I know I’ve been saying I was gonna start writing again properly for the last 4 months. So I’ll stop saying it. Instead I’ll do what every good blogger does, which is take inspiration from someone else’s work to knock up something of my own. Well kind of…

In this case I’ve actually been meaning to write about the cult of the cute in Japan for a while, but like most other things I haven’t gotten round to it. And considering I’m leaving the country in six weeks, I should really get my arse in gear and play catch up.

Back to the matter at hand. Japan’s love of cute, also known as かわいい　(pronounced kawaii - emphasis on the last i sound please). I was browsing the Sushimatic blog about an hour ago, and came across this post, which speaks for itself in terms of how far the whole cute thing can sometimes be taken in this country.

Thing is Japan really has this weird thing going on with cute. How a foreigner picks up on it depends on the person by and large, but regardless of your degree of ‘immunity’, sooner or later it really starts to stick out like a sore thumb. It’s not entirely exagerated either, as Sushimatic pointed out. There is probably a certain degree of difference depending on who’s speaking on it, but by and large Japan very much seems to hold dear the belief that everything can be ‘cute-d up’ and that making something cute can make it easier to ‘process’.

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written by Laurent \\ tags: cute, Japan, kawaii, signs, society

The TEFL world just keeps giving to me today. Well actually, Alex’s blog is really the one that keeps giving if truth be told.

I stumbled upon this article which Alex had linked, and which is quite simply amazing in its detailing of the latest forays of English teaching in Japan.

The article details the efforts of a man, who runs a chain of Maid cafes, the quintessential otaku attraction, to set up a school which combines two very simple things: English teaching and cosplay (or cross-dressing using costumes from Anime and Manga). The fact that these two things really have nothing in common doesn’t seem to stop his incredible logic, which is pretty flawless when you consider his argument for such a mind boggling link-up:

Otaku are known for their incredible customer loyalty, while schools are known for their trouble in getting customers to keep on coming back, so I figured a school for cosplayers would achieve the perfect blend

And if all this wasn’t enough, the school’s English focus is also something to behold, deciding to go for that much avoided market of ‘Broken English’… you couldn’t make this up if you tried. Hell, look up the school’s site and its extensive ‘Maximal Broken English’ online lessons!

Still the best is kept for the end, as the article is wrapped up with a quote that I believe could well and truly transform the world of TEFL as it’s known. And if it doesn’t do that, it should at least provide for what could possibly be the most entertaining English lesson to watch or partake in ever.

“I want to start classes for kids some time in the future. And I’ll make the teachers get dressed up in Pikachu suits.”

Somebody give this man an award right now, please.

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written by Laurent \\ tags: geeking, Japan, Random, school, Teaching, TEFL

Came across this article on Japan whilst looking for something the other day. Aside from being an interesting read for anyone who’s lived here for a while or is thinking of living here, the author makes a very interesting point that I can relate to, even though I’ve only been for a very short time compared to his 20 odd years.

And yet beneath all the motion and excitement, something had caught inside me in Japan, and it was perhaps (I see now) all that I couldn’t explain, everything that I couldn’t put into tidy boxes and pinwheeling sentences. I had walked around a temple near the airport at Narita, during a morning layover, waiting for my flight back to New York, and something in the mild October sunshine, the gathered quiet, the shelteredness of the scene, took me back, unanswerably, to boyhood and England: Japan made me feel more at home than I’d been in a life of traveling the globe.

This sense of home he talks about is something I’ve felt on multiple occasions in the last year, and everytime I’ve struggled to fully understand it. I think the main thing I struggle with is that while Tokyo, and Japan, has this ability to make you feel at home, more than even home can, it’s also undeniably alien and very much an environment in which a foreigner stands out, regardless of linguistic skills or social integration.

Yet despite this, Tokyo can very much make you feel at home, make you feel like belong in a sense, or if not belong that you’re in a place where it’s ok to just be. This contradiction between being regularly estranged and feeling embraced at times is funnily enough another contradiction to add to a long list I’ve discovered since being here. Maybe it’s just because of the way the Japanese are, how the society functions and operates that lets you be able to feel that just being is ok, that you are, as strange as it may seem in such a, at times, foreign land, at home.

