Above is a clip of Dave Chapelle’s stand-up talking about Asians (contains some swearing, probably NSFW.)

In it, he points out that Asians “have beef with other Asians,” and uses the example of mistaking a Korean person for a Chinese person. I have to say that this is an unfortunate truth in many cases, especially in the States. Many Asians are really proud of their heritage and are offended by being mistaken for another race.

From my experience it is because of this pride that causes Asians to butt heads with other Asians–comparing percentage level (i.e., a full-Japanese person has more authority over a half-Japanese person), acting like an authority on their race among a group of non-Asians, seeing who better plays into their racial stereotypes (wearing Hello Kitty, Fruits.) So it is no wonder that non-Asians will get a lot of angry reactions like Chapelle points out in the clip.

The thing is, you can’t expect non-Asian people to be able to tell the difference between a Thai face and a Chinese one. Even fellow Asians will get each other confused–my Japanese mom has been mistaken for Chinese and Vietnamese on several occasions (most likely because as an Okinawan she doesn’t look typically Japanese.)

I think there is nothing wrong with being proud of your heritage, but living in America means we get an interesting opportunity to come together and educate non-Asians on our own respective cultures–not use them to single each other out and see who is more pure or a better representative of stereotypes.

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Hopefully this video will make up for my lack of posting lately–school is coming to an end and of course all papers are magically due at the same time.

Anyway, this is the Algorithm March, which is featured as part of children’s programming in the morning on Japanese TV.  Basically they show you how to do an interactive dance and song, and then incorporate with a lot of people.  I think it’s a great way to entice kids to exercise, to practice these dances and try to get them right.  They are also amazing to see because the performers are usually in business suits and have completely serious expressions–it’s always fun to watch grown ups doing funny things.

Now you understand why it is hard for me to teach Japanese children through American kids’ shows, because they are just not this cool.

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Charisma Man–click for full picture

Here is another reason to learn another language (specifically, Japanese): If you should ever want to stay in Japan, your language skills can get your a 5-year resident visa instead of just 3. The article mentions that it’s based on a “certain level of language proficiency,” which hopefully is a realistic one.

I think this is calls for a huge sigh of relief for foreigners living in Japan, especially since security has been tightened in airports, where to get into the country you need to be fingerprinted and have your photo taken.  A lot of people–especially those who may come from countries with fewer ties to Japan–complain about how hard it is to get into Japan and stay there.

Despite this, in a country where all sorts of measures are taken to ensure that Koreans born in Japan are never made into citizens (regardless of how many generations the family has been there), I find it ironic that there is a push to encourage foreigners to come and make their stay.  In fact, many people in Japan–such as Okinawans, the Ainu, Brazilians, and other races–are discriminated against just because they aren’t “ethnically Japanese,” despite living in the country all their lives.

Rather than patting themselves on the back for nudging open the door for foreigners just a little bit wider, the Japanese government needs to re-examine its own issues with race.  A guy shouldn’t have to work schlock jobs just because he is Brazilian and wasn’t able to get the education he needed to move up in the world.  A woman shouldn’t resort to prostitution because she is Malaysian and is refused normal jobs.  There is still an incredibly embedded sense of “you vs. us” mentality, where “gaijin” (the sometimes-derogatory slang word for “foreigner”) is thrown about casually, lumping all non-Japanese together.

While I’m happy to see that the Japanese government is at least making some kind of effort to persuade those interested to come and live in Japan, it can hardly be looked at as a significant improvement in the way Japan sees other races.  Improvement will come when everybody who lives in Japan are provided equal opportunities to succeed, and not hindered by their lineage.  At this point though, it still seems like wishful thinking.

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There’s a lot of noise regarding Hideki Matsui’s marriage, which is very atypical of most sports marriages in Japan. Normally a sports celebrity marries someone in the entertainment or news industry to increase PR–in other words, make them look good. The woman, an attractive TV personality, normally quits her job after she gets married to the sport celeb, and is often older than him because naturally someone who leads such a stressful life needs a mother-figure in his life.

Now let’s take a look at Matsui’s marriage: his wife is a “regular person,” is eight years younger than him, and can make a “mean burger.” What? Marrying out of love? Japanese people?

