lines between good and evil were not so clear. In "Samurai Fiction", one clan hires a ronin--Kazamatsuri--who saves one of its members on the road. He is a superior swordsman but others in the clan are suspicious of him. He is tasked to watch over a famous sword gifted by the shogun but a clansman accuses of him of trying to steal it. An argument ensues and the ex-ronin ends up killng the clansman and runs away, taking the sword with him. Heishiro, the son of the clan Lord, insists on pursuing Kazamatsuri to take back the sword. The father knows that he is unskilled and tries to stop him, but Heishiro will not be denied. 
　Both Kazamatsuri and Heishiro are symbolic of this shift in view of the samurai. Kazamatsuri is a samurai with skills but is portrayed as both good and bad: He saves the clansman but then walks off with the shogun's gift, although that was not really his original intent. Indeed, when he flashes back to the series of events that finds him running away, we wonders, "How did it come to this?" The fact that Kazamatsuri is gay further blurs the modern image of the samurai.
　Heishiro's character suggests that the romantic image of the samurai is over. Besides his own ineptitude, his brothers-in-arms are just as flawed. When they catch up with Kazamatsuri on the road one, Kurosawa, dies immediately, the other, Shintaro, survives but is seriously injured. Does Kurosawa's death suggest the death of the romantic image of the samurai as portrayed in Kurosawa Akira's Seven Samurai and Yojimbo? Is Shintaro's injury a criticism of the attempts to reframe the samurai in Katsu Shintaro's Zatoichi films? Indeed, the man who helps Heishiro recapture the sword is named Mizoguchi, a man who is as skilled as Kazamatsuri but refuses to fight after killing one man and then adopting the daughter of the man he killed. He would rather live a peaceful life and fight only by throwing stone or two, a bloodless way to fight, as bloodless as the most famous movie directed by Kenji Mizoguchi, The 47 Ronin (Chushingura). Kurosawa, Shintaro, Mizoguchi: I'm pretty sure that these names were not chosen by accident. 
　Anyway, the movie was not very popular, but it is as entertaining, even humorous, as it is thought provoking.

Harakiri (Seppuki 切腹)

#2 The 1960s and 70s in Japan are marked by student protests and riots. Many were radicals but I personally know a few who participated in some of the protests to varying degrees. The protests began in the late 1950s for the return of Okinawa to Japan, boiled over with the unpopular mutual security treaty between Japan and the US in 1960 and developed into riots against the Viet Nam war and for education reform at the University of Tokyo to end bureaucratic authoritarianism and meaningless lectures by disengaged professors. Underlying these protests was a deep-seated distrust of "the man", those who scheme to maintain appearances and their position of authority... but this is a conversation better left to the political scientists of whom I am not one.
　However, I can say that a number of the films of this era seem to reflect this distrust of higher authority. The second film I show is "Harakiri" (切腹 Seppuku) recipient of the Special Jury Award at the 1963 Cannes Film Festival. The film is about two masterless but law-abiding samurai who struggle to make a living by making paper umbrellas and fans or teaching the Classics to neighborhood kids instead of wandering the country as mercenaries. They are juxtaposed against samurai who are members of major clans that live in the mansions of their Lord in the city of Edo, samurai who espouse the Way of the Warrior (Bushido), a life style created by and for the samurai elite to justify and glorify their status in society. The story begins with rumors of masterless samurai "requesting" an official place to commit ritual suicide on the grounds of the palatial residence of a major clan but ultimately receiving a position in the clan or at least some money to discourage them from making a mess--socio-politically rather than physically--of their house. Chijiwa is not of this dubious ilk but his infant son is sick and he cannot even afford a doctor so he tries his hand at this scheme to glean a few coins for his family but is surprised to find that he will be forced to fulfill his request. The suicide ritual is gruesomely cruel. Tsugumo, Chijiwa's father-in-law and also masterless, reacts: He decides to call out the hypocrisy of this particular house (and the ruling class in general), revealing that their "code" of Bushido is just a facade.