It’s definitely one of the things I’m going to miss the most once I’m gone, especially when I walk around Tokyo and just take it in: sights, sounds and smells. It’s also a reason I would recommend anyone try it out here once if they feel they got it in them and want to experience something different. It’s a mindset too, you have to be in the right headspace I guess, it’s not as simple as just turning up and waiting for it to happen. But for anyone who has any experience of living in a different culture, or wants to really try it out, then I think Japan in a weird way definitely holds something nowhere else really does.

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written by Laurent \\ tags: Japan, Random, society, travelling, writing

Animosity between neighbouring countries isn’t really anything new. Growing up and living in Europe I’ve become accustomed to plenty of it, from funny stereotypes to nonsense bordering on xenophobia. One thing I’ve realised since working at a newspaper here though is how deep the animosity between Japan and China sometimes runs, and how far and low some people will seemingly act on it.

Like all good rivalries, it runs deep and both ways, but my knowledge of the issue isn’t that thorough if I’m honest. I know the Chinese hold a grudge, well one of the most recent ones anyways, against the Japanese for Japan’s WWII aggressions and past attempts at imperial expansion in Asia (google the rape of Nanking as a good starting point). As for the Japanese, I’m not actually quite sure where their grudge comes from, anyone with any enlightening knowledge please drop a comment. One thing I do know is that I’ve met my share of Japanese who have been vocal about their distrust of the Chinese and seeming belief that China and its people are up to no good (broadely speaking of course).

What’s been really enlightening and entertaining though is the Japanese media’s practice of jibing at the Chinese for anything they possibly can. The most obvious examples I see everyday are those at the newspaper I work at, which is the country’s second biggest, and also on TV. At the newspaper the Chinese jibes are literally everywhere it seems. I’ll be editing a story, and all of a sudden there will be a totally unrelated sentence making a remark, generally negative, about China. If it wasn’t so funny in the way it’s done, it would be scary.

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written by Laurent \\ tags: Japan, newspaper, Random, society, writing

It was trade show time again 2 weeks ago as the Tokyo Amusement Expo 2008 (aka Tokyo Arcade Game Show) rolled into town at the Makuhari Messe. Compared to the Tokyo Game Show, which is the year’s video game event by excellence, TAE is a much smaller affair spread over two days and taking in just one of Makuhari’s exhibition halls. When TGS rolls into town, pretty much the whole of Makuhari is taken over, and the majority of Tokyo’s geek community descends on the Chiba town. TAE was quieter and smaller, which didn’t necessarily make it less fun.

For one you get more space to stroll around, taking in all the glory of trade shows: the scantily-clothed ladies, the suits eyeballing people from the sides, the stall staff looking bored or scared, the geeks willing to queue 2h for a five minute blast on a yet to be released game and the hordes of pervy old men with big cameras chasing the aforementioned scantily-clad ladies. The arcade show had the added bonus of also being swarmed by hundreds of kids, dragging their parents to various stands displaying the latest wares aimed at the younger market, from card games to UFO catchers to… well, really weird shit.

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written by Laurent \\ tags: akihabara, computers, Japan, society, video games

Had a good chuckle earlier today after reading this article in the New York Times I was linked to.

For those that don’t know, or can’t be bothered to read, the world-famous Michelin Guide, one of the things the French are most proud of, make no mistake, launched an Asian version of its guide for the first time last year. It chose Tokyo as the first city up for ‘inspection’ and came out with a stagerring amount of praise for the capital’s cuisine and its establishment, giving it more stars than both Paris and New York combined.

Which you’d think was good news for a city. But not for the Japanese it would seem, as the results were not just greeted with pleasure but also with a fair amount of discontent and disdain from some of the city’s top chefs it seems.

My favourite part as to be when chef Toshiya Kadowaki said his Nouveau Japonais dishes, which take inspiration from French cuisine, do not need a Gallic seal of approval. A lot of the disdain and refutal seems to either come from the belief that foreigners are not qualified to judge Japanese cuisine or that bragging, competition and awards go against the Japanese tendency to not stand out from the crowd, to fit in rather than stick out.

