Finally! No more exams! Feels good! I thought today I’d write about how each part of it went, then let you get on with your lives. So get comfortable and don’t move. Unless you’re in some sort of peril.

Japanese Exam
The exam was three hours long and consisted of three parts. The first was a translation from Japanese to English about dating for old people. Yeah, a weird topic but the idea is we’ll encounter Kanji and vocab we don’t know, and then we’re to either facilitate this in the translation or guess the meaning. In reality this doesn’t work, although I don’t think I went too off the mark. I did however at one point guess a translation as ‘Women leave their husbands, be it because their children leave home, or their husbands die’ and it was a good few seconds before I realised that’s impossible.

Part two was comprehension questions about eco-tourism and the effects of tourism on the countryside. Nothing much to say here, but next time you go to a mountain don’t pick the flora! Otherwise I’ll have to answer questions about you and it’s HARD!

The final part was writing in Japanese. This time we were asked to write about the recycling system of the UK, which as you can imagine was MIND BLOWINGLY interesting.

All in all I think the exam was pretty hard. There was quite a few things in there we’d never seen before and the grammar and Kanji we had learned were used in pretty sneaky ways. I honestly have no idea how it went, but results come out in a few weeks so we’ll find out then!

Japanese Listening & Speaking
The listening was boring so I won’t write about it. For speaking we had to tell a story (yep, I know) about a guy who won the lottery, lost his ticket then found it again. I decided to talk about how he had run up huge gambling debts and winning the lottery was the only way out. When the girl came to his house to give it back, he thanked her, but at the last minute she kept the ticket and bought a boat. The teachers loved it even though I stumbled over a few tricky grammar points. But again I think it was alright.

Japan’s Minorities
Three questions, three hours. I won’t bore you with the details, but I gave mad props to the Okinawans throughout the exam. Those guys must be feeling pretty sweet right now. (At least if they read my essay, which I admit there is little chance of them doing).

Yeah, so this was a boring update. WHAT OF IT?

HAPPY NEW PRESIDENT EVERYONE!

Sorry, had to get that off my chest. So glad Obama is in and already making some nice changes.

Of course, it’s hard to think about that when you have an incredibly important exam tomorrow.

That’s right, from 9am until midday I will be in a three hour exam. It consists of an hour of writing an essay in Japanese, an hour of translating Japanese into English, and an hour of answering comprehension questions about a random text. After that I have a short listening exam and a speaking exam next week, plus a 3 hour exam about Japan’s minorities, then I am finished!

Well, until second semester starts on Feb 9th, that is…

In other news, if you enjoy reading essays in Japanese (and who doesn’t?!) then click the link below firmly and be magically transported to my latest Lang-8 essay;

FACEBOOKやエスエヌエス・サイトについて

I’ll be twittering as soon as I can after the exam so keep watching the ‘News…’ section to the right to see how terribly it went. Once I’m back in lectures and out of revision I can start posting again on a regular basis. I promise!

From Amazon (synopsis of Manga):

Tokyo Zombie is a horror-comedy manga about two blue-collar factory workers (who happen to be jiu-jitsu experts) dealing with a zombie uprising in Tokyo. When the story begins, Fujio and Mitsuo are dreaming of training in martial arts overseas and becoming famous. When they accidentally kill their overbearing boss, they decide to cover up the evidence and bury him at a man-made garbage mountain known as DARK FUJI. Unfortunately for them, the tons of rotting garbage have been contaminated with industrial waste…
Which, naturally, transforms the bodies of the dead into ravenous, flesh-eating zombies.

Oh yes. A film about zombies from a giant pile of rubbish. You can tell you’re in for hilarity when the Amazon synopsis of the opening part of the film includes ‘zombie uprising’, ‘accidentally kill their overbearing boss’ and ‘ravenous, flesh-eating zombies’, you know you’re in for a good time.

I’ll get the bad news out of the way first. The film’s budget was obviously not huge, and as a result the special effects are a little lacking. But in all honesty that sort of adds to the hilarity – some of the things the director adds to in order to get across something happening are often funnier than the plot itself – for example the slide whistle sound effect when one person falls off a bridge. You’d probably miss him if it weren’t for the whistle. The funniest part of the film is definitely the little side jokes, like the man obsessed with searching for Calpis (a Japanese soft drink) in a zombie-destroyed world, or the poor bloke who’s been forced into dumping his mother into the mountain of rubbish by his pushy girlfriend;

But the film is well worth watching – it’s pretty consistently funny, and in the second half the strangeness of the situation of the characters makes up for the lack of one liners. I will admit there are long scenes that drag on – the driving one for example is a bit overdone. Furthermore there are a few jokes, such as one of the leads finding out he’s being lied to by his doctor, which are probably funnier in Japan than they are in England or America. At least in English, I didn’t get the joke. The subtitles are good (although I tried to get through on Japanese alone – it’s a tough one!) and the film is well done. The one liners do come across well 99% of the time, and lead to some great quotes;

I’m not really sure about deep messages or comments on society that the director is trying to make here, although the wastefulness of our world is probably a main one. The actors are all reasonable , highlight being the hapless Yoko (played by Erika Oduka) who puts on a great show, and is a pretty decent character. (Although her complaining does get a bit old).