10 Films in 10 Posts

Okay, on facebook, an old blog friend, Jeri,  has tasked me to post one poster a day of a movie that influenced me for 10 days. I don't know if I can do it for 10 days, but I will try. Anyway, any film will influence me one way or another and it's hard to choose ten that have influenced me "the most." As I was pondering my choices, I got an email from Sierra Humes, a student in my class this summer who said she continues to think about some of the movies we saw more than a month after class ended. For this teacher, it is hard to think something more satisfying than the idea that students are still "influenced" by a course I taught. So I've decided to post Japanese films I screened this past summer. 
　#1: The first J-film I ever saw in a class as an undergraduate and the first I ever showed in a class I was teaching was "Seven Samurai". Yes, a bit dated and unoriginal, but it remains a classic. It is still one of the highest-rated action films on Rotten Tomato of all action films, not just J-films. And while it is fun to watch--Toshiro Mifune's Kikuchiyo is certainly a treat--it is instructive as well. It depicts class separation of the Edo period: Young Katsushiro desperately wants to be with the peasant Shino, but she knows that she must remain with her kind. Kikuchiyo born a peasant, wants desperately to be a samurai, and in a way he does, but at what cost? (Watch the film.) It is also a film reflective of the time it was produced. Kurosawa often incorporated his own view of society, and the seven samurai--ronin, masterless samurai looking for purpose in the Edo period--may be a reflection of those soldiers wandering back home from WWII trying to find their way in a rebuilding Japan of the 1950s.

Traversing the Warrior Fantasy--Martial Culture and The Meiji Restoration

Date: Friday, March 23, 2018
Time: 2pm-4pm
Location: National Churchill Library and Center (Gelman Libaray 101a)
RSVP at: goo.gl/QK2wMp

This event is co-sponsored by the Department of East Asian Languages and Literatures and the Sigur Center for Asian Studies.

Speaker: Michael Wert, Associate Professor of East Asian History, Marquette University

Abstract: The Meiji Restoration is typically analyzed in terms of international and domestic politics, intellectual trends, and changes in the commercial economy. This talk adds to that conventional narrative by exploring the role of warrior identity and the widening gap between warrior ideals and warrior realities in the nineteenth century. For samurai and elite commoners alike, martial culture in the form of swordsmanship became a vehicle for acting out the fantasy of the ideal warrior at a time when warrior authority was at its nadir. Rather than see culture as simply a site of resistance, it was the very act of over-identifying with warrior fantasy and ideology that undermined the Tokugawa regime.

Speaker Bio: Professor Michael Wert is an associate professor of East Asian history at Marquette University, with a focus on early modern and modern Japan.His first book Meiji Restoration Losers: Memory and Tokugawa Supporters in Modern Japan engages memory theory by asking how memory can help answer broader historical questions. Specifically, it traces the “memory landscapes” of the Meiji Restoration from 1868 to the present through the lens of those on the losing side. His second project continues to center around the Meiji Restoration, using theoretical tools to investigate the role of martial fantasy, culture, and violence in the early modern period. Professor Wert is a graduate of GW (B.A. East Asian Studies, 1997).

About Me

I'm a former assistant professor in the Department of East Asian Languages and Literatures at The George Washington University. I taught Modern and Classical Japanese Language, as well as Classical Japanese Literature.
My duties as an instructor focused on enhancing the reading abilities of advanced students. This included reading contemporary fiction that is relatively easy to comprehend: 村上春樹 Murakami Haruki, 星新一 Hoshi Shin'ichi, etc. I also encouraged students to learn bungo, or classical Japanese; besides reading the Classics such as 伊勢物語 Ise
monogatari or 方丈記 Hojoki in the original, bungo is a must for those who want to conduct research in Japanese history, political science or economics using pre-World War II sources.
My research interests continue to focus on the influence of texts and contexts on reading, particularly as they pertain to Heian court poetry.

