Reading is Fundamental

t’s back to school time here in the United States, and that means time to plan your courses and hit the books again.  If you are wondering how to jump-start your Japanese, and traditional methods haven’t been working for you, the internet is full of different apps and methods to learn Japanese. One of them is Tadoku, a method that actually became popular in Japan for students of English.

Tadoku (多読), which is also known as “extensive reading," is a method of language learning which stresses reading and listening as a more enjoyable and more effective way of language learning than the traditional approach grammar based approach. Introduced (but not invented) by Professor Sakai Kunihide, Tadoku emphasizes reading and listening to easy-to-understand resources.  Essentially, Tadoku consists of reading as many easy-to-read texts as possible.  There are three basic rules to Tadoku-style reading:

1) do not look words up in the dictionary
2) if you are stuck, move on, don’t ask questions
3) if you do not like what you are reading, get something else to read.
Because Tadoku emphasizes continuous, unbroken reading, it is important that you start reading texts that are almost 98% comprehensible.  For some people, that might mean reading a book that has only one word per page - but that’s OK!  As you move to more difficult texts, the key is to keep up the pace, keep up the rhythm, and internalize the language through reading and listening.  Tadoku postulates that every 5 minutes spent looking through a dictionary is another 5 minutes in which very little language is acquired and a reader isn’t spending time comprehending the language.  But more importantly, Tadoku emphasizes the joy of reading; a reader who wants to keep reading will read more than someone who is bored or frustrated.  

Extensive reading requires reading large volumes of material at or very slightly above one’s comprehension level, aiming for overall understanding of the work instead of worrying about every detailed twist of grammar or every word.  This approach stresses learning from context and getting used to the language by massive exposure instead of understanding things point by point.  Of course, it cannot replace intensive reading (in which a difficult point or a sentence well above the learner’s level is studied in detail).  Many contend, though, that the two methods are simply complimentary.  

Tadoku is not just a method, though.  It is also a system that offers carefully-graded readers for Japanese-learners of all levels.  These levels were first invented for students of English in Japan.  You can find official texts, created and designed for your level, at the official Tadoku website:  http://tadoku.org  But the internet is also full of places where you can find free resources for students.  For example, you can find folk tales, some with audiobook versions and translations, here.  http://rtkwiki.koohii.com/wiki/Audiobooks  You can also find Tadoku reading materials here:  http://language.tiu.ac.jp/materials/ and here:  http://joechip.net/extensivereading/2011/06/15/extensive-reading-material-online/   UVa Library even has an online library of Japanese texts, with and without furigana, here:  http://etext.virginia.edu/japanese/

Tadoku is as much about sharing the love of Japanese as it is about learning, and the Tadoku community frequently offers games, contests and challenges that you can join online, on places like Twitter.  One popular Tadoku contest is regularly held here:  http://readmod.wordpress.com/about/

If you want to try Tadoku with a text that you have found, but aren’t sure at what level you are reading, you can use this online app to figure out the level of a particular text.  http://language.tiu.ac.jp/tools_e.html.  

Watching Japanese TV from the USA

Updated April 22, 2018

It's been a long time since my original post back in August 2014 on Watching Japanese TV from Japan. Since that time, the technology has changed, the services have changed, and all sorts of new options are available. This spring I decided to try out 3 online streaming services that deliver Japanese TV stations from Japan by internet to your home. Those three are JapanTV, Fuji TV, and iSakura.

I started by checking out the offerings at Japannettv, which sells two of those services. Immediately, I need to compliment the staff at Japannettv. I began by trying to purchase one of their android TV boxes, because it comes with three major services pre-installed. However, even though I had already paid and ordered the box, the staff contacted me to make sure I understood that the iSakura app they use had stopped working. I should have known that, because it was prominently displayed on the webpage, but I didn’t really appreciate the problem. Once they explained the issue, I realized that I needed to a different route and try an Amazon FireTV box instead. 

One FireTV purchase later, I easily downloaded the iSakura and JapanTV apps to my FireTV. I needed to use Adblink (software that you can use from a Mac or PC to link to your FireTV) to install the “apk” for FujiTV, but as you will see, it was worth it! The whole process for all three apps took less than 30 minutes total. I was pleasantly surprised at how easy it was to install. 

A word about my “test rig.” I used the 2018 FireTV box, which lacked an Ethernet port. I tried to buy an Ethernet connector, but Amazon was sold out and had a month-long waitlist. Clearly they underestimated the demand for an Ethernet connection when they designed this device. My test rig, therefore, was Wi-Fi only. 

When I began the test, I was using an abysmal 3.5 Mbps DSL connection. In the middle of the test, I upgraded my connection to a 60 Mbps Cable connection. What a difference…

What follows is my review of those three services.

JapanTV

JapanTV is not the same thing as Japannettv. JapanTV is a streaming service that is sold by a website called Japannettv. As far as I can tell, they are not affiliated with each other. I bought a 3-day trial to JapanTV for $4 through Japannettv. JapanTV offers live, streaming TV, 2 weeks of archived television for all of its channels, and also a large collection of on-demand television and movies. It was the only of the three services that offered on-demand movies and tv shows. 

The interface is easy to navigate – it has 3 categories: Live TV, movies, and dramas. You can add movies and dramas to your “favorites” list and they appear together on one list, just like they would on Netflix or Hulu. The interface is pretty and easy to read. 

The movies and dramas were numerous – nowhere near as many as a streaming service like Netflix or Hulu, but a good variety with an emphasis on recent movies; I would analogize it to HBOGo. There were about 400 movies and over 400 TV shows/series, all mostly recent. I easily found several movies and dramas I wanted to see from the last few years.  Unfortunately, with a wifi connection of 3.5 Mbps, I was never able to get any on-demand movies to play. 

However, once I upgraded my connection, the on-demand movies played nearly instantly. Fast-forward and rewind were effective and worked almost seamlessly. The picture quality was quite good – not as good as Netflix had been under my 3.5 Mbps connection, but still quite good. I wouldn’t call it “HD”, but probably between 480p and 1080i, depending. All the on-demand programs that I watched also came with Chinese subtitles. 

I should add that some shows did not play at all until several attempts. Also, as an added feature, movies picked up where I left off when I went back to watch more of the show – although doing that caused the movie not to play at all. Sometimes, even with my 60 Mbps connection, I fluctuated between 300 kbs and 1.1 Mbps for on-demand content, which was a little disappointing. 

The live TV options are fantastic, with plenty of choice – almost 100 channels, with BS, CS, Kanto and Kyushu options. The menu was a snap to operate and instantly gave me access to 2 weeks worth of shows. Again, however, my first connection failed me. My connection ranged from 50 to 400 Kbps, barely enough to watch for more than 10-20 seconds without clipping or completely losing the signal. (The screen will sometimes tell you your connection speed, at least when it fluctuates).

My upgraded connection again brought things into focus – literally. Suddenly I was able to connect at between 850 Kbps and 4 Mbps, which let me watch entire programs without interruption. However, if I tried to navigate the program guide, it caused problems. The Internet connection slowed, the picture sometimes froze or became choppy, and the program guide would lag for a couple seconds. Within 4-6 seconds of changing stations, the picture would come back. Thereafter, I was able to navigate the guide easily and click on a program, causing it to load about 1 second later. 

I have heard that others have had no problem at all, and enjoy a strong connection and a great picture. It probably depends on where you are and how you connect to the Internet.  With my fast connection, JapanTV displayed HD content, like NHK nature films, quite well and gave me an excellent picture. To be clear, it never reached the pristine quality of a true HD feed from NHK.  

The interface was a little clunky – I never figured out how to watch an archived program and then channel surf without automatically going back to live TV. You can’t pause a TV show. You can fast-forward and rewind recorded (DVR) shows, but it didn’t always work. You can also rewind while watching live TV; JapanTV was the only service that let me rewind live TV. With my slow connection, rewind caused a long delay. With my strong connection, rewind and fast-forward worked great. However, like FujiTV, if you channel surf while watching an archived TV show, it will cancel your show and put you back to live tv. 

A really handy feature of Japantv is the ability to make a list of “favorite” channels. With 100 channels, it can be handy to see only what’s playing on your favorites. FujiTV has that feature also; iSakura does not.

Note: JapanTV lists the time in system time, but you can change it. So it converts the Japanese time to U.S. time – if you follow a Japanese program guide, you’ll have to do the conversion or you might get confused. 