Whereas other sports wives are public figures and remain famous for helping their husbands become famous, nobody even knows what Matsui’s wife looks like–just some sketches him and his brother drew for the press (awww. I think?)

Of course interest is piqued in this mystery woman, but it seems that Matsui is going at lengths to keep her identity a secret. I find this marriage to be a cool exception to the norm because Japanese marriages (especially celebrity ones) are traditionally not out of love but out of obligation of continuing family lineage. To marry someone who may even end up hurting your career takes a lot of guts, which makes me think this isn’t a PR stunt. This will be one time I root for a Yankees’ player

Source: Matsui’s got a nice wife, but can she cook a mean hamburger? - Japan Times

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Sweet Rain — see preview here

Does Japan need to think of audiences across the ocean when it comes to marketing films? According to this article from the Hollywood Reporter, Japan’s movie industry carries strength domestically but is starting to see a slight decline. U.S. film executive Bey Logan encourages Japanese filmmakers to think of audiences abroad in order to expand their markets:

“Japan is one of the most fascinating, contradictory and frustrating markets,” he said. “The biggest strength of the Japanese market is that it is so strong domestically, based on television shows that are already familiar to a Japanese audience, they do not travel outside of Japan.”

Consequently, producers do not even consider collaborations because they are effectively guaranteed a money-spinning product.

“They are not interested in the U.S., for example, because they are so strong at home,” he said. “But I was here in Hong Kong back in the 1980s when the industry was strong — and now it is much less strong.

“I would urge Japanese filmmakers to keep up their relations with outside companies because even though they are experiencing a boom at the moment, the time will come when there is a bust.”

Does this explain the reason why there are so many Western remakes of popular Japanese movies? I’m not sure how I feel about this statement–the reason why many foreigners enjoy Japanese movies is because they are distinctly Japanese, and aren’t interpretations of how Westerners think Japanese life is like.

It’s true that there many great films in Japan that probably will never be released overseas, and this may be due to lack of appropriate marketing. But it seems that there a slight increase in interest in Asian cinema, especially films that come from Hong Kong (despite that they are almost entirely all martial arts movies). So should Japan start making more kitschy Samurai flicks? Appeal to Western ideals of what Japanese entertainment should be like?

Source: Japan urged to take film abroad - The Hollywood Reporter

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Everybody in Japan knows what a chikan is.  The word is in our textbooks, joked about by our teachers, and trains have signs posted everywhere for people to beware of them.  So what is a chikan?

A chikan is a groper, usually a middle-aged man who feels up women on crowded trains.  These incidents occur so frequently that there are Ladies Only trains for rush hour.  Many times a chikan is revealed simply by the woman screaming “Chikan!” after being harrassed.

Recently in the news I’ve been seeing a case where two people made a false groping claim on against a man on a subway.  The accused man was just standing on in the subway as with the rest, when he said a young woman came up to him and started to scream that he was a chikan.  Then her boyfriend, who pretended to be a stranger, came up to them and claimed that he saw him touch her.  The woman demanded monetary compensation.  After the accused man was taken into custody and the two admitted to the fraud, it made me wonder whether events like these give real chikan incidents less validity in the eyes of the law, or do they know to suspect fradulence?

On the one hand I think this case would give chikan less incentive to grope on trains because they might be faced with dealing out a bunch of compensation money–on the other, I feel like this sort of crime makes it harder for police to spot real chikan when it turns into me-against-you arguments.  Despite Japan being a modern nation, sexual equality is close to non-existent, and as such women have a harder time being taken seriously by male authoritative figures. 

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The people who brought you the video on how to eat sushi also made one on how to use chopsticks.  Watch and learn!

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Photo from J. Sarmiento

I have never let my schooling interfere with my education. - Mark Twain

I find myself thinking this when studying here in Japan more than at the school back in the States. Especially after skipping a semester of Japanese, more than ever have I realize that your are your own teacher.

I love learning but I don’t enjoy education, and sometimes I feel like there is no point in going to school when I could be learning the same material at my own pace. But we have been long told that education is the key to success, and schools are places you go to get some. Nowhere is this thinking more integrated into society than in Japan, which focuses on intensive memorization instead of teaching abstract concepts.  Countless books are sold to help students memorization math equations rather than formulas, and cram schools where they teach to questions in college entrance exams are just as numerous.