Once upon a time at UCLA: Clockwise from back left, Hillary, Terry, Stephanie, Alan, Weiyon, Masaya, Roger Ebert, Kim, Yuka, Tsukasa, Yan, Yasuko, Ken and unidentified. (I can't remember her name. Can someone remind me?)

Brief Bio:

Born in Los Angeles, CA. Graduate of Loyola High School, East Los Angeles Community College (AA), UCLA (BA and MA), and Stanford University (PhD). First learned how to speak Japanese effectively at age 17 at Mikawaya, a Japanese confectionary in Little Tokyo, Los Angeles. Learned to read and write Japanese during college. Research interests include Late Heian poetics, renga linked poetry, and Japanese film and pop culture. See Curriculum Vitae for more detail.

Christmas Memory

I haven't seen my daughter in a while--has it really been more than 10 years? I wrote about her a few years ago in an earlier post and am not inclined to write about our situation. To be honest, I'm not even sure there's a situation to write about anymore. But I do have memories and I thought I'd write about one that I recalled recently when talking to friends about Christmas.

Back in December of 1991, when I was in Japan for my dissertation research, my daughter, K, had serious doubts about Santa coming to visit our home. In the States, before we had gone to Japan, K spent her first three Christmases at my parents' house where there was a seven-foot Christmas tree set up in the living room near the fireplace. But in Japan, most houses--let alone condos--are small and do not have fireplaces. There is also little room for a ceiling high Douglas fir or Scotch pine, which they don't sell in Japan anyway. In our small, modest abode, we had a small artificial tree--the kind you'd see on a counter at a business office. This was the norm in most Japanese homes.

Well, you can imagine K's skepticism. She wanted a bicycle for Christmas and even wrote a letter to Santa asking for one, but was unsure about delivery of such a large present. It would be difficult enough for Santa to bring a bike down a real chimney. "How could he deliver a present to a house without a fireplace?" she'd ask.

All I could do was shrug my shoulders and admit, "Good question."

"He couldn't get through the mail slot in the door, right?" I had to agree. She even glanced at the vent over the stove. But then she looked back at me, and we shook are head in unison: "No way."

Of course, being the devious father that I was, I was simply setting up my daughter for the Christmas surprise.

I should note that K did not doubt the existence of Santa; she just couldn't figure out how Santa could get into our home. As for me, by sharing in K's skepticism, I had removed myself as a suspect in any phony Santa charade. If K did get the present she wanted, it could only have come from the real Santa, not the dad who seemed to doubt Santa could actually fit through a mail slot. So I bought a bicycle and kept it hidden in its box unassembled until...

Christmas eve: I told K to set out some milk and a cookie, "Just in case." K was still doubtful. "Do you really think he can come here?" she asked over and over. But she must have held out a sliver of hope because she set the treats with care on a table next to the mini-Christmas tree. By 9 PM, K was fast asleep, undoubtedly exhausted from all the hoping.

I assembled the shiny red bike, attached the training wheels and headlight, and placed it next to the table next to the mini-Christmas tree. I am no mechanical engineer so assembling it took me more effort than I want to admit, but I did an adequate job, accomplished after some trial and error over the course of a couple of hours. Exhausted bleary-eyed, I plopped down next to the table, reached over and took a small bite out of a cookie that had been sitting there unattended on the table for a few hours. I grimaced at its staleness and, still bleary-eyed, reached for the room-temperature glass of milk next to it. "Oh crap!" I muttered. A mouthful was enough to bring me to my senses. I'm lactose intolerant, you see, so I put down the cookie and milk, moved quickly to the kitchen sink, spit out what I could and rinsed my mouth with water. Without a thought of what I had left behind on the table, I trudged off to bed and fell asleep worrying that I'd get a stomach ache from the milk.
And sure enough I woke up with a sudden pain in my stomach. "Oh crap," I muttered again. But when I opened my eyes, I realized that the pain in my stomach was not from the milk. K was straddling my stomach, jumping up and down. With a fistful of my T-shirt in her hands, she shook me fiercely. "He came! He came!" she screamed. What are you talking about? I was so groggy, I don't remember if I said that or was just thinking it. But it didn't matter. K quickly jumped off and ran out of the bedroom still screaming. She returned in a flash.