JapanTV Verdict: Great interface, amazing array of options. With a weak Internet connection, the connection was so cripplingly slow that I could barely watch anything. With a strong Internet connection, I was able to enjoy on-demand programming, live TV and archived programs with ease at high quality. 

FujiTV

 

FujiTV is free to watch for about 5 minutes from the app. Actually it’s free to watch on the web right now! (iOs app pending). Here’s a link: https://fujitv.live/fujitv Truthfully, there is no reason for you to read my review – just click the link and check it out for yourself! You can skip right to the iSakura review now…

If you are still here, though, here are my findings based on using the 5-minutes-for-free-at-a-time option. You can go back and watch again for another 5 minutes repeatedly; however, after a while it locks you out and you have to go back and start again another day. That made it both very easy and also very hard to test the service; I could jump in and out to compare video picture, features, and interface, but never settled in to really get comfortable. [FYI - They actually commented at the end of this article before I wrote the review, but otherwise never contacted me or offered me anything for this review]

FujiTV is a TV-only service; there is no video on demand (although they claim that feature is coming). Recently, they upgraded to 2 weeks worth of archived television. Like JapanTV and iSakura, you can navigate the calendar to see current, future, and past programming for each channel, and clicking on the show you want to watch launches the program. 

The interface was slightly harder to use than JapanTV and iSakura, mostly because it wasn’t as intuitive. Also, the interface lacks the channel icons that JapanTV has. The show descriptions scroll on FujiTv and are not immediately readable in full, like they are with JapanTV and iSakura. The text is a little smaller too. What FujiTV’s interface gains in speed over JapanTV, it loses in readability. However, once I understood what the buttons did, they worked well. I could not figure out how to fast-forward or rewind shows, however. 

The biggest selling point for me was the great picture and fast connection. Using my first, weak connection, I cannot overstate the difference between Fujitv and JapanTV for me; it was the difference between shooting a bullet and throwing it. If I clicked on a show, it loaded – immediately. That was true, regardless of whether the show was live or archived. Sometimes the picture was excellent, and sometimes it was merely good. Still, at its best, it was better than standard definition TV.

With my fast connection, the difference between FujiTV and JapanTV became subtler. Fuji TV still looked good, but JapanTV was actually better at displaying live HD content, such as a NHK nature film. The blacks were deeper on JapanTV, although the color on FujiTV was still very good. Bottom line – both displayed great pictures. Just like JapanTV, FujiTV never reached the pristine quality of a true HD feed from NHK. 

FujiTV shares the ability to “favorite” a channel, something that JapanTV offers but iSakura does not. Again, that’s a handy feature with so many channels. FujiTV doesn’t have the full range of channels available with JapanTV and iSakura, but that comes down to personal preference. When I had DirectTV, I had 280 channels and watched the same 4 channels all the time. 

Also, I discovered something odd – FujiTV runs about a minute behind JapanTV. Weird, no?

FujiTV Verdict: Good interface. With a weak Internet connection, the connection was still strong and let me watch whatever I wanted to with a strong picture. With a strong connection, the picture was even better and it became easier to surf, pause, and rewind. It’s relatively easy to install, but a snap to try for free. 

Did I mention that FujiTV plays from any web browser with no extra software? That’s something that JapanTV and iSakura can’t claim; both require special software or plugins. Honestly, go try it right now for free! Who needs my opinion when it is that easy to try for yourself?

iSakura

 

iSakura, like FujiTV, is a TV-only package with no video on demand. However, it also features 2 weeks of archived television shows that you can freely choose, just like JapanTV. iSakura has two packages, and only one of them is designed for the FireTv or Android devices. However, once you sign up with that version, you can use that account to watch it on iOs or PC (I did not try that option). Like JapanTV, iSakura has a 3-day trial option that you can use one time. $4 buys you 3 days.

I didn’t sign up for iSakura until after I had my upgraded Internet connection, so I can’t speak to how good the connection would have been on my first, terrible Internet connection. However, with a strong connection, iSakura was fast and seamless- if I clicked on an archived show or changed the channel, the programming popped up instantly with no lag and the image and sound stayed clean. When it came to changing channels or programs, iSakura felt the most like regular TV of all the options. It was the fastest of all three services.  

The picture was basically the same as FujiTV and JapanTV. It looked like a good YouTube video. However, in one test, iSakura really crushed JapanTV. “The Blind Side” happened to be playing on Wowwow and I watched a nighttime scene in the movie that had lots of dark colors. iSakura looked good – like the movie should. JapanTV’s blacks blurred together and looked indistinct. As for FujiTV, it fell in the middle – definitely better than JapanTV, but slightly short of iSakura.  

When channel surfing, iSakura’s channel guide is the least obtrusive – a list of channels just pops up on the side. You can pause, but not rewind, live TV. Of course, with archived programming, you can fast-forward and rewind. It was also the easiest of all the interfaces for me to use. It’s probably just preference, but the way the buttons on the FireTV remote interfaced with the program guide just flowed very logically – I never found myself accidentally changing a channel or a program, the way I often did with FujiTV and JapanTV. 

However, the easy and speed comes at the cost of aesthetics; JapanTV’s guide has icons and clear channel names. iSakura’s guide has a short description of the station, without any icons. That’s especially tough because, unlike FujiTV and JapanTV, you can’t designate favorite channels and create a separate guide for them. 

Just like JapanTV, if you are watching pre-recorded content on one channel and then try to look at what another channel has available, it will cut you off from what you were watching. However, if you search through content on the same channel for other dates/times, you can keep watching your show. The fact that I could watch a three-day old program and still surf for other content on that channel while watching it was a big advantage over JapanTV. 

Like FujiTV, but unlike JapanTV, iSakura lists program times in Japan time. A show that airs at 19:30 in Japan is listed on the guide as 19:30. 

iSakura Verdict:  Great signal without a single interruption during the entire test (at high speed). Changes channels and loads content seamlessly, without lag. Clean, simple interface and a good picture with both live and archived (DVR) content. Better blacks and colors with some content. Lacks a “favorite channel” function or on-demand movies.

Conclusions:

None of the three services even approached the sort of HD picture that Netflix delivers through its app, or that the picture you might get with an HD app like the one offered by the Metropolitan Opera. None of these services offered a true HD feed of Japanese TV like one would get with TVJapan, the overseas version of NHK. If you want true HD, the only choice is signing up for TVJapan; DishNetwork once offered it, and it is now available through DirectTV. Some cable providers offer TVJapan as well, but my local provider only offers it in SD. 

On the other hand, you aren’t getting just one channel – you are getting access to TV broadcast from the other side of the planet, along with a week or more of DVR material for every channel, and available at the click of the button. The picture isn’t perfect; deal with it. What all three services offer, frankly, is amazing. I predict that no one would be disappointed with any of these services, provided that your Internet connection sustains them. Fortunately, all three offer a free (FujiTV) or $4/3 day trials (JapanTV & iSakura). Check them out!

Please note: The remainder of this post is from August 2014. I have not updated it since then, although I plan to go through and test and update the links soon.

See Below for Original Post from August 2014

The Fall Semester is starting and that means it’s time to get back to studying!  TV is an integral part of American culture, and anyone who is interested in Japan or learning Japanese eventually gets curious about what Japanese TV is like.  Sure, we see the crazy and unusual aspects, but watching normal everyday Japanese TV can really help you learn the language and culture. 

Unfortunately, finding Japanese television can be challenging.  While it used to be easier to find services that re-broadcast Japanese television overseas, in February 2011, Japan's Supreme Court decided that “place shifting” Japanese television was illegal, in a ruling that went against Nagano Shoten's Maneki TV service.  Until then, companies had been offering services that let you watch Japanese TV that was being received by one TV in Japan and then beamed to you overseas.  If that sounds familiar, the United States Supreme Court also declared that practice illegal this year in its Aero decision. 

Consequently, what is left for people overseas who want to watch Japanese television is a hodge-podge of grey-market and probably illegal methods, along with a couple of perfectly legal (if not limited) methods as well.  Here are some of the options (but I can’t vouch for any of them – most of them are problematic):

UPDATE (Jan 2015):  Japan is currently undergoing a new crackdown on uploaded content.  Authories arrested a man in Japan last month for uploading many videos to Dailymotion.  It seems the answer Japan wants to "Is Japan Cool?" is "I don't know, I can't watch any of their television."