Unlike other countries that teach English throughout school curriculums, English seems to be harder to grasp in Japan despite it being taught throughout the average school career.  Japan has English teaching schools everywhere you turn–most recently, otaku-themed English conversation schools, known as Cosplish, have been emerging. So why does it take so long?  Why is there a need for schools aimed at geeks? In the same vein, why do some people pick up a language more easily than others? Like I said before, it has to do with focus on memorization rather than abstract learning. 

Understanding broad ideas and formulas are key to learning anything–especially another language. Here are three ways to help better grasp a language you are learning.

 1.) Think abstract thoughts
This one should be drilled into you by now if you’ve been visiting this site for a while. Think using general ideas and formulas instead of memorization. If you are learning language in a classroom, don’t just memorize whatever you are learning in order to pass a test. You should be learning it for yourself, not the teacher–they could care less if you know the material or not. But if you can’t apply anything you’ve been taught by the end of the semester , then you’ve just spent an exhorbanent amount of money on courses for nothing.

 2.) Don’t compare the language with English
This is a common mistake many English-natives make when learning a language, especially the Romance langauges such as Spanish or French. Don’t try to make sense of the language in the same way English is structured because you will make yourself very confused. Instead, treat it as a language independent of anything else, and whatever words you may already know because of Engilsh just helps the process along even further. Also remember that English is a ridiculously complex language filled with exceptions on top of exceptions.

 3.) Think mathematically
 I hate math more than anybody I know, but this is one instance in where I do believe knowing math (or algebra, anyway) comes in very handy. If you treat grammar like a mathematical formula, all you need to do is plug in a noun here or a verb there, and you’re done. As you get more complex in your studies, so do the formulas–I’d imagine math geeks and programming experts would pick up languages a lot faster than those who don’t get along with numbers so well.

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Stich all dressed up for Halloween–photo taken with my cellphone last October

I am not such a huge fan of Disney as I was when I was kid–for one thing, the movies have progressively gotten worse and the storylines seem very desperate.  Japan, however, has continued to fully embrace Disney, possibly even moreso than average Americans.  One character that immediately jumps to mind is Stich from Lilo & Stitch, the little destructive blue alien with a love for Elvis. 

In Japan, Stitch has taken on many incarnations, even being adopted into the Japanese culture by wearing seasonal Japanese clothing.  I am kind of excited to hear Disney teaming up with Madhouse to create a Japanese Stitch TV show (cleverly entitled Stitch!). I’m excited because Madhouse is a famous animation studio that has created many amazing animated works, including numerous CLAMP animated series, and most recently Yazawa Ai’s huge hit Nana and Satoshi Kon’s Paprika.  I’ve always admired the work Madhouse puts into their productions, and am even more intrigued that the show will take place in Okinawa.

Disney is also in cahoots with Jinni’s Animation to produce another series called Fireball, which will take advantage of Jinni’s repitoure of extensive 3-D animation works. Jinni’s Animation produces a lot of music videos and commercials, and most recently had a hand in the opening credits for Takeshi Miike’s Sukiyaki Western (which contained a cameo by Quentin Tarantino).

I can’t say for sure whether this move will gain my respect back for Disney–Disney in America is certainly different than Disney in Japan–but it’s nice to see that they are branching out and actually thinking about their international audiences for once.

Source: Disney to work with two local animators - The Japan Times

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Maybe this explains why I suck at Magic Eye

 According to an article from Wired, it does:

“As an adult, color categorization is influenced by linguistic categories. It differs as the language differs,” said Kay, who is renowned for his studies on the ways that different cultures classify colors. He cited recent research on the ability of Russian speakers to detect shades of blue [pdf] that English speakers classify as a single color.

Apparently babies, who have not yet assigned labels to colors, are not limited to how they can interpret colors. As they get older, their language determines how many colors they can perceive based on how many words there are to associate with certain shades of the same color.

I noticed this by chance when I purchased a 24-color colored pencil set to teach children with–there were a few reds that were remarkably the same color, but in Japanese the words were completely different.  Same with blue and orange.

All the more reason to learn a foreign language–your world can become more colorful!

Source: Babies See Pure Color, but Adults Peer Through Prism of Language (Wired Science)

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