"Dad! Dad! Come and see!" she commanded from the door.

"Who came?" I asked still trying to get my bearings.

"SANTA!" she screamed in that high-pitched voice that only a four-year-old girl can muster.
Ah, the bicycle, I smiled. When I entered the living room, she was sitting on the bike pretending to pedal it.

"Wow, did Santa really bring you this?"

"Yes!" she said beaming. "I know for sure he did."

"Oh? And how do you know that?"

"Look!" she said.

My eyes followed in the direction in which her finger was pointing and, sure enough, there was a half-filled glass of milk and a half-eaten cookie. K jumped off the bike and scooted over next to me. "Look at that," she said outlining with her fingertips a jagged semi-circle in the cookie. "You see that? Those are Santa's tooth marks."

My eyes widened as I slowly recalled the sequence of events that culminated in K's discovery. But I just smiled and nodded in acknowledgment. Who was I to question such irrefutable proof of Santa's visit?

I Tricked Myself

I have online quizzes for many of my courses. As you might imagine, student's love online quizzes since they can use their notes and books to find answers. I've tried making the quiz time really short, but this disadvantages many of the international students who need time just to understand the question, so I give them plenty of time to complete it. Why? Because the questions are detailed. Not necessarily long but they contain information that may be incorrect. As I tell my students: In a True/False question, every portion of the the question must be true to be True. If even one part of the question is false then the answer is False. I will often place the false information towards the end of the statement so students have to read the entire question before answering or risk getting an answer wrong.

The non-international students find the extra time great since this gives them some breathing space, but they will accuse me of being "tricky" because I backload the false information. Me? Tricky? Students fail to read the entire question, get an answer wrong, then need to blame someone else for their failure, right? I mean, geez... y'know... I mean... well...

Okay, maybe I AM tricky, because I just realized that... that... I can't believe I'm gonna admit this....

I tricked myself...

As a conscientious teacher, I usually take the online quiz myself to confirm the quiz questions and answers are correctly matched. During the course of creating a quiz, it is quite simple to set the wrong radio button for the answer. Sometimes I will create a multiple choice question with answers then change up the order of the answers but forget to reset the radio button to the correct answer. Sometimes I simply forget to make a selection and leave the default choice--usually the first answer--as is. Anyway, to avoid these occasional omissions, I will take the quiz myself before making the quiz available to students.

Now the late-term online exam I gave last week had 77 questions. As per usual, I took the exam and found two mistakes, promptly corrected them and took it again. Result: 77/77. Grrrreat, the exam is ready to go. I double check the availability time--4:45-6:00--the date--yes, I have set the wrong date before--and other miscellaneous options. I send an email reminder to my students to find a computer with a hard Internet line--WiFi can ruin your quiz/exam if you become disconnected--and reiterate the time of availability.

Subsequently, I look on the Grade Sheet on Blackboard and can tell that everyone took the exam without any major incident. Whew. Actually this was the first time I ever gave an online exam. Quizzes yes, but not an assessment with more than 15 questions. So I'm glad that all went well. But any sense of relief I had was short lived.

Mere minutes later I get my first email.

I hate to ALREADY be the pain in the ass, but I just finished the exam and already have a few "contestations" to make about the grading. 

Contestations? Huh? Did my student just call herself "pain in the ass"? (Oops. Did I just write "herself"?) Then faintly from my bag I hear in a soft voice: "LINE". I check it and find a message from another student.