Here's a great blog where people discuss updates to various streaming services: 

http://www.d-addicts.com/forums/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=73546&start=1125

News: 

Fortunately, if you want to watch the news, these links are all free and legal

If you want to watch TV Asahi’s pre-recorded news broadcast, you can watch it at http://news.tv-asahi.co.jp or at YouTube at: https://www.youtube.com/user/ANNnewsCH

Fuji TV also offers their pre-recorded news at http://www.fnn-news.com or on YouTube at https://www.youtube.com/user/FNNnewsCH

Tokyo MX also has their own YouTube Channel with shorter and longer news clips for viewing:  https://www.youtube.com/user/tokyomx

TBS also has a page in Japanese, with many pre-recorded clips as well:  http://news.tbs.co.jp

If you have Google Chrome, you can also check out their Japanese news channels, such as Channel J – General, FNN – News, Nc Kyo – General, NHK Bs2 – News, NHK World – News, Odoroku TV, Seebit – General, TBS – News, and Yomiuri. 

Prerecorded shows:

One of the best places to find videos if you are still learning Japanese (aren’t we all?) is to use NHK’s vast library of children’s videos.  Each program also has a summary available for it, and many have extra clips or supplementary materials as well:  http://www.nhk.or.jp/school/

Here’s a guide to using the website, which has over 50 videos for all ages.  http://joechip.net/extensivereading/2013/10/30/watch-japanese-kids-shows-online-with-nhk-for-school-translated-program-guide-for-japanese-learners/

UPDATE: Viki has started to offer pre-recorded Japanese TV Dramas (with ads, but otherwise for free).  Here's the website:  https://www.viki.com/countries/japan

YouTube is full of pre-recorded Japanese television, but you have to know where to look.  There are many different websites that let you do that, and here is one of them (it’s in Japanese):  http://youtubeowaraitv.blog32.fc2.com

Here’s a video explaining how to use that link  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1Qlmp00cexk

And a similar site can be found here:  http://varadoga.blog136.fc2.com

and here:  http://youtubewara.blog10.fc2.com

Reddit is always a great place to find information, and has a subreddit where you can find links to Japanese television.  http://www.reddit.com/r/JTV

Reddit also offers a page where you can browse its most recent videos, like you would pictures on Imgur.  http://reddit.tv/#/r/JTV

Reddit also shares a great deal of links to Japanese Game Shows here, and even have some with English subtitles!   http://www.reddit.com/r/JapaneseGameShows 

From your computer, there are many shows available on Crunchyroll, and if you are also willing to pay for their subscription service, you can get even more shows and also watch on your Xbox, Roku or Apple TV or similar device.  Crunchyroll (which is entirely legal and buys licenses from Japan) offers free and paid access to Japanese dramas and anime, as well as some movies.   http://www.crunchyroll.com

Live Television:  Free

If you want to watch live Japanese television, that can be a little trickier.  You could, of course, subscribe to TVJapan from Comcast, DishNetwork, or Fios. NHK is the Japanese equivalent of PBS, in a way. However, that single television station can cost as much as $30/month, which is a lot of money for one station!  TVJapan broadcasts programs that air on NHK in Japan and is almost entirely commercial-free which is nice.  

Speaking of PBS, PBS offers NHK world shows through MHz, which locally can be seen on Charlottesville channel 41.3; unfortunately, NHK world is almost always in English.  

Another option is Niji, which I am told is great, but I’ve never used because it is PC only – no Mac or iDevice.  Niji doesn’t always work, so I’ve heard. But it offers access to many different channels, all broadcast live from Japan.  

You can out their Facebook page: https://www.facebook.com/myniji

Another website that PC users really enjoyed (so I’ve heard) was http://www.fengyunzhibo.com/space/japan.htm  but of late, the site has become unreliable.  This website also offers a gateway, but it’s never worked for me.

http://www.keylabo.com/watch-tv-online-for-free/

Another cool site is this one, where a user in Japan has set up a streaming service to his/her TV in Japan.  It offers 4 live feeds to whatever that TV is tuned to at the moment.  Here's the link:

http://wilsonjj.me/jptv/#

The website has four icons which run left to right.  Each icon plays the same feed, but through a different player.  Some of the feeds work on Macs, some work on iOs, but they all work on PC.  However, not all of them work 100% of the time.  Let's face it - you get what you pay for!    

Live Television: Paid Services

On the other hand, if you have money, of course, the options are more plentiful:

For example, you can subscribe to a place-shifting service such as http://jpplayer.com

They will give you access to many live channels in exchange for a subscription fee.  1 Year costs $200, or $16 per month.  PC only, though. 

Another, similar service is http://en.itvjpn.com

Another option is to purchase a Japanese IPTV set-top box. This box gives you access, through the internet, to television channels that are being sent from overseas (usually Taiwan).  This device works sort of like a slingbox, where you control the channels and can even hook up a DVR.  Be warned, though – although they offer “HD quality” the real quality depends on the speed of your internet.  And by “speed of your internet” we are really talking about the internet signal that runs under the ocean from Taiwan. 

Some of those boxes can be found at foreign retailers – no guarantees about quality, though.

http://szhxlh.en.alibaba.com/product/1013757992-219118117/Japan_HD_Internet_TV_BOX_player.html

http://www.shop.superiptv.com/product_info.php?cPath=40&products_id=49

http://www.aliexpress.com/store/product/2014-NEW-Japan-android-IPTV-box-with-53-Japan-channels-two-increase-free-English-live-channel/608927_1949698695.html

Once you’ve found your feed, the last step is getting your hands on a TV Guide – fortunately, at least that is always free. You can find a nice one, up-to-date, at Yahoo Japan http://tv.yahoo.co.jp/listings/realtime/

Reviews - Which paid service is best?

Which one of these services are the best?  Mantis Kamakiri has a great page with reviews of several paid streaming services at http://streamingglobaltv.com/watch-japanese-tv-online/

Mantis says:  "I use one of the programs sold through JapanNetTV and it is pretty stable most of the time, iSakura would be the one to go for though as it is the most reliable. And yes, a lot of those apps come with a free trial so you can test compatibility."  

Other Choices

You might have noticed that I left out any mention of BitTorrent or various other Torrent/File-Sharing sites.  That was deliberate; you’ll have to make your own decision about whether to participate in those types of websites.  I also left out other foreign-language websites, like YouKu and Tudou, which require the user to also speak the language of the website, in addition to English and Japanese.  Lastly, I left out Nico Nico Douga because that website deserves an entry all to itself someday!

What method do you use to watch Japanese TV?  Share it with the rest of us and I can make it part of a future post!  

Edo Castle 2.0

Kickstarter is really changing the way that people make their dreams come true, from Levar Burton’s reboot of “Reading Rainbow” to some guy trying to make himself a bowl of potato salad.  But this summer, a few Tokyo Olympic organizers are trying to “kickstart” a project of an ever bigger magnitude:  A complete rebuild of Edo Castle.  Otake Naotaka, director of the authorized NPO “Committee For Rebuilding the Keep of Edo Castle” (江戸城再建), claims that he came up with the idea while traveling the world promoting the 2020 Tokyo Olympics, frustrated that Tokyo did not have an iconic landmark like other major world cities. 

Edo Castle is so named because Tokyo was known as Edo until 1868, when it was renamed Tokyo, meaning “eastern capital,” in contrast to the previous capital of Kyoto to the west. Before then, it was perhaps the world’s largest city, home to more than a million residents in the mid-eighteenth century. Edo was established in the 11th century, but it wasn’t until 1457 that the place got a proper compound and was called a “castle.”  And it was enormous:  Edo Castle’s outer moat stretched 15 km (9.3 miles), while the inner moat was 5 km long. Without stopping for anything, it’d take you about 3 hours to walk the outer moat and 1 hour for the inner one.

While there is some disagreement about where the original Edo Castle was, there is no disagreement about one thing:  rebuilding it will be VERY expensive.  The location is assumed to be in the East Garden of the Tokyo Imperial Palace, which is open to the general public. This is because even today, the foundations of the keep remain there. Unfortunately, the original keep of Edo castle burned to the ground in 1657 during the“Great Fire of Meireki”, which claimed the lives of 100,000 people (1/5th of the city’s population at the time). After that, the Maeda House of Kaga Domain funded rebuilding the foundations of the keep, but work stopped after the people protested spending valuable resources rebuilding the castle while the rest of the city (and country) suffered.  Today, only the foundation stands; the Shogunate never completed the remainder of the castle.  

The cost of rebuilding would be around 4 — 5 billion yen if the keep were to be restored faithfully as an entirely wooden structure. This is on the same scale as Tokyo Station, which was restored in 2012 at a cost of approximately 5 billion yen. The cost for the rebuild would be covered by donations from corporate sponsorship and individuals.  Their plan is to rebuild a historically accurate 6-floor citadel on the same old pedestal. The costs would be around 40-50 billion yen (400-500 million USD), and would have to get special permissions for: 1) being such a tall wooden structure, 2) looming over the residence of the imperial family, and 3) being rebuilt on the yet-untouched, unexcavated pedestal remains.  It would not be unprecedented, however.  In preparation for the 1964 Tokyo Olympic games, the nation built major new transportation infrastructure, including the Tōkaidō Shinkansen (bullet train) from Tokyo to Osaka, the Tokyo Monorail, and the Metropolitan Expressway network.

If you’d like to learn more, the folks over at JCastle have a fantastic profile of the Edo Castle project and its history, including a cool overlay of the Google map of modern Tokyo with the original castle grounds.  

http://www.jcastle.info/edo/192

Volcano

There is no single image more symbolic of Japan than Mount Fuji.  The highest mountain in Japan, 富士山 (Fuji-san, meaning "Mount Fuji", not "Mr. Fuji”) is located 60 miles southwest of Toyko and is the subject of countless poems, stories, and works of art, including illustrations by Hokusai and Hiroshige.  The mountain is woven into the soul of Japan.  It is even the symbol for one of the most prolific movie studios in Japan and appears at the beginning of many films.  

However, the mountain may also pose a threat to the people who love it.  Mount Fuji is also a volcano, albeit one that has long been dormant.  It last erupted in 1707.  However, the 2011 9.0 magnitude Tohoku earthquake that crippled the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant and killed over 15,000 people also appears may have been the harbinger of an eruption.  A new article in the journal Science indicates that pressure has been building since the 2011 quake inside the volcano.  In 2012, the mountain’s magma chamber pressure had risen to 1.6 megapascals, almost 16 times higher than the mountain’s level when it last erupted.  Another scientist has also predicted that Mt. Fuji will erupt before the end of 2015.  He points to cracks and rising magma, as well as a rise in water level at Lake Sai nearby.  

The last eruption of Mt. Fuji projected almost a billion cubic meters of ash and debris into the atmosphere.  It was also quickly followed by an 8.7 magnitude quake and tsunami that killed over 5,000 people.  Unlike Japan in 1707, however, today over 1.2 million people live in the area directly surrounding Mt. Fuji, making evacuation difficult.  The more than 1 million people closest to the mountain could experience pyroclastic and lava flows capable of leveling any and all structures.

Before you cancel your travel plans, though, you should know that scientists really have no way of knowing whether an eruption is imminent or even inevitable.  Scientists still do not understand enough about volcanoes to know how to predict their behavior.  In addition, despite what movies and television have led us to believe, although the eruption can cause massive property damage, most volcanic eruptions result in slow-moving lava that is easy to escape.  

Free Slurpees for Everyone!

I hope everyone got to enjoy their free slurpee this week at 7-11.  On Friday July 11, (7-11!), 7-11 stores around the world gave away free slurpees for the 12th year in a row.  If you missed it, there is another chance next Friday.  If you did, though, make sure to thank Japan!  While most Americans don’t realize it, 7-11 is a Japanese company.

It didn’t start out that way, of course.  In 1927, Southland Ice Company started selling milk, eggs, and bread from one of their Dallas ice houses.  Soon, the little stores that sold convenience items from ice houses became Southland’s main business, and by 1946 the stores expanded to stay open from 7 am to 11 pm - unheard of in those days!.  After opening their 100th store, they opened their first 24 hour market in 1962 in Austin, Texas.  Unfortunately, by the 1980s 7-11 and Southland Corporation became the victims of junk bonds, high debt, and the 1987 stock market crash.  Facing bankruptcy, they found a rescuer across the pacific ocean in Japan.

Years before, 7-11 had sold its Japanese franchises to Ito-Yokado company, who built a hugely successful chain of their own 7-11s in Japan.  While Wall Street viewed 7-11 as a dying brand, Ito-Yokado bought it, debt and all, and turned it around.  By 2005, Ito-Yokado (now known as Seven & i Holdings) bought the rest of 7-11.  Today, Japan’s Seven & i owns about 53,000 stores worldwide.  Almost 16,000 of those stores are in Japan - 2,000 in Tokyo alone!   The company also owns Japan’s Denny’s family restaurants as well as the Sogo and Seibu Departement stores.  

Still, while you are enjoying your slurpee, you can rest assured that someone in Japan can too.  After removing slurpees due to low demand in the 1980s, slurpees returned to Japanese 7-11 stores in 2011.  And don’t worry if you can’t remember the name - while it might be a little dry for Americans, in Japan the name Seven & i Holdings is proudly displayed throughout the country. 

Learn Japanese or Die

It’s summer, and unless you are at summer school you are probably worried (like the rest of us) that your Japanese skills are getting rusty.  After all, the fear of making a mistake in Japanese can sometimes prevent people from taking the risk of even speaking at all.  Still, just remember that you can be an expert in Japanese and still make mistakes.  Even if you are the Prime Minister of Japan! 

Last week, Prime Minister Abe rolled out a new blog as part of his effort to encourage women to join the workforce and play a greater role in both the economy and society.  Unfortunately, the website, which was otherwise in Japanese, carried the title “SHINE!”  

Read in English, it is a message of encouragement.  Read in Japanese, it is a simple command:  DIE!  

If you want to avoid making these and other mistakes, the Huffington Post recently published a nice compilation of Japanese language-learning Apps.  Here is the link:

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/fueled/9-apps-for-learning-japan_b_5524854.html

I’m republishing their list and descriptions, along with some commentary that I’ve added in []s:

Mirai Japanese

A stellar textbook-type app, Mirai employs a "tutor" who reads out a script while you follow along. The explanations are thorough, and where Japanese words pop-up, which is unsurprisingly often, you can toggle them from rōmaji (English spelling) to Japanese writing. Having someone reading out pronunciation is especially useful, and the first 20 lessons are free! There's a similar app, Tae Kim's Learning Japanese, but which is not nearly as user-friendly.

Dr. Moku's Hiragana Mnemonic

Apologetically calling its own system "corny," Dr. Moku's Hiragana Mnemonic is a great app for memorizing Hiragana: the Japanese alphabet. It uses mnemonics: creating associations between words and ideas or pictures. For example, む is pronounced "mu" -- so they drew a picture of a cow into it. After a half hour, I was blazing through each exercise: highly recommended for beginners.

Human Japanese Live

Human Japanese Live is a favorite among students of Japanese. Setup like a textbook, divided up into chapters and exercises. It's made much better than its dead-tree counterpart by having soundbites attached to all characters and words, as well as other tricky parts of learning Japanese (like stroke order: the order and direction every line has to go in) laid out and easily understandable. A must-have, if you're serious about learning Japanese. [I actually have this app - it’s great, although very heavy on English explanations for grammar and usage.  It is must more of a textbook than most other apps]

Learn Japanese by MindSnacks

Some MindSnacks games, which do a range of languages, to be too simple to be helpful, but they've proven popular with a lot of others. The app gives you a series of games, and to win any of them relies on you getting familiar with Japanese words, written and spoken. Sounds good, but it's very much learning by rote -- which suits some people and not others.

iAnki

iAnki isn't  a purpose-built Japanese app, but makes it onto this list for being a well-devised flashcard app. You download the app, create a log-in and then you can either create your flashcards or download some online. For Japanese there's a mix of flashcard playlists, "Japanese Clothing;" "Animals;" and "Hiragana;" among others.  [Anki is highly customizable and has been around for a long time; there are also many other apps that use its method.  The nice part is that it “learns” what cards you know and what cards you need more practice with]

iKnow

iKnow is a great app to get invested in, by which I mean that while it doesn't offer anything better than Dr Moku for Hiragana, or iAnki for word memorising -- what it does do is offer an extensive and interesting course for learning Japanese. By now, you're already spoilt for choice with such courses, but as they say "variety is the spice of life:" if you don't take a fancy to Human Japanese Live, iKnow might be up your alley.

Memrise

Memrise is a popular app with language learners (it has courses for Arabic, Chinese, as well as plenty of European languages). It's pretty much a case of linking words from one language to another, in this case English to Japanese. It's an effective way to remind yourself of vocab and is gamified so it's a little more fun: you get points for every correct answer. But there's some awkward ordering of words and sounds which makes it less than perfect.

Japanese

This app really great dictionary for your phone: breaks-up words for pronunciation, explores conjugations and is very soft on people coming to the language for the first time. If you're getting serious about learning the language, this will be a potent tool in your arsenal.

imiwa?

And if you were offput by the price tag, imiwa? is in many respects the free version of the Japanese app. It's not quite as user-friendly, but given there's no charge and it gives detailed translations in several languages, it'd be a good place to start for someone just dipping their toe in. Frustratingly, neither of these apps have a sound function to hear how the words are pronounced. [Imiwa? is the favorite app of Japanese Table!   The nice feature is that if you select and copy text in one app (such as your web browser), when you switch to Imiwa? it automatically translates the word]  

A Time To Dance

A visit to Japan will make anyone want to dance, but if you visit Japan, you better make sure to wear a watch if you plan to dance in public.  After a certain hour, your late-night partying will turn you into a criminal.

A little history first:  In 1948, struggling to emerge from the destruction of WWII, the Japanese government tried to crack down on gambling and prostitution by passing a strict law that restricted nightclubs.  The law was called the Businesses Affecting Public Morals Regulation Law (風俗営業等の規制及び業務の適正化等に関する法律), also known as fueiho.  Among other provisions, it requires a club to have a special permit to allow dancing after 11 p.m..  An early tool used to control the Yakuza, drunken American soldiers, and young people, it gradually fell into disuse as Japan developed one of the most vibrant late-night DJ scenes in the world. 

That all changed in 2012, when Japanese police suddenly began to enforce the half-century old law.  All over Japan, in Tokyo, Osaka, Fukuoka – Police suddenly started to raid clubs, jail owners, and shut down venues that had been openly operating for years without any trouble.  In March, 2012, Fukuoka Police shut down the club “Keith Flack” and arrested its owner.  Police arrested the owner of Osaka’s Noon, which had operated for 18 years, and held him in jail for 22 days.  Suddenly, Japan’s vibrant and nationwide DJ world came to an abrupt end. 

Why the sudden crackdown?  Many speculate that it began when a group of masked men beat to death the owner of Flower, a club in Roppongi.  When the club reopened under a new name a few weeks later, police swept in and closed the club under the law.  Others believe it began in 2009 with the beating death of a Kyoto Sangyo University student in a street brawl.  Still others believe it began with public concern over an “out-of-control club culture” that drove former pop idol Noriko “Nori P” Sakai” to test positive for amphetamines. 

There is another theory to the crackdown, though.  When Noon’s owner, Masotoshi Kanemitsu, was held in jail, he reported that his interrogation centered around his financial transactions.  Many speculate that police have been using the raids as a convenient cover for more in-depth investigations into drugs and money laundering.  After arresting owners, workers and patrons, they are free to interrogate them about a wide-range of offenses under the cover of enforcing the fueiho laws. 

Whatever the reason, Japan is not sitting this dance out.  Instead, a nationwide campaign called “Let’s Dance” is campaigning for the end of the fueiho laws.  Last month, it appeared that the Japanese government is starting to agree.  Japan does not want anything to imperil the revelry promised by the impending 2020 Olympics.  With one eye set on the world stage, the Abe government is likely to make big changes to the law before the end of the year. 

Kei Cars

The Toyota Corolla is the world’s best selling car, and the Toyota Camry and Honda Accord are the best selling cars in the United States.  You’d think that those cars dominate the roads in Japan, too - but you’d be wrong.  OK, maybe I’m exaggerating, but the Kei Jidosha (軽自動車), or light vehicles, are a category of cars, trucks and vans that dominate Japanese roads in both cities and rural areas, yet are virtually unknown outside of Japan.  40% of all cars sold in Japan are Kei cars, and in some regions between 75% and 100% of all households own at least one Kei car.  Daihatsu, Honda, Mitsubishi, and Suzuki all manufacture kei cars, which are easy to spot due to their yellow license plates.  To fall into the Kei class, a car can be no more than 11.1-feet long, 4.6-feet wide, and 6.5-feet high, with a 660 cc engine.  These tiny vehicles are a vital part of the Japanese economy, but safety and export rules keep them out of the US and Europe.  

Japanese automakers produce more than 50 models of Kei car, and Kei cars also typically get 40 to 60 mpg — which is another reason they’re so popular.  Gasoline costs $5.79 a gallon in Japan.  In a survey published in April by the Japan Automobile Manufacturers Association, 26 percent of drivers said they'd downsized from a regular vehicle to a kei--looking to cut costs. Last year, kei cars made up 40 percent of the new car market in Japan, and over half of cars on Japan's roads are believed to be kei cars.

The Kei car began as an initiative to literally get Japan moving after WWII, when most Japanese could not afford a full-sized car, yet had enough money to buy a motorcycle. To promote the growth of the car industry, as well as to offer an alternative delivery method to small business and shop owners, kei car standards were created.  Originally limited to a mere 150 cc (100 cc for two-strokes) in 1949, dimensions and engine size limitations were gradually increased.   The Kei tax discounts, created more than half a century ago, still offer Japanese consumers significant advantages.  First, the taxable amount is only 3% of the purchase price, compared to 5% for a larger car.  Second, the weight tax amount is 13,200 and 8,800 yen for a three and two year period respectively; as compared to the 18,900 and 12,600 yen charged for larger size passenger cars. The savings are thus more than 30% in both cases. This weight tax is paid after the vehicle has passed its safety inspection.  Lastly, a 24-month insurance contract typically costs 18,980 yen at the time of registration, versus 22,470 yen for a larger car.

Still, the vehicles are a challenge for the Abe government, which is considering ending the subsidies for these tiny vehicles.  Development of the vehicles does virtually nothing to improve Japanese exports, since the vehicles are rarely sold overseas.  The subsidy also cuts into sales of regular cars, hurting Japanese automakers at home.  Searching for ways to increase revenue, the Abe government has proposed cutting back on or ending the Kei subsidies.  However, there has been considerable outcry, as the Kei cars are still vital to small businesses, farmers, and families.  20% of households surveyed in April stated that if the Kei subsidies ended, they would give up having an automobile entirely.  

World Cup

World Cup Fever has gripped, well, the world, but nowhere less than in Japan, where the sport that we call soccer and that the rest of the world calls football is known as サッカー.  As early as 1968, Japan took the bronze medal at the Mexico City Olympics.  However, Japan did not have a professional league until 1993 and did not play in the World Cup until 1998.  However, in 2002 Japan co-hosted the World Cup with South Korea and has won four of the last six Asian Cup competitions.  Today, however, Japanese fans are as fervent as any in the world, often chanting “Nippon Ole!” in support of their team; and well they should, as their team is the strongest team that Asia has ever fielded at the World Cup, thanks in no small part to Keisuke Honda, who scored Japan’s only goal against the Ivory Coast this weekend.  

Japan is one of the most successful football teams in Asia, having qualified for the last five consecutive FIFA World Cupswith second round advancements in 2002 & 2010, and having won the AFC Asian Cup a record four times in 1992, 2000,2004 & 2011. The team has also finished second in the 2001 FIFA Confederations Cup.  The Japanese team is commonly known by the fans and media as Soccer Nippon Daihyō (サッカー日本代表), Nippon Daihyō (日本代表), or Daihyō (代表) as abbreviated expressions.  Recently the team has been known or nicknamed as the "Samurai Blue", while Japanese news media still sometimes refer it to by manager's last name, as "Zaccheroni Japan" (ザッケローニジャパン Zakkerōni Japan?), or "Zac Japan" (ザックジャパン Zakku Japan), after the team’s Italian manager, Alberto Zaccheroni.  

Zaccheroni leadership since 2010 has been highly successful, beginning with an historic victory over Argentina. His first major competition with Japan was the 2011 AFC Asian Cup hosted in Qatar. He led the team to their record fourth Asian Cup title winning 1–0 in the final against Australia.  While his team lost 2-1 to the Ivory Coast yesterday, his next two challenges will be Thursday’s game against Greece, followed by next Tuesday’s challenge against Columbia.  

Keen observers of the Japanese team might notice, however, that the Japanese uniform is blue and white, rather than red and white, the colors of the Japanese national flag.  It turns out that back in 1936, Japan’s first international competition, Japan wore blue and white uniforms in its match against Sweden.  When the team prevailed 3-2, the national soccer federation took it as a good sign and even today believe the colors are a good luck charm.  In any case, if you don’t think that the Japanese take their soccer seriously, you might want to look again:  

Free WiFi For Everyone!

Japan is a fun tourist destination and the Japanese go out of their way to make their nation tourist-friendly.  Still, finding free wifi is a a challenge for any tourist in Japan; unlike the U.S., Europe or South Korea, free Wifi can be difficult to find in Japan.  That’s why a new program from NTT Telecom promises to take Japan’s tourist friendliness to the next level:  Free Wifi for anyone with a foreign passport!  

Here’s out it works:  when you arrive in Japan, present your passport at the airport and register for a wifi card that offers free wifi coverage at any one of 45,000 hotspots in eastern Japan, including Tokyo, Hakone, Mt. Fuji, Yokohama, Nagano, Nikko, Kusatsu, Tohoku, Hokkaido and Fukushima.  

-- 
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Japanese Table" group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to japanese-table+unsubscribe@googlegroups.com.
For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.

Plus, if you are preparing to visit Japan, you can download the iOSor Android version of the NAVITIME for Japan Travel app and obtain an ID and password beforehand. The app also offers an augmented reality mode that shows you a Street View-style image of the location where an available Wi-Fi hotspot is located.  Here are the links for the apps: (first iOs and the Android)

https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/navitime-for-japan-travel/id686373726?mt=8

or

https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.navitime.inbound.walk&referrer=utm_source=from_ntt&utm_medium=pc

While the access only lasts for 14 days (or 336 hours), it’s perfect for a short journey to Japan.  The program is sponsored by the Japanese government and for now, it’s only for a limited time; it will last until September 2014.  In the meantime, the Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communications, the Japan Tourism Agency, NTT Broadband Platform, and KDDI affiliate Wire and Wireless will set up a committee this summer. They will create a system for sharing the ID information of foreign visitors by teaming up with airports, railway operators and the hotel industry. The government will also call on facilities nationwide offering free Wi-Fi to adopt the common ID system

Abductions

In a surprising turn, North Korea announced on May 29 that they will launch a special commission to investigate its abductions of Japanese citizens.  This divisive and emotional issue has been a difficult challenge for Japanese - North Korean relations for almost 40 years.  At talks held in Stockholm, Sweden, North Korean negotiators agreed to Japanese requests to investigate what happened to more than a dozen Japanese believed to have been kidnapped, reversing the North’s earlier insistence that the issue had been settled.  

The story of the abductees began with mysterious disappearances in the 1970s and 1980s, when young people began to disappear from coastal areas of Japan.  The victims were almost all young men and women, but lacked any real financial or political connections.  The victims were ordinary people - a nurse, a noodle chef, a carpenter, and the life.  The youngest, Megumi Yokota, was 13 when she disappeared in November 1977, from the Japanese west coast city of Niigata.  Then, in the 1980s, rumors began that the victims had been taken to North Korea.  A postcard or a sighting would claim that the missing Japanese citizens were secretly living in North Korea, now living as prisoners and teaching Japanese to North Korean spies.  Other stories claimed that some citizens were abducted to allow North Korean agents to assume their identities, or killed because they observed North Korean incursions, or even kidnapped to become wives to the Japanese terrorists who had hijacked a JAL flight in 1970.  

For years, North Korea denied the accusations, until 2002, when it admitted that it had kidnapped Japanese citizens; North Korea even returned five of them, still alive. Although North Korea believed the admission was an act of goodwill that would endear it to Japan, instead, the revelation poisoned Japanese-North Korean relations.  The Japanese public was outraged and did not believe North Korea's insistence that the other abductees had died. Estimates of the number of abductees has ranged from 13 (the number claimed by North Korea), to 17 (the number claimed by the Japanese government), to 100 (the number claimed by advocacy groups).

Japan, for its part, has agreed to ease sanctions in exchange for the inquiry.  As a first step, Japan agreed to end an eight-year entry ban on the Manyongbong-92 ferry, which sails between Niigata and the east coast port of Wonsan in North Korea.  The North Korean committee will also examine the fate of other Japanese nationals in the North, including those who accompanied their Korean spouses to the country in the 1950s, and search for the remains of Japanese who died there in the chaotic final days of World War II.  

Holiday Blues

This week, the Japanese National Diet, or parliament, adopted a new national holiday, Mountain Day (山の日), which officially gives the people of Japan 16 total national days off.  Beginning August 11 of 2016, Japan will have more national holidays than South Korea, France, Spain, and Italy.  Mountain Day joins holidays like New Years, Constitution Day, the Emporer’s Birthday, Health and Sports Day, Culture Day, Children's Day, Coming of Age Day, Respect for the Elderly Day, and Vernal and Autumnal Equinox Days, as well as two other recent additions: Ocean Day and Greenery Day, a day to give thanks for plants.

While the high number of national holidays might make the Japanese appear to have an explosion of leisure time, in fact the opposite is true.  Japanese employees worked an average of 2,031 hours a year in 1990, compared with 1,831 in the United States and 1,578 hours in Germany, according to the Japan Institute for Labor Policy and Training. While the number has declined nearly 15% to 1,728 hours in 2011, the average Japanese worker only takes 8.6 days of personal vacation a year.  Prime Minister Shinzo Abe has made the issue of work-life balance a part of his economic reform package, specifically so that more women can enter the workforce, setting a target of women occupying 30 percent of leadership positions in Japanese society by 2020.  

Of course, national holidays mean more work, not less, for workers in the retail and consumer industries.  For example, in lieu of holidays worked, Uniqlo gives employees 16 additional days off that they can take throughout the year.  The national holidays of course also bring congestion and traffic on the trains and highways.  Another issue is that in Japan, unlike the United States, workers are not paid when they are on leave for a national holiday. 

Still, the government hopes that the new holiday will improve the lives of workers in Japan, where there is still a word, Karoshi (過労死), meaning “death from overwork.”  One in three men aged 30 to 40 works over 60 hours a week. Half say they get no overtime. Factory workers arrive early and stay late, without pay. Training at weekends may be uncompensated.  Worse yet, the number one cause of death in 2010 for the 20-29 age group and the 30-39 age group was suicide.  Japan knows it is time to change.   Toyota, for example, now generally limits overtime to 360 hours a year (an average of 30 hours monthly), and at some offices issues public address announcements every hour after 7 p.m.  Dozens of large corporations have also implemented "no overtime days", which require employees to leave the office promptly at 5:30 p.m. However, since their workload is too high, few workers can actually take advantage of this, opting to stay in the office with the lights off or simply taking their work home (called furoshiki or "cloaked overtime").

Below is the full text of the new law, in Japanese:

国民の祝日に関する法律の一部を改正する法律案 国民の祝日に関する法律(昭和二十三年法律第百七十八号)の一部を次のように改正する。 第二条海の日の項の次に次のように加える。

山 の 日 八 月 十 一 日 山に親しむ機会を得て、山の恩恵に感謝する。 附則

この法律は、平成二十八年一月一日から施行する

Honda the Genius

This week, Japan announced a stunning rise in GDP, with a growth rate of 5.9% for the 1st quarter of 2014.  While that rise is probably short-lived, as it reflects consumers who were spending as quickly as possible before Japan’s impending sales tax increase, it is still good news for a nation that has been struggling to regain the momentum that was once considered unstoppable.  

Of course, that momentum was the work of great individuals, both leaders and workers, and one of those men was Soichiro Honda, the founder of Honda automobiles.  Honda was an extraordinary leader but also, at heart, a gifted and revolutionary engineer.  Honda started his corporation in 1948, just after the end of WWII, by selling a motorized bicycle that featured an engine of Honda’s own design.  The next year, he released a motorcycle that would lead Honda’s rise to the best-selling motorcycle manufacturer in the world.  By 1973, Honda was ready to release its Civic, featuring another Honda-designed engine, the Compound Vortex Controlled Combustion, or CVCC, engine.  This engine was revolutionary because it was able to meet strict new US emissions standards without the use of heavy, power-robbing, expensive catalytic converters.  Ford and Chrysler had already licensed the technology.  

However, GM would have none of it.  Instead, the CEO of GM at the time called it a “little toy motorcycle engine” and mocked its usefulness for American automobiles, declaring that it was unfit for a GM car.  When Honda heard this claim, he saw it as a challenge, one that he was ready and happy to accept.  

Honda purchased a 1973 V8 Chevrolet Impala and had it shipped to Japan.  He then directed the design of an all-new engine for the Impala that took advantage of his CVCC design.  He then flew it back to the United States and set it up, face to face, with GM’s Impala for a US Government-run test.  The result?  Honda’s design retained the original horsepower while passing the new EPA emissions standards without a catalytic converter.  Plus, it was more fuel efficient.  