Which is all well and good, but when this comes from chefs in a coutry responsible for murdering foreign cuisine in new and unimaginable ways it’s a little funny… nah actually a lot funny.

Still que sera sera right, and whether or not they want to admit it, accept it or do whatever with it, the Japanese are responsible for some amazing cuisine and Tokyo definitely stands out as one of the major culinary centres for any self respecting foodie. It’s hardly surprising that Michelin chose to lavish that much praise on the city and its restaurants, as it is hardly surprising that some of the people reacted in the way they did.

No matter how good food can be in this city though, I still stand by my belief that some of the abberations Japan has come up with when it comes to interpreting foreign dishes is some of the most shocking stuff I’ve been unfortunate to see, smell or taste. Mentaiko spaghetti? Ughhhhh…

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written by Laurent \\ tags: food, Japan, Japanese Food, Random, society

For most foreigners, Japan not only carries an image of the exotic and different but also of futurism, aided in no small part by its cultural output, especially anime. Stepping into Tokyo for the first time, taking in the sights and sounds of places like Shinjuku or the public transport system only reinforces this perceived impression of a hypercapitalist, futuristic society. Give it a while though and you realise that while this impression does have a grounding in reality, it’s also exagerated in parts, misrepresented through an outsider’s lens.

But as I found out last month when I went to the Dairoboto exhibition, in Ueno, Japan does lead the world in robotics, which given the aforementioned preconceptions of a futuristic society, is hardly surprising. Japan uses more robots than any other country and, as the exhibition’s blurb explained, is the world’s leading ‘robot kingdom.’ A term that would send the imagination of any self respecting nerd wild with possibilities.

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written by Laurent \\ tags: computers, geeking, Japan, pictures, robots, technology

Hindsight is a great thing, not least because with it comes the ability to be able to reflect on things that have happened and see them in a different light.

I’m coming up to the end of my short lived ‘career’ as an English teacher in Japan, or to give it a bit more accuracy, my Eikaiwa teacher career in Japan. As of the end of this month I’ll no longer be an English teacher (I guess there is always a next time, especially in this business).

I became an English teacher so that I could move to Japan, and live here for a while. I needed a change of scenery and a challenge, and it seemed like it could provide both. I took a CELTA degree before moving out, even though it’s not required for most Eikaiwa jobs. I always thought that if you were going to do something you should do it properly.

Four months or so after I arrived here and started working in the Eikaiwa industry, I wrote a series of posts debating the good, bad and ugly of the job. Well debating might be the wrong word. I was quite pissed off at the time, and it was more of a way to vent and put things down then really debating the pros and cons. And my experience at the time was limited to say the least.

Now with hindsight might be a good time to revisit some of the ideas.

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written by Laurent \\ tags: Japan, Teaching

With a week long hangover and impending first skiing trip in nearly 14 years, it’s time for a round-up of my first year in Japan. Traditions and what not, everyone’s probably bored to death with yearly round-ups already but hey it’s the season of excess so I’ll add to it, considering I managed to keep my xmas shopping consumption to pretty much zero this year.

A lot has happened in one year. I’ve changed jobs much to my surprise, I’ve visited a lot more of Tokyo and Japan than I thought I would and I’ve also managed to attain a somewhat decent ‘beginner’ level in Japanese.

So to sum it up are two lists of what I consider good and bad points about living in Tokyo and Japan.

This’ll be my last post of the year. I’ve still got a bunch of things to write up which have accumulated and which I’ll get onto in the new year - once I’ve drunk away all the money I need to live and am forced to do nothing but work and sit in front of my computer at night.

Happy new year and wishes for 2008 to everyone.

2007 in two lists, bullet points and randomness  

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written by Laurent \\ tags: food, Japan, Random

As of this week I officially start in my new job. Even though I’ve been working there once a week for the last month, this week is the proper beginning of my new job life in Japan. I’m leaving the ‘comfort’ of full-time teaching employment for the relative uncertainty of two part-time contracts which can be both be renewed or cancelled every three months. Thing is the ‘job security’ is actually not the biggest concern if I’m honest. What I’m more worried about, though putting it like that makes it sound worse than it is, is my new position as a copy-editor (aka sub-editor in the UK) at the Asahi Shimbun, one of Japan’s biggest English daily newspapers.