Sensei! Tanizaki wrote the tattooer right? You made a trick question I think that said "it would not be far fetched to call the artist in akutagawa ryunosuke 's the tattooer sadistic" and I said false, because ... akutagawa didn't write that 😂 but it said I got zero points for that question? Obviously the tattooer was sadistic but akutagawa didn't write that! Lol

What? I mean, yeah, "The Tattooer" was sadistic and it WAS written by Tanizaki, not Akutagawa.

So I check the exam and sure enough I have the wrong radio button selected. Crap. But then how did I get 77 out of 77 when I retook the exam? Did I enter the wrong answer? Did I select True?

Did I... omigod... trick myself?

m(_v_)m

Teaching with hay fever

I hate ragweed. It is the bane of my life. I have a runny nose, itchy eyes, sore throat. I manifest all the yucky symptoms of a cold but without a fever. Ugh.

So in bungo today, we were learning the interrogative/emphatic particle や (ya) and I used a famous poem as an example. I set up the poem explaining how Narihira was hooking up with the princess Takaiko who was already promised to the emperor. Of course, when the powers that be found out--her brothers--they secreted her away where he could no longer meet her. A year later he goes back to the place they used to hook up and recited a poem expressing his loneliness:

　月やあらぬ春は昔の春ならぬ
　　わが身ひとつは元のみにして
　Is the moon not there?
　　Is the spring not the spring of old?
　　　My self alone being the same self...

So as I recite this poem, I sniffle a bit and suddenly feel a tear streaming down my cheeks.

Juliana: Sensei! Are you crying?!?

MarieClaire: It's the pol...

Juliana: "The poem?" she blurts out before MC could complete the sentence. "Are you so moved?!?"

The class--MarieClaire, Xavier, Monica, Irene, Mark, Phoebe, Pim, Yuta, Chloe, et al--exploded into laughter, as I try to explain my issues with hay fever.

Did I mention?: i HATE RAGWEED!!!

Speaking of Learning: Learn Self-control

So CDI this past week was quite stressful. From Monday through Friday, 9 to 5, we discussed: 

• Course goals vs. objectives
• Assessments: to measure or not? 
• Do I know the subject so well that I don't realize what my students don't know? 
• In-class activities: are they engaging or is it busy work? 
• Et cetera, et cetera.

Addressing these kinds of questions and confronting my own syllabus was pretty intense. So to alleviate some of the stress--I guess--they made sure we had PLENTY OF FOOD. So everyday at 8:30am we had breakfast, at 10:45am coffee break, 12:15 lunch. While it was not crazy good, it was better than the usual fare we've been served lately during these days of budget cuts and belt tightening: Tandoori chicken, salmon, shrimp and avocado sandwich, just to name some of the better options.

The killer, tho', was the snacks. In the back of the study room, there was a table with a large urn of coffee, water, soda and FOOD: 

• Fruit (bananas, plums, apples, and--omigod!--cherries!)
• Energy bars (Special K, granola, and--oh no!--peanut butter W/ DARK chocolate)
• Bagels with cream cheese
• Potato chips (regular, wavy, ruffles, BBQ, and--my favorite!--kettle)
• Muffins (plain, whole wheat, cranberry, blueberry and--gulp!--coconut)
• And a bottomless bowl of small Trail Mix bags.

They were constantly restocking the table ALL DAY LONG. So of course, I had to try EVERY single treat available. And to confirm which one I liked, I had to try them again... and again. I was like a puppy dog who found open and unattended bags of Puppy Chow, Milk Bone and Beggin' Strips. I swear, I think 

I GAINED 6 POUNDS. 

So before I get back to work, I need to exercise a bit, maybe for a couple of weeks. I feel sluggish and kinda dumpy. Ugh!

Course Design Institute (CDI)

All week long, I participated in the Course Design Institute (CDI) at school. The goal was to awaken us to a Learning Centered approach to teaching. I am not against such an approach, but I learned that I am not as learning centered as I thought. I usually think:

• Are students studying? 
•  Did students do the reading? 
•  Are they writing their paper? 

Of course, implicit in this attitude is the hope that student are learning.