So overall the film is funny. It’s not a classic though – the plot is haphazard, some of the acting is a bit stiff and occasionally the film drag on a bit, but overall well worth watching, if only for a brilliant twist. (I’m not saying what it is, but it’s well worth watching for. Trying to guess it is impossible so you’re welcome to go ahead and try in the comments!)

From AmpedAsia:

Asako is your typical seventeen-year-old, high school truant. She has no goals for the future and doesn’t know what direction her life is taking. Then she meets Aoki Kazuyoshi, a ten-year-old boy living nearby. Although still a precocious child, Kazuyoshi poses as a twenty-six-year-old housewife on an erotic internet chat site. Kazuyoshi invites Asako into the erotic business world, and she immediately becomes immersed in an adult world that she had no idea existed. The door is wide open for the curious Asako, who discovers things that she has never dreamed of, but is this truly the right path for her life?

Sounds hilarious, right?! Well, for the good first forty mins up to an hour it really is. The two main characters, school truant Asako and 10 year old boy Aoki work well together and there are some hilarious dialogues;

Aoki: If you’re going to kill yourself, could I feel your breasts a little first?
Asako:  I’m not going to kill myself… Wait! Who do you think you are?!
Aoki: Don’t worry, I don’t want to touch them really. It was a diversion tactic to scare you out of suicide. I thought that line might work.

That got a good laugh out of us, anyway. It’s all very sweet and cute, which contrasts nicely with the fact the kids are masquerading as adults in a very adult chat room. But still the light comedy is maintained until it all goes wrong.

At some point director Kei Kataoka felt he had to pander to the slightly creepy “Phwoah look at that schoolgirl” crowd, and shoves a very creepy thirty seconds of lead actress Aya Ueto admitting she’s turned on whilst the camera focuses on her chest. Now Ueno is hot, there’s no way around it, but just jamming a Eurotrash-wannabe scene in there makes the whole film feel like the sort of thing a creepy old man goes to see in a cinema with a secret entrance.

The film wants to be deep but it really isn’t. Every time they look a little at some deep social issue, back comes the quirky jokes and terrible background music. Imagine a tribute to Britney mixed with an ice-cream advert jingle played entirely on a Kazoo whilst underwater.

So there you go. The film itself is funny, is well acted and the plot is well written and enjoyable. Huge cheers go to the young Kamiki Ryunosuke, who’s only 15 now, for the best acting in the film despite being 12 at the time, and I would recommend this film to anyone who can watch a film with friends without feeling awkward, even when the film does. I gave up just after half way through as the rest of the film had been sort of ruined for me. Hope you have better luck!

More film reviews coming soon!

According to The Times Online;

As a thankless, recession-streaked 2009 dawns, Japan’s stressed-out workers are preparing to adopt a subversive new approach to the work-life balance: fibbing, skiving and knocking off early.

In other words, the Japanese workforce are finally employing a well tried and tested approach to work – not going! Hurrah! But things get better! Someone wrote a book about how to get off work! I wonder if it’s only come out now because the author was skipping work all the time? Yes, The Incumbent Salaryman’s Bumper Book of Excuses apparently helps you to keep up to 120 excuses ready to go at all times. Except if you’re missing work you should be at home and thus your boss can’t tell you’re looking at a book, but whatever.

Anyway, The Times article goes on to suggest that the excuses found in the book are, to the experienced skipper of work, pretty lame. Bizarre allergies, identical twins and weather phenomena in your area that only you noticed are apparently all inside the book.

There are [also] excuses to cope with being accused of having an untidy desk (it’s good feng shui), of wearing an ill-matched tie (it was a present from the client I’m about to visit) and of yawning near the boss (hay fever medicine).

So this is all very well but it’s not good enough Japan! If we are going to have guides about how to escape working then they better be well written, as this is a very important idea to me! (Am I making myself really unemployable by writing this? Find out in a few years when I’m living on the street!)

So I have taken it upon myself to write a new, better book to help people avoid having to work. Strap yourself in, put on your best fake sick voice and then head back to bed; Mike’s guide is here. My book is called Wouldn’t it be sweet if we didn’t go to work today?! and here, dedicated readers, are some choice cuts;

Page 33

Page 83

Page 91

Pretty good ideas! If you are interesting in buying my book it only costs £600 and is available by coming to my house and asking nicely for it!

Finally, I need a clever and snappy way to end this update. I can’t really think of one though. Man, I really could do with a way out. WOAH?! Apparently I’m in 1958 and, hey, get off my computer you cats! They’re stealing my computdiw! uhw owdwd? jwdwd! ahahadwhdwdwdiw!!!