Why worried? Well cause it’s all turned out to be a bit of a blag. I applied for the job more as a ‘whatever’ moment than anything serious, considering I didn’t have the required qualification - that magical ‘previous newspaper experience’ requirement which you can never get until you find a job that will give you the job without the pre-requisite ‘experience’. A lovely catch-22 situation most university graduates only know too well about. Looks like I’ve managed to break it this time. Ok I’m not totally blagging it, considering I do have over 4 years of subbing experience, just not in a paper and while I guessed it would be a lot more different, I didn’t know how much.

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written by Laurent \\ tags: Japan, motivation, office life, Teaching, writing

Learning is not always fun, especially if you don’t want to do it or if it seems like an impossible task. Learning Kanji when you’re not Japanese, and didn’t start at an early age, falls quite neatly into the latter category (or the first one too, but at that point you’ve got to be thinking about why you’re learning something like Kanji, which you can get by without). The thing with Kanji is that once you get the past the feeling of pointlessness, and the other one that makes you want to bang your head violently against a wall because people today are still using such an antiquated, and totally impractical, way of writing and communicating, you actually realise that it’s quite good. And interesting. And fun. Really I’m serious.

It took me roughly 8 months before I seriously contemplated learning Kanji properly. And I’m glad I waited because it’s made it that much more interesting, especially after you get to the point where you know and can read the phonetic kana alphabets fine but you’re stuck on the Kanji and therefore have no other option but to move forth. My first step towards Kanji mastery was to buy the first set of the excellent White Rabbit Press Kanji cards, which are used to help you train for the first levels of the Japanese Language Profiency Test. Cards are cool and being a teacher makes you automatically down with flashcards anyways, so it’s a winner. There’s a few annoying things about them, including the order of the cards and the usefulness of some of the example sentences/words, but by and large they’re a great way to get stuck into Kanji and open a whole world of daily understanding.

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written by Laurent \\ tags: Japan, kanji, learning, video games

If there was need for proof that commercialisation of culture has truly gone awry in this day and age, then Japan and Halloween would probably constitute the perfect example. If you think that the commercialisation of christmas was bad, then trust me you need to witness Halloween in Tokyo. I remember about 6 weeks or so ago I was walking along the street and noticed some Halloween decorations in a shop window. To which I thought, ‘hold on a minute it’s mid September… you what?’. I can’t really say I’ve ever cared for Halloween, what with it being a primarily American celebration, but the sight of Halloween decorations 6 weeks or so ahead of the time left me feeling a little weird.

Turns out that was just the beginning. Halloween’s about 10 mins away my time, and I’ve been subjected to more Halloween related merchandise and decorations in 6 weeks than I ever have in 27 years previous to that. Surely that must rank as some sort of record. Even though the overkill commercialisation of something like Halloween is quite ‘normal’ today, it’s still a pretty mental experience. Considering that Japan is as far removed from Halloween as I could have imagined, seeing the place covered in decorations for the best part of 6 weeks and the insane amount of commercial tie-ins has actually left me wondering wtf for the best part of that time. From Halloween flavouring of all sweets and chocolates and drinks and ice creams imaginable (Baskin Robbins takes the crown on that one with something like 10 Halloween related flavourings) to Halloween Kitty, I’ve had the colour orange burned into my retina and sub-conscious, and will be glad to see the back of all these pumpkins.

Ok so there is the logical explanation: American occupation following WW2 has left a massive footprint across parts of Japan, especially the big cities, with the country being pretty much Americanized (see the z there?  :lol: ) in any way possible which makes the Halloween celebrations not so surprising. But still the total overkill is quite a shock to the system the first time round. There is cultural imperialism and then there is this - hyper-imperialism/commercialism which is quite fitting, in a land full where compound names using hyper can be deployed for a lot of things.

According to one of my students today this situation wasn’t always the case, and has only got worst in recent years. What’s more while there is all this Halloween related business for 6 weeks, most of the people don’t actually seem to celebrate it. There’s no massive trick or treat about to happen as far as I know, and by all accounts it’ll all be over as fast as it started come thursday morning, with nothing much to show for it apart from a whole bunch of discarded orange paraphernalia. I’ve spent the last 3 days doing Halloween lessons for kids, most of which know pumpkins, ghosts and the usual related figures, but haven’t really got a clue about the rest of the associated ‘traditions’ (and I use that word loosely).

If Halloween’s that bad I dread to think of what christmas might throw up. Yet another celebration which has really no relation to the country or culture, apart from commercial and imperialistic ties, ready to flood the streets and shelves of shops. Ho ho ho…

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written by Laurent \\ tags: halloween, Japan, Random

In what seems to be a week of people and things going down, I’ve just found out that it seems Nova has declared bankruptcy, as of this morning. Nova is the McDonald’s of the English Conversation industry in Japan - the biggest of the big dogs, and pretty soon it may well be something of the past. Nova’s problems have been ongoing for quite a while, but this year it seems to have all come to a head with teachers and staff being unpaid, the government ruling against them in a case dealing with students and fees, and work places being repossessed after rent has gone unpaid (as well as teachers’ accommodation). This has led to teachers walking out, strikes, and school closures in recent months. More recently some senior members resigned, and the president went into hiding.

Most of which is pretty dark for the people involved - staff and students. And I guess some management. But by and large those at the top have probably known it was gonna go pear shape for a while, and they’re the ones who really have to answer for the collapse of what seemed to be an unmovable corporate giant for a long time. Thing is the business world is a cruel one. The president hasn’t made things easier, having been trying to worm his way out of any responbility since it all kicked off this year. Though that seems to have finally stopped if the claims of bankruptcy filed this morning are correct.

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written by Laurent \\ tags: Japan, Teaching

Following on from my quick blurb about Alex Case’s recent post on the mysteries of Japanese motivation in the classroom, I’ve got round to formulating some thoughts on the issue. While it’s definitely not something I can claim to have much experience of, having worked in Japanese classrooms (or the pretence of depending on how you view Eikaiwas) for the last 10 months has definitely given me a whole new insight into what the motivations for learning a language can be for Japanese people. In contrast to my short but intensive time training for a CELTA degree last year, and during which I dealt with learners from a variety of countries and levels, dealing with the motivation of certain Japanese learners on a daily basis can be a totally mind boggling experience, and one that definitely forces you to also reconsider your own reasons, and motivation.

The issues with motivation in a Japanese classroom can be varied - some people come it seems just to tell you how great Japan is, others are obviously after a chat and will seemingly do anything they can to delay any sort of teaching, others yet will take any form of trying to teach them pretty badly, some will want your opinion on anything and everything and yet more come because it seems that learning English is their current hobby. The last one is probably the one that winds me up the most. Don’t get me wrong we all need, and have, hobbie especially in this day and age of over consumption and capitalism, but personally I’ve never once considered learning a language as a hobby. I don’t know, I learnt languages because I needed to, and I practice them because I want to, or need to for work (my current employment being a strong case in point). I can understand why someone might want to learn a language as a hobby, especially if they’re older. It passes time, it can be stimulating and it brings a certain amount of cultural learning with it too.

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written by Laurent \\ tags: Japan, motivation, school, Teaching

No matter how prepared you are, how trained or how keen, one thing you won’t be ready for when teaching in an Eikaiwa in Japan for the first time is how quickly your motivation can be sapped. And how many people you’ll deal with who have no seeming motivation to learn. I know I sound miserable and it’s likely not the case for everyone out there, though I’d really like to hear of someone teaching in an Eikaiwa who has never dealt with either problems, even just once.

Alex Case put it better than I could over on his blog, having solved the mystery of Japanese motivation. Which got me thinking… but right now my brain is totally shattered from exhaustion and so I’m gonna leave my own thoughts on this until a little later, when I can actually string an argument and some thoughts together. I swear though, one hour private lessons are the work of the devil.

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written by Laurent \\ tags: Japan, motivation, Teaching