But instead of focusing on what I want them to do--study, read, write--I should have focused more on what they want to do:

• Are they learning? 
•  Are they thinking about (engaged in) the topic? 
•  What can I do to facilitate their comprehension of the subject? 

Well, I addressed my own demons, and focused on the issues that my students should address in my class on The Genji. Based on the ideas and feedback I received from my colleagues, I reworked my current syllabus and submitted it this morning and... I ended up with the second best syllabus/course design for the Institute this week! Woo hoo!

This is not official and the recognition comes with no prizes, but it was nice to be recognized by my peers and colleagues anyway.

GW Men's Basketball Advance to NIT Championship Game

There's a four-character Chinese proverb often used in Japan. 鶏口牛後 (けいこうぎゅうご keikō gyūgo). Literally, it means the chicken's mouth over an ox's ass, suggesting that it is better to be at the top of something small and modest than at the bottom of some large prestigious organization. My mother used this expression to encourage me to do well at a community college: better the Chancellor's Distinguished Student Award from East Los Angeles College than some anonymous graduate in the back row of a huge college. Indeed, it was this kind of encouragement that led to an education at UCLA (BA & MA) and Stanford (PhD).

So why am I talking about this?

Well, this is all a preface to say that GW is in the Championship game of the National Invitational Tournament by soundly beating San Diego State. Bet you didn't expect that.

No, the NIT is not as prestigious as the NCAA Tournament. Not by a long shot. But it might be better to be at the top of the NIT than be a bubble team and go down in the first round of the NCAA. One of my students--Yuta Watanabe--is a starter for GW so he's missing class this week. I think I'll give him some slack, as I've been giving him a hard time after a few untimely losses as the season wound down. Hope Yuta and Kevin (both on my fb banner) and the rest of the team play well Thursday against Valpo. Go G-Dub! ‪#‎raisehigh‬ ‪#‎GWU‬ ‪#‎A10MBB‬

2016 Research Days at GW: Alicia Taylor

Today was 2016 Research Days at GW. Students were selected to exhibit a poster representing their research. Research Days is heavy with hard science and social science heavy and there were only a handful of humanities students. But among them was our very own Japanese major, Alicia Taylor who is researching Japanese TV ads and how they are effective. Way to represent. And I love supporting our major! Alicia is using the critical approach of Roland Barthes' Mythologies to break down the effectiveness of a Pokari Sweat television commercial, and the ineffectiveness of a yakisoba ad starring Nagase Tomoya. Barthes approach builds on Ferdinand de Saussure's theory of sign (signifier and signified) and demonstrates the effective association that can be manufactured between multiple images and emotions to build a message that feels "natural", effectively building a "myth". Can you see the "myth" in the Pokari Sweat ad with images of high school baseball players pursuing their dream of reaching Kōshien through hard work and "sweat"? Or how about the colors of the uniforms--school and baseball--and other items that reflect the Pocari Sweat image? Anyway, I look forward to reading her final research submission.

National Japanese Exam 2016

The National Japanese Exam (NJE) is an online, proficiency-oriented, standards-based and culture-related assessment tool for middle school (junior high), high school, and college students who are studying Japanese as a second language. It was developed by AATJ (American Association of Teachers of Japanese) as a way for such students to test their Japanese skills and participate in a nation-wide exam with awards for high achievement.

The NJE helps teachers see students’ strengths and weaknesses in various areas including reading and listening. Teachers can use the results to give various school-level awards to students (Gold Level, Silver Level, Bronze Level, Honorable Mention, and Participation certificates) and to highlight the success of their Japanese programs and celebrate their students' accomplishments.

The NJE is an entirely online test that teachers administer in their classrooms. It features Listening and Reading sections at three levels.

Registration for the 2016 NJE is open! Registration will close at 5:00 p.m. Pacific time on February 19, 2016. The cost of the exam is $9 for the AATJ members (Nonmember fee is $17).

http://www.aatj.org/nje