Ansel Adams

Probably the most famous American photographer of all time is Ansel Adams, whose black and white landscape photos of the American West are still seen all over the United States today in calendars, posters, and books.  But most people do not know that, in 1943, Adams took hundreds of photographs of the Manzanar War Relocation Center in California and the Japanese-Americans interned there during World War II.  He published the photographs in a book called “Born Free And Equal:  The Story of Loyal Japanese-Americans” in 1944 and displayed his images at the Museum of Modern Art in New York City.  

At the height of World War II, on February 19, 1942, President Franklin D. Roosevelt signed Executive Order 9066, which resulted in the forced relocation of over 120,000 Japanese Americans, two-thirds of whom were native-born American citizens. The rest had been prevented from becoming citizens by federal law.  Over 110,000 were imprisoned in the ten concentration camps located far inland and away from the coast. Manzanar was the first of the ten camps to be established.  Over 90% of the prisoners were from the Los Angeles area, with the rest coming from Stockton, California; and Bainbridge Island, Washington. Many were farmers and fishermen. Manzanar held 10,046 prisoners at its peak, and a total of 11,070 people were imprisoned there.

The camp site was situated on 6,200 acres at Manzanar, leased from the City of Los Angeles, with the developed portion covering approximately 540 acres. The residential area was about one square mile and consisted of 36 blocks of hastily constructed, 20-foot by 100-foot tarpaper barracks, with each family living in a single 20-foot by 25-foot “apartment” in the barracks. These apartments consisted of partitions with no ceilings, and therefore no privacy. Lack of privacy was a major problem for the prisoners, especially since the camp had communal men’s and women’s bathrooms.

Adams’ project began when his friend, Ralph Merritt, who was the camp director, invited him to visit and photograph life at the camp.  The project was highly controversial, owing to both the ongoing war and the animosity against Japan, especially in the American West.  He was not the first to photograph the camp; Dorothea Lange, another influential depression-era photographer and journalist, photographed the early days of the camp, when conditions were especially harsh and inhumane.  Merritt also discovered that Toyo Miyatake, a Japanese-American photographer, had smuggled a camera into the facility and had been secretly photographing it; however, instead of seizing the equipment and the photos, Merritt decided to fund his project, supply him with more equipment, and eventually introduce him to Adams.  

On November 21, 1945, the Government closed Manzanar, the sixth camp to be closed. Although the prisoners had been brought to the Owens Valley by the United States Government, they had to leave the camp and travel to their next destinations on their own. The Government gave each person $25 ($323 today), one-way train or bus fare, and meals to those who had less than $600 ($7,746 today). While many left the camp voluntarily, a significant number refused to leave because they had no place to go after having lost everything when they were forcibly uprooted and removed from their homes.

Today, you can visit Adams' collection of photographs online at the Library of Congress.  http://www.loc.gov/pictures/collection/manz/  When he donated his collection to the Library of Congress in 1965, Adams wrote:  "The purpose of my work was to show how these people, suffering under a great injustice, and loss of property, businesses and professions, had overcome the sense of defeat and despair by building for themselves a vital community in an arid (but magnificent) environment.”

Golden Week

Tomorrow marks the end of “Golden” Week in Japan, a collection of four national holidays within seven days, although, this year, due to the unusual way in which the days fell, the holiday wasn’t so “golden.”   In combination with well placed weekends, Golden Week is one of Japan's three busiest holiday seasons, besides New Year and Obon week.  Golden Week consists of the combination of Showa Day, Constitution Day, Greenery Day, and Children’s Day.  Instead of just giving people those four holidays off, many offices end up closing for about 7-10 days, giving their employees a full week of freedom. Even if they’re not given the whole week, many employees will just take time off anyway. The holiday week starts on April 29th and goes through May 5th.

However, this year, the holidays are placed unfavorably, creating an isolated holiday during the first half and a four-day holiday period in the second half of the Golden Week.  Showa no hi (the Showa Emperor’s birthday) was on a Tuesday and Constitution Day on a Saturday, so there was enough time between them for people to work, which means they didn’t get those days off. That left a short 4-day weekend to get all the things people usually do during Golden Week done — like visit their home towns — and the truncated time period meant more highway congestion in a shorter time span.

This year, the Japan Travel Bureau declared that the Golden Week holiday started on April 25 and ended May 6, despite the fact that, for the first half of that period, schools weren’t closed the whole time.  JTB estimated 21.962 million domestic travellers over the holiday, which is 3.6 percent less than in 2013, when the number hit a record high.  The estimate for overseas travellers based on reservations already made was 474,000, which is 11.4 percent less than last year. At Narita airport, 36,000 people were flying out of Japan on Saturday.  Roads were overwhelmed, too, with traffic backed up for more than 50 km heading toward an interchange north of Tokyo on the Kanetsu Expressway running to Niigata Prefecture along the Sea of Japan coast. 

Rakuten Travel looked into its own reservation trends and said that the usual destinations, Okinawa and Hokkaido, remain popular but there was a 40.5 percent spike in the number of travelers going to Tokushima Prefecture — including a 157 percent increase among travelers in their 20s — most likely due to the 1,200th anniversary of the Ohenro Pilgrimage, which is interesting since the pilgrimage in the past was only popular among older people. Shimane Prefecture also saw a steep increase in visitors for a similar reason: people visiting iconic Izumo Shrine.

Obama Dreams of Sushi

This week U.S. President Barack Obama visited Japan, and like any visitor, had a list of things he knew he wanted to do.  First on the list – a visit to what is probably the best Sushi restaurant in the world: Sukiyabashi Jiro. 

This restaurant, one of only a few restaurants in the world that carry the coveted “three-star” rating from the French Michelin guide, is a tiny, unassuming sushi bar located in the basement of an office building off a subway station and seats only 10 people at a time.  Its owner, Jiro Ono, turns 90 next year and is expected to soon be succeeded by his son, Yoshikazu. 

Mr. Ono began making sushi at the age of 9 when, his parents penniless and unable to care for him any longer, he set out on the street looking for work.  Today, apprentices begin by learning to wring out hot towels and spend months washing dishes, cleaning, and saying nothing but “yes.”  From there they graduate to helping prepare other simple dishes – but don’t think that the preparation is anything but simple.  Octupus is massaged for 45 minutes before it is served.  Rice must be kept at perfect body-temperature. 

If you are lucky to get a reservation after the month-long waiting list opens (and usually closes within minutes), don’t bother trying to decide what you should order – there is only one menu:  the chef’s 30,000 yen “Chef’s Recommended Special Course.”  But if you want to check it out, you can also see delicious profiles on Anthony Bourdain’s “No Reservations” and the fantastic documentary “Jiro Dreams of Sushi.”  http://youtu.be/M-aGPniFvS0

If you would like to try the experience but can’t afford the cost or the effort to get a reservation, you could also try Jiro’s son Takashi’s restaurant, located in Roppongi Hills.  A little closer to home, you could also try “Shiro’s,” a sushi restaurant in Seattle operated by Daisuke Nakazawa, a former apprentice of Mr. Ono’s. Mr. Nakazawa even appears in the documentary, retelling how he spent months making tamago for Mr. Ono, suffering hundreds of failures until finally Mr. Ono approved.  Still, if you can try it, it comes highly recommended:  President Obama called it “the best sushi he had in his life.”  

InBetweenSpaces

Sometimeswedon’tnoticethelittledifferencesinlanguageunlesswestepbackforaminute.  Ever notice that in traditional Japanese, sentences don’t have any spaces between the words?  It was only in the 1980s when advertising copy writers began incorporating full stops in titles and other advertising. Then, in the 1990s, the group Morning Musume (モーニング娘) began using a full stop in its name, starting a fad for this usage.  Ever wonder what Japanese was like before English punctuation entered its lexicon?  After all, you don’t need a ? when the language already contains its own question mark (か）

Nowadays, although we often see western punctuation in advertising, manga, and other media, Japanese retains its own unique punctuation.  The Japanese equivalent of a period is "句点", commonly called "マル(a circle)," 

which is written as "。", just looking like a circle.  The Japanese equivalent of a comma is "読点," commonly called "テン(a point)," which is written as “、”  The Japanese comma, like the Japanese period, is used in much the same way as the English one. It’s put in the same place as the period (bottom right of the last word), and can either be the style you see to the left (line from top left to bottom right) or a regular period you see in English (like this: ,). Comma usage in Japanese is much more liberal compared to English.

For quotation marks, you will often see:  
「」
Japanese use these to indicate quotes. Although these are called “single quotes” which would make you think they’d be like ‘this’. This is the most common quote style. The single quotes are the ones you will choose 90% of the time with some exception. 

There is also the interpunct・

The interpunct is a round circle that vertically aligns center with the words next to it. It’s usually used to break up words that go together, most often in katakana, for example - ザー・モンキー

You will also occasionally see ~, which is used in "to from" constructions in Japanese, such as 月〜金曜日 "from Monday to Friday". 

Of course, you always free to use Kaomoji (顔文字)(which basically translates to “Face Letters”) to add some spice to your Japanese; just don’t include them in a big report to your boss ^_~ 

Whaling

On Monday, the United Nations International Court of Justice is set to rule on a request by Australia to bar Japan from whaling in the Antarctic Ocean.  In 2010, Australia instituted proceedings against Japan at The Hague, arguing that Japan’s whaling program violates Article 8 of the International Convention for the Regulation of Whaling.   Currently, the Tokyo-based Institute of Cetacean Research, which was founded in the 1980s at roughly the same time that the country was forced to cease commercial whaling operations, has been granted an annual catch quota by the Japanese government and sells whale meat that has been procured through its lethal sampling techniques. The institute argues that catching and killing a large number of whales is necessary to improve the accuracy of its research.

Japan has set an annual catch limit of 1,035 whales in the Antarctic Ocean and 380 whales in the northern Pacific. But in the last few years, obstruction by environmental activist group Sea Shepherd has reduced the actual catch to just 103 in the Antarctic in the fiscal year ended March 2013. However, despite the low yield, the demand for whale meat in Japan has dwindled even faster.  The amount of whale meat stockpiled for lack of buyers has nearly doubled over 10 years, even as anti-whaling protests helped drive catches to record lows. More than 2,300 minke whales worth of meat is sitting in freezers while whalers still plan to catch another 1,300 whales per year.  Whale meat supplied half of Japan's protein needs 50 years ago, but today it's limited to specialty restaurants and school lunches in most of the country.  Consumption of whale meat among the Japanese public today is around 1 percent of its peak, in the early 1960s.  The number of whale meat distributors and processors declined by half between 1999 and 2012.  The industry at its peak in the 1960 had more than 10,000 crewmembers and fishermen, but that number has dropped to fewer than 200, plus a small number of coastal whalers.

Meanwhile, Japan's government-subsidized whaling program is sinking deeper into debt and faces an imminent, costly renovation of its 27-year-old mother ship, Nisshin Maru.  The Institute of Cetacean Research, a nonprofit entity overseen by the government that runs the program, made 2 billion yen ($20 million) from the whale meat sales last year, down from more than 7 billion yen ($70 million) in 2004.  Initially, the government injected about 500 million yen ($5 million) a year into the program, or about 10 percent of its costs. By 2007, the subsidy had grown to about 900 million yen ($9 million), and is projected to exceed 5 billion yen ($50 million) for the current fiscal year ending in September. That includes money for anti-Sea Shepherd measures, such as repairs for damage and dispatch of a patrol ship.

A Galaxy poll of Japanese citizens released on Thursday asking ''Are you in favour or opposed to whaling?'' showed an overwhelming 92 per cent against.  In addition, the program came under intense criticism recently when, in 2011, the Ministry of Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries used an earthquake and tsunami disaster reconstruction fund to help cover whaling debts. The ministry later acknowledged funneling 2.3 billion yen ($23 million) of the fund into whaling, triggering public outcry. The whaling subsidy, now part of a broader package of fisheries issues, will expire next year.

Monday's ICJ ruling in the Hague could cost Japan the roughly 1,000 whales it takes in the Antarctic each year, or its catch quota could be reduced. Other Japanese whaling in the North Pacific and off the Japanese coast will not be affected.  However, it is likely that Japan will obey the ruling, given that Japan hopes to benefit from International legal support in its dispute over disputed islands and territory with its neighbors.  

PS4

This week, Sony finally released the Playstation 4 in Japan, to the cheers and eager anticipation of the Japanese gaming public.  For American gamers, this news might come as a bit of a surprise, since Sony released its newest console in the United States and Europe in November of last year.  However, while US customers have been able to purchase the device for over three months, Friday saw the launch of the PS4 in Japan, with legendary game designers like Hideo Kojima on hand to help usher in the new hardware.

The PS4 has proved a hit so far, selling 4.2 million units worldwide last year, outpacing rival Microsoft Corp.’s Xbox One at 3 million.  By contrast, Sony’s domestic rival, Nintendo, launched its new Wii U console in November 2012 and it took more than a year for the video game giant to sell 5.86 million units.  In January the PS4 doubled the Xbox One’s sales and remains in short supply all over the world.  This news is not only good news for Sony – victory in the “console wars” is a matter of Sony’s very survival. 

Sony has been facing great difficulty of late.  The company rose from humble beginnings in 1946, with just 20 employees, to become one of the first Japanese companies to go global as the country emerged from the debris of its defeat in World War II to become a manufacturing powerhouse.  Today, however, most of its main brands are struggling.  The iconic Walkman has been replaced by the iPod, the Bravia TV line has not turned a profit in about a decade, and Sony was forced to sell its Vaio computer line last year.  Sony plans to cut 5,000 jobs this year.  

It is not alone.  Domestic rivals like Sharp and Panasonic have also suffered at the hands of U.S. giant Apple and Samsung, and found themselves outplayed in the smartphone and low-margin television business.  But analysts said the PS4 might just help Sony turn the corner.

No Retreat, No Surrender

This week marks the death of Hiroo Onoda (小野田 寛郎), one of the last two Japanese soldiers to officially surrender after the end of World War II, at the age of 91.  Although the war officially ended in 1945, Second Lieutenant Onoda, who was an intelligence officer stationed in the Phiippines during the war, refused to surrender for another 30 years until 1974, when his former commander traveled from Japan to personally issue orders relieving him from duty.  His service was exceeded only by private Teruo Nakamura, who held out for a few more months, only to also surrender in Indonesia in 1974.  

Onoda had joined the Imperial Army at the age of 20 and sent to Lubang Island in the Philippines, where his duties including monitoring and disrupting enemy movements and capabilities. His orders were to never surrender or take his own life.  His unit, which included three other soldiers, continued to carry out attacks through 1945.  When the war ended, they found a note from other soldiers telling them that the war was over.  However, they believed the note was a forgery.  Toward the end of 1945, leaflets were dropped by air with a surrender order printed on them from General Tomoyuki Yamashita of the Fourteenth Area Army. They had been in hiding for over a year, and this leaflet was the only evidence they had the war was over. Onoda's group looked very closely at the leaflet to determine whether it was genuine, and decided it was not.  Over the next 30 years, they continued to carry out guerrilla-style attacks, ignoring increasing evidence that the war had ended.  During that time, two of their group were killed in attacks and another turned himself in.  

On February 20, 1974, Onoda met a Japanese man, Norio Suzuki, who was traveling around the world, looking for "Lieutenant Onoda, a panda, and the Abominable Snowman, in that order”.  Suzuki found Onoda after four days of searching. Onoda described this moment in a 2010 interview: "This hippie boy Suzuki came to the island to listen to the feelings of a Japanese soldier. Suzuki asked me why I would not come out ..." Onoda and Suzuki became friends, but Onoda still refused to surrender, saying that he was waiting for orders from a superior officer. Suzuki returned to Japan with photographs of himself and Onoda as proof of their encounter, and the Japanese government located Onoda's commanding officer, Major Yoshimi Taniguchi, who had since become a bookseller. He flew to Lubang where on March 9, 1974, and delivered orders to Onoda, relieving him of his duties.  Onoda “bowed stiffly in acknowledgment that his war was over – and then proceeded to brief his commander about his 29 years of intelligence gathered on ‘enemy movements.'

Though he had killed people and engaged in shootouts with the police, Onoda received a pardon from President Ferdinand Marcos.  In his formal surrender to Marcos, Onoda wore his 30-year-old imperial army uniform, cap and sword, all of which were in good condition. His Arisaka Type 99 rifle was still in operational condition.  He offered his sword in surrender to President Marcos, who returned it to him.  After publishing a book about his story, Onoda moved to Brazil, where he became a farmer.  He had no interest in the modern world or technology.  He later returned to Japan to start a school for wilderness survival school young children to introduce them to nature and help prevent juvenile delinquency.