“Author” is puzzled by a Japanese graduate student at an American university who lets his children watch American cartoons, but not anime. I don’t think that’s very surprising.
Assuming that the kids are under 10, then the vast majority of the anime available here is not appropriate for them. Unlike the American cartoons, they are just not intended for that age group.
Japan actually makes a lot of kodomo anime which is aimed at young children, but it is rarely licensed in America, mainly because it is of no better quality than the stuff you see on Saturday mornings on American TV. It does tend to have a distinctly Japanese flavor though.
Example: Zenryoku Usagi (The “Give it All You’ve Got” Rabbits.) The rabbits are construction workers. They have great company spirit. They work very hard. They should have the rest of the country paved over in a matter of months.
Musui’s Story–The Autobiography of a Takugawa Samurai by Kokichi Katsu offers an unusual glimpse into a side of historical Japan that is rarely discussed, the seedy underside of life in the romantic Edo period. Instead of being the sort of noble and upright samurai that is usually depicted, the author comes off as a cheerful scoundrel.
Kokichi was born in 1802, the third son of Heizou Otani, a minor government official. As the younger son of a samurai, his best chance for advancement lay in being adopted by a samurai family with no sons. Accordingly at the age of six his father arranged for him to be adopted by the Katsu family, with the understanding that he would eventually marry their daughter Nobuko. (more…)
Brian Ashcraft of Wired was having terrible luck with cell phones: he ran through four of them in less than a year. So he took his next one to the Kanda Shrine near Akihabara, which specializes in spiritually purifying electronic equipment. Result: one shiny new purified and blessed cell phone.
The tourists are even allowed to consult the Oracle at Delphi. That scene reminded of when Chaz and I visited an ancient temple at Ise in Japan. Outside the gates, monks sat on platforms inscribing scrolls. “You may ask anything you want,” our guide told us. “Will there be peace in our time?” asked Chaz. The monk gave a look at our guide. Our guide said, “Ah, I think maybe a better question may be more like, ‘How many monks live in temple?’ ”
I’ve argued in previous posts that you as a non-Japanese-speaker can pick up a lot of information by listening to the Japanese sound track while watching anime with subtitles–nuances that are not available in the translation. One of the most useful and interesting things to listen for is whether the characters are using polite or plain speech.
English has different levels of formality. Consider the difference between “Is this Joe’s place?” and “Is this the residence of Mr. Blow?” [1]. They may mean the same thing, but they suggest very different situations. However Japanese goes far beyond English in it’s levels of formality. Polite speech (keigo) amounts to a completely different dialect with its own verb conjugations and specialized vocabulary [2]. Because there is no real English equivalent the subtitles rarely attempt to show that it is being used, but sometimes you need to know when it is being used (or not used) in order to fully understand the characters’ reactions. (more…)
A timely warning, which may hopefully spare someone considering the JET program a grave disappointment.
In case anyone doesn’t get the joke, if they tell you your Japanese is “jouzu” (skilled) that generally means that it’s pretty bad. It’s sort of like exclaiming over the skilled dancing of a trained monkey. You’ll know that you’re really starting to get good if someone corrects your mistakes.
Personally I’ve been told that my Japanese is “kirei”, because it is exceptionally awful.
This is interesting. Shibawanko no Wa no Kokoro (Shibawanko’s Japanese Spirit) is a children’s anime in very short segments, only a couple of minutes each. Shibawanko, a serious-minded hard-working talking dog, teaches children about Japanese traditions and proper behavior, assisted by a mischievous talking cat named Mikenyanko.
For someone interested in Japanese culture this is great stuff. Unfortunately I see zero chance that this will ever be licensed.
While reading Paul Varley’s Japanese Culture I was struck by his account of the tale of the “Forty-Seven Ronin.” It shed new light on something that had been bothering me, the question of why the heroine of Fushigi Yugi keeps doing things that are so freaking stupid. (more…)
At the moment it seems that the two most popular posts on this blog are the ones about how to pick up subtle points that don’t survive the translation to anime subtitles–even if you don’t understand Japanese (Japanese Honorifics in Anime and Japanese Family Titles in Anime.) So here are my notes on Japanese pronouns [1], which also can convey a lot of information about the characters in ways that are not easy to include in the subtitles. Once again, this will probably seem very elementary to long-term anime fans, or to anyone who actually speaks Japanese. (more…)
The original poster didn’t include any information, but from internal evidence I conclude that this is located in the shopping district called Canal City Hakata in Fukuoka, Japan (a city in northern Kyushu).
Since my post on Japanese honorifics seems to have become pretty popular, I am going to post my notes on family titles. Once again, this is for the benefit of people who watch anime with subtitles but do not know Japanese, and who want to be able to pick up nuances that the subtitles leave out. (In dubbed versions these are totally lost.) This stuff will probably seem pretty elementary to long-time fans.
English, of course, has a number of family titles: words like “Mom”, “Dad”, “Grandma” etc. Japanese has many more of these, with numerous variations which can tell you quite a bit about the characters who use them. I won’t try to cover every possible title, but will focus on the most common ones heard in anime. (more…)
But I pose the question: “Why do the Japanese seem to erase the physical structures of the past rather than preserve them? Do the Japanese have a sense of nostalgia?” The West is a sentimental culture, in which one society uses previous ones as a point of reference. The West’s notion of progress inherently presumes that society is always building upon the past, like layers of sedimentary rock. So the Romans looked to ancient Greece, the Renaissance states looked to ancient Rome, and so on. The pantheon and Parthenon remain potent and well-preserved symbols of their civilizations. But the Japanese, rather than pamper their patrimony, have the habit of tearing down temples, shrines or massive gates that are hundreds of years old, only to immediately construct replicas.
“The ideal form of beauty for the Japanese is the cherry blossom,” says the Japanese fund manger, in perfect American-accented English. “It is temporary, impermanent. It is beautiful, but quickly disappears.” I accept his polite reply, but know that there must be more to it.
Of course I wish him well, but I’m not sure that Shinku, Suigintou and Suiseiseki will be much help in dealing with a shaky economy, an upper house controlled by the opposition, and a sclerotic ruling party infested with cronyism.
According to this article in The Register, the Kanda-Myojin Shrine near Akihabara does a brisk business blessing laptops to protect them from viruses and other mishaps.
I’ve been burned by articles in The Register before, but this one includes a photo of the ceremony.
One of the main advantages of watching anime in Japanese with subtitles is that even if you don’t understand Japanese you can pick up a lot of information that will be lost in the English dub. A little effort spent in learning a few words can pay off in a wealth of information about the culture and the relationships between the characters.
I’ve collected a lot of notes on the subject and I’m going to try to organize them into posts. If you have been watching anime for years you will probably find this stuff very elementary, but newer viewers may find this useful.
The first thing to master are the honorifics. There are only 5 to learn, but there are many subtleties in how they are used. (more…)
Maybe The Economist is preparing a special report on Japan for their next issue. That might be why they have just posted on their web site a strangely unfocused column that seems to be mostly about the Tokyo dining scene, but which begins with a description of a high-tech toilet that is far more sophisticated than the one I described.
This one features a massive remote control that appears to have tremendous potential for evil if it should fall into the wrong hands.
Chinese President Hu Jintao has just completed a rare state visit to Japan, supposedly establishing an “everlasting warm spring” in the relationship between the two countries.
Meanwhile the writers of Nijuu Mensou no Musume (The Daughter of Twenty Faces) seem to be busy trying to set Sino-Japanese relations back several decades. Consider the following elements from Episode 2:
All of the Chinese characters are depicted as duplicitous.
One of them is drawn in a way that amounts to an offensive racial stereotype.
The most sympathetic Chinese character, an attractive woman, gushes about how much she enjoyed “entertaining” Japanese troops during the war.
I predict that this is one anime that will not be popular in China, and it probably won’t be licensed for Region 1 either. It’s no great loss. I’ve rarely seen a story so riddled with logical holes.
(Actually I’m not sure that this should be under the category Japanese Culture. Hello Kitty is a Japanese invention, but it seems to be Taiwanese women who are “way too into this Hello Kitty thing.”)
Filed under Useless but Very Cool: Get some aeronautical engineers and origami experts together and design a paper airplane that can be launched from the International Space Station, reenter the atmosphere and land safely on Earth. Unfortunately there seems to be no control over where it will land… (article in The Register.)
That’s the end. I’ve gone through all my photos and posted everything that looked reasonably interesting.
If you are considering a trip to Japan I strongly recommend that you go for it. Japan is a strange and wonderful place, full of beautiful things, and a few things that are just a bit odd. The people are friendly and hospitable, service is uniformly excellent and the trains really do run on time. (The average delay for a shinkansen leaving the station is supposed to be about 6 seconds.)
The country has a reputation for being clean, safe and expensive, and that’s pretty accurate. Still at today’s exchange rates it seems less expensive in relative terms. Many other currencies have appreciated much more against the dollar than the Yen has.
I would like to thank our tour organizer, Mike Roberts of Samurai Tours. He did an amazing job and I’m sure we saw a lot more of Japan than most visitors get to see. I would also like to thank our local guides who illuminated much that would otherwise have been obscure.
Kyoto is much smaller than Tokyo, but it does have its own version of shopping districts. Teramachi and Shin-kyogoku are two parallel covered streets which seem to go on forever, connected to each other by short alleys so that they form a single complex. The complex is usually crowded with young people. (more…)
I stumbled on this place by accident: a complex of buildings devoted to the practice of martial arts. It is located just around the corner from the Heian Shrine. (more…)
The Heian Shrine is dedicated to two emperors: Kammu, who founded the city of Kyoto in 794, and Koumei, the last emperor to spend his life in the city. It is thus a focus of civic pride.
The entrance is marked by a suitably imposing torii. (more…)
The ancient city of Nara, capital of Japan from 710 to 784, is a short train ride from Kyoto. Many people make the trip, and what most of them want to see is the great temple called the Todai-ji. (more…)
This is Gion, the “Geisha District” made famous by the book and movie Memoirs of a Geisha. Perhaps I should call it a “Geiko District”, since in Kyoto a geisha is called a geiko (“art child”) and an apprentice geisha is called a maiko (“dance child”). (more…)
The Ginkaku-ji (Silver Pavilion) is a Zen Buddhist temple that was built in 1474 by the Shogun Yoshimasa Ashikaga. Being the Shogun he presumably had nearly unlimited funds to work with. It’s interesting to consider how he spent them. (more…)
Mt. Misen, the tallest mountain on the island, has been considered sacred since ancient times. The easiest way to get to the top is to take the ropeway that runs up the side. (more…)
Itsukushima Shrine is the largest shrine on Miyajima and the place most people want to see first. It dates back to the 6th century, though it was built in its present form in 1168. (more…)
Miyajima (Shrine Island) is, as the name implies, the site of a number of striking shrines and temples. It claims to be “one of Japan’s Three Most Scenic Spots” (the others being the Amanohashidate sandbar and Matsushima Bay, neither of which I have seen.)
The island was visited by Kobodaishi in they year 806 and has a number of Shingon Buddhist temples. Because of the island’s sacred status, no one is allowed to die or be born there. I don’t know what the penalty is for breaking this rule. (